“We Got Caught Up In the Movement:” Reflections on Princeton’s Center for African-American Studies’ “Where Do We Go From Here?” Conversation

“We got caught up in the movement…I washed up on the shores of Mississippi [from the North]” proclaimed journalist and author Charles “Charlie” Cobb, as he discussed his organic entrée into the civil rights movement as a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) field secretary. Cobb’s sentiments were largely shared by the other panelists, which included Courtland Cox, Ivanhoe Donaldson, Larry Rubin, and Robert “Bob” Parris Moses—all of whom were northerners actively engaged in the herculean struggle for civil and human rights as it was waged by SNCC. During the classical phase of the black freedom struggle (ca. 1954-1968), SNCC emerged as one of the preeminent civil rights organizations, involving themselves in the era’s now iconic moments, such as the 1963 March on Washington and the student sit-in’s proliferating throughout the American South.

While these watershed episodes in history crystallized SNCC’s place within the pantheon of civil rights organizations, the aptly titled conversation “Where Do We Go From Here?” facilitated by Princeton’s Center for African American Studies (CAAS), urged its intellectual congregants to consider the quotidian struggles experienced by the architects of SNCC and the communities they served. This bottom-up approach to understanding the energizing force and relevance of SNCC, according to Professor Imani Perry, offers a “corrective” to the popular memory and historiography of the civil rights struggle and the tendency to privilege the movement’s heroes and its conspicuous victories. In other words, this community-centric rubric goes beyond expressing how the benevolent few rose to the mantle; rather, it demonstrates how communities of activists and community folks alike, were the real powerbrokers in the modern quest for civil and human rights.

Perhaps more salient than the trope of “getting caught up in the movement,” was the fact that these men lived to tell their stories. Their macabre tales of dodging death in the wilderness of the South’s most notorious states, stand as a testament to the physical and psychological costs of challenging systemic racism and inequality, a debt SNCC and its foot soldiers were all too willing to pay with their own lives. Their staggering display of courage—then and now—remind me of the stalwart shoulders on which this generation rests. In the midst of global socio-political unrest, the Occupy Wall Street campaign, and the troubling politics of the budding Voter ID laws, I wonder if we are up for the imminent challenges ahead? Are we capable of getting “caught up in the movement” in the same way that our foreparents did? Are we equipped to sustain this rich legacy of fearlessness in the face of adversity? How can scholars and archivists participate in the communities and movements that we seek to preserve? Finally, to draw upon Courtland Cox’s appeal at the close of the conversation: Are you prepared to make justice your life’s work?

For more information on CAAS’ programs related to SNCC, visit the following links:

http://www.princeton.edu/africanamericanstudies/events_archive/viewevent.xml?id=248

http://www.princeton.edu/africanamericanstudies/events_archive/viewevent.xml?id=236

National Archives’ Citizen Archivst Dashboard

What do you think of the National Archives and Records Administration’s (NARA) plans to launch the Citizen Archivist Dashboard? Does this effort signal a democratization of the profession? How does it re-conceptualize the work of an archivist? Access? (See the link below)

http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20111107_7329.php

“Tilling Our Mother’s Garden”

Check out this link to a brief article I wrote for Emory’s Summer 2009 issue of Keywords magazine. It is a love letter of sorts to the Alice Walker papers collection in the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL) at Emory University:  http://web.library.emory.edu/KeyWORDS/magazine/EMBLIBS_MAG_SUMMER_09.pdf

“I Come Bearing Gifts”: Pedagogy for the Scholar-Archivists’ Soul

As if it were yesterday, I remember my first foray into original research. I was working on a research paper pertaining to the Harlem Suitcase theatre, a small Harlem based repertory group for African American thespians and writers, founded by Louise Thompson Patterson and Langston Hughes in the 1930s. Patterson’s papers were newly acquired by Emory University’s Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL), thus began my storied romance with archives. I distinctly recall the nervous excitement and the attendant goose bumps that freckled my arms as I sifted through box after box and folder after folder of correspondence, playbills, scripts, and photographs among other primary sources. In hindsight, this was the beginning of my journey toward becoming a scholar-archivist.

As an IMLS fellow in the Mudd Manuscript Library at Princeton University, I am often charged with the task of engaging students, many of whom are in the nascent stages of research projects and some who have never stepped foot in an archival repository. It is in these moments, where I draw upon the unique skills that are endemic to the life of a scholar-archivist, illuminating the practical and intellectual uses of archival records.  To begin, I closely read, sometimes two or three times, the instructor’s syllabus to get a sense of the questions and ethos that shapes the course. Secondly, I research the library database to find collections that might inform the course’s thematic objectives, and once this is complete, I draft an annotated bibliography of these resources in preparation for the class visit. Throughout this process and in consultation with my colleagues, I am constantly generating questions that will invite students to think more critically about the course and the primary sources at their disposal.

I often open classes with the phrase: “I come bearing gifts,” as students climb into their seats, their eyes bouncing off of the sea of gray and cream hollinger boxes that stand before them.  For me, “bearing gifts” is more than ice-breaker parlance; in my view, there is something far more altruistic in this language. The opportunity to use archives as a pedagogical tool does something special for the scholar-archivists’ soul,  it sparks the imagination; it enlarges the scope of how research can be conducted; it provides students with the tools to produce original scholarship; and it, in fact, still gives me goose bumps.