Melanie Chambliss

“History in the Making” examines how bibliophiles, librarians, and library patrons used Black archives to forge and fracture historical authority during the first half of the twentieth century. This project argues that Black archives functioned as sites of intellectual self-determination because Black archives provided both resources and frameworks to challenge White supremacy as the organizing principle of the modern world. These institutionalized collections offered accessible evidence of Black accomplishment and humanity, and visitors used these resources to form new ideas and identities for themselves, which splintered any hope of a master narrative. While many scholars have focused on ‘the archive’ as a silencing or oppressive space, this project highlights Black archival agency, or African Americans’ engagement with the process of historical production. “History in the Making” traces this agency through case studies of Black archives, an analysis of Black librarian training sites, and a retheorizing of Afro-Puerto Rican bibliophile Arturo Schomburg’s work as an iconic figure in Black diasporic collecting.

“Remaking the World of Arturo Schomburg” is a collaborative digital edition of the papers of Arturo Schomburg (1874-1938), the Afro-Puerto Rican bibliophile who built two of the world’s most important collections on African diasporic history. Fisk University and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture—the two institutions where Schomburg was a curator—have partnered with a team of scholars, led by Laura Helton and Melanie Chambliss, to digitally unite Schomburg’s correspondence and create a portal for research and teaching. Currently in its planning phase, this project will launch in 2025—the Schomburg Center’s centennial—with a mini-edition, “Black Bibliophiles in Nashville and Harlem,” illuminating the intellectuals and librarians who founded the field of Black history.