2025/04/11 by Jake Hodder · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · #Digital and Traditional Archives Management
paper · doi:10.1016/j.jhg.2025.03.003
openalex publication_date 2025/04/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
This paper examines the development of key Pan-African collections in the United States during the interwar period, a time of heightened Pan-African consciousness among African Americans. The emergence of professionally trained Black curators and the growth of major US philanthropic organisations fostered a concerted effort to archive and document the global Black experience. These collections, housed at institutions such as the New York Public Library and historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), became significant sites of ‘worldmaking’, establishing Pan-Africanism as a distinct and transmittable field of study. In this context, Black activism intersected with white philanthropic ambition. While activists saw archives as tools for social change, philanthropists viewed them as sufficiently apolitical to meet their preference for ‘uplift’ rather than activism. The paper underscores the capacity of archives to hold multiple, conflicting interpretations and shows how a geographical approach can help avoid narrow, singular understandings of collections in the present. • Examines the development of major Pan-African collections in the U.S. during the interwar period. • Focuses on the New York Public Library and historically Black universities and colleges (HBCUs). • Considers related Pan-African reference projects, like A Bibliography of the Negro in Africa and America (1928). • Positions archiving as an act of geographical, political and intellectual worldmaking. • Examines white philanthropic influence and motivations on Pan-African collecting.