External Affiliate Faculty

Schomburg's writing on the archive over the course of his career demonstrates his continued efforts to articulate the project to which he dedicated his life: Black archives. In the same spirit, this essay looks at two of his works on Black archival theory: "The Negro Digs Up His Past" (1925), which espouses a counterarchival imperative rooted in New Negro ideology, and "Racial Integrity" (1913), which introduces a more radical theory of Black archives that better reflects his own collecting philosophy and archival legacy. Reading his distinct theorizations closely, the essay considers how Black archives navigate the tension between material evidence, belonging, and race on their own terms and in their own "turn."