7 Thrilling Tales That Upturn What We Know about Black History

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-2024

Publication Title

Electric Lit

Abstract

When most folks hear the word “archive,” they picture a dusty library folder…but when scholars use the word, sometimes they mean it in a different sense. For them, “the Black Archive” certainly refers to the papers and documents that track lives and deeds. But scholars, or at least new generations of scholars and writers, also see it as something messier and more imaginary. You don’t necessarily go to a library and pull up a call number for a file with this kind of archive. Instead, you ask impossible questions: How do we remember, much less reckon with, ugly truths that entire civilizations tried to bury? How do we find stories that aren’t in census data or the letters of rich folks? Where is the archive of the diminished, the despised, the dispossessed?

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