2026/01/01 by Erika Lee
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Asian American and Pacific Histories #Digital and Traditional Archives Management #Oral History, Memory, Narrative Analysis
paper · doi:10.1525/ch.2026.103.3.1
openalex publication_date 2026/01/01 · openalex created_date 2026/07/29 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
This essay alerts readers to the federal government’s recently announced plan to close the National Archives centers in San Francisco and Chicago and identifies these closures as part of a broader attack on American history and the historical profession. It argues that the National Archives’ central role as “the nation’s record keeper” will be put at risk if these centers close and that researchers’ access to essential records on immigration, race, Indigenous history, law, and policy in the West, Hawai‘i, and the Pacific will be immediately curtailed. Anchored in the author’s own experiences, the essay explains how National Archives collections have powered landmark scholarship, public history projects, and critical discoveries, including research on Wong Kim Ark and birthright citizenship. It underscores that these archives are indispensable not only to academic historians but also to genealogists, lawyers, journalists, and Native and ethnic communities whose personal and communal histories reside in federal records. It concludes by highlighting the rapid organizing by community members and allied professional organizations that is underway and how past successful campaigns to keep regional archives open offer a blueprint for contemporary resistance.