archives

Progress Digitizing the Johnson Publishing Archive, a Vast Resource in African American History

Kara Olidge of the Getty Research Institute says making millions of images from the publishing company behind Ebony and Jet magazines accessible will help people to learn about Black history even if state legislatures restrict teaching it in schools. 

LOC Opens Personal Papers of Justice John Paul Stevens to Public

The justice's personal papers show, among other things, that Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy were upset that the harshness of dissenting opinion in Bush v. Gore would lead to public criticism of the conservative justices who helped George W. Bush to the White House. 

How Sara Georgini Does History with the John Adams Papers

The series editor for the Papers of John Adams at the Massachusetts Historical Society discusses her work as a public historian. 

A Hunt Through the Queer Past for the Anonymous "HHC" Ended in an Unexpected Place

by Aaron Lecklider

The repression of the past has meant that few early LGBTQ activists have kept detailed records of their work or their communities. But sometimes the present community of historians can collectively find those ghosts of the past. 

Where to Look for the Evidence of Colonial Violence

by Erik Linstrum

The British government's efforts to conceal potentially embarrasing records as decolonization accelerated in the 1950s and 1960s means that historians need to know where to look for contemporary evidence of the violence of colonization and counterinsurgent tactics. 

Russia's Invasion Threatens Soviet Secret Police Archives in Ukraine—and Families' History

by Megan Buskey

During a brief recent window of time, records of Soviet secret police activities in Ukraine, including voluminous files kept on ordinary civilians, have become available to researchers. While pro-Russian politicians once kept them classified, Russian munitions now threaten their physical existence. 

NYPL to Take Archives of East Village Eye, Newspaper of 1980s Downtown Scene

The complexity and difficulty of placing the relatively small archive of an underground arts paper with a repository that can preserve it highlights the challenges facing historic preservation. 

Margaret Bingham Stillwell, Women Archivists, and the Problem of Archival Inclusivity

by Amanda E. Strauss and Karin Wulf

Two scholars who are the first women leaders of their institutions reflect on the ongoing lessons of a pioneering woman archivist and rare books librarian for understanding how archival practices can be made to include or exclude. 

Tracing AIDS-Driven Cultural Production Across Generations

by Mackenzie Lukenbill

The collected papers of AIDS educator and activist Chloe Dzubilo stand as a "counter-archive," which does not just preserve a record of the past but makes it a trigger for thought and action in the present. 

William Still Preserved the Black History of Abolition at a Time of Danger

by Julia W. Bernier

After emancipation, the meticulous records William Still kept about the fellow Black people he helped to reach freedom became a tool in a different struggle: to fight against the erasure of Black humanity and power by proponents of Jim Crow and the Lost Cause. 

Postcard From Detroit

by Mattie Webb

The city of Detroit is a fitting location for an archive documenting not only American labor history but the connections between US-based unions and the antiapartheid movement in South Africa. 

Returning Trump's Stolen Records Won't Make America's Archives Complete

by Karin Wulf

While government archives, libraries and other repositories preserve a wealth of the records of the nation's past, the preservation of records is also a record of prejudice and exclusion. Historians must still work against the current to research the stories of women, the poor, and racial minorities. 

We Discovered the Archive of a Sex Education Academy; Is its Value for Auction or Research?

by Allison Miller

What happened when a historian and an archivist-in-training tracked down the much-rumored but long unseen archives of a defunct institute for the study of sexuality? 

Confronting Slavery in the Archives at Georgetown

by Cassandra Berman

Jesuit records pertaining to slavery have been housed at Georgetown since 1977. Their unremarked presence highlights the important difference between presence and accessibility in the archives and the work required to document historical responsibility. 

Gwendolyn Midlo Hall Kept the Identities of Enslaved from Archival Oblivion

After retiring from a career as a Latin Americanist, Hall documented the identities of thousands of people brought to Louisiana in slavery in the 18th century, an achievement others had thought neither possible nor necessary. 

49 Years Later, Nixon's Knowledge of Pinochet Coup Remains Secret

It is beyond time for the Biden Administration to declassify presidential records related to American operations in Chile around the overthrow of democratically elected President Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973.  

Where are the Women in History?

by Amanda B. Moniz

Women's histories have frequently been written in the past, but in ways that are inaccessible to researchers in the present. One example is the way that women reformers were presented as exemplars of Protestant evangelical rectitude. 

What I Learned About Governments from Researching Classified Documents

by Lawrence Wittner

Historians who have conducted research in classified materials understand how seriously governments take secrecy and how secrecy can conceal malfeasance or anti-democratic action. 

The Presidential Records Act Explains How the FBI Knew What to Search For at Mar-a-Lago

"The archivists probably have a really keen idea of what is and what isn’t missing, based upon things that they’ve gotten out of other offices, like the vice president’s office and things that got deposited from the secretary of state, for example."

Eve Babitz's Archive Reveals the Person Behind the Persona

by Kevin Dettmar

"What could the personal documents of a writer who was so public about her private world teach us about her work? How much of that persona was a performance and how much a reflection of her real anxieties and ambitions?"