Scattered and Fugitive Things - How Black Collectors Created Archives and Remade History

Scattered and Fugitive Things tells the stories of the Black collectors who dedicated themselves to documenting the history of African American life, traveling from the parlors of the urban north to HBCU reading rooms and branch libraries in the Jim Crow south.

List of contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Value, Order, Risk: Experiments in Black Archiving
1. Thinking Black, Collecting Black: Schomburg’s Desiderata and the Radical World of Black Bibliophiles
2. A “History of the Negro in Scrapbooks”: The Gumby Book Studio’s Ephemeral Assemblies
3. Defiant Libraries: Virginia Lee and the Secrets Kept by Good Bookladies
4. Unauthorized Inquiries: Dorothy Porter’s Wayward Catalog
5. A Space for Black Study: The Hall Branch Library and the Historians Who Never Wrote
6. Mobilizing Manuscripts: L. D. Reddick and Black Archival Politics
Epilogue
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the author

Laura E. Helton is an assistant professor of English and history at the University of Delaware. She is a coeditor of the digital humanities project “Remaking the World of Arturo Schomburg.”

Summary

Scattered and Fugitive Things tells the stories of the Black collectors who dedicated themselves to documenting the history of African American life, traveling from the parlors of the urban north to HBCU reading rooms and branch libraries in the Jim Crow south.

Product details

• Authors: Laura Helton
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 05.04.2024
• EAN: 9780231212748
• ISBN: 978-0-231-21274-8
• No. of pages: 328
• Series: Black Lives in the Diaspora: Past / Present / Future
• Subjects: Guides > Self-help, everyday life > Family; Humanities, art, music > Art > General, dictionaries; Social sciences, law, business > Media, communication > Book trade, library system; Cultural Studies, HISTORY / Americas (North, Central, South, West Indies), HISTORY / Social History, Social & cultural history, ART / Museum Studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, Social and cultural history, History of the Americas, Black & Asian Studies, Museology & heritage studies, Museology and heritage studies, HISTORY / African American & Black, Relating to African American / Black American people, literary criticism; language arts & disciplines; history