Attending a general interest conference or workshop (3 points)

On Thursday October 9th, I had the opportunity to attend the Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Black LIberal Arts Tradition Symposium and attend a session entitled, Unearthing the Black Liberal Arts Tradition in the Archives, as well as the following MLK archives collection at the Woodruff library. 

One of the things that stuck out to me about this presentation was the concept of archival practice, creating a sacredness to taking care of black bodies. In my work, which is particularly concerned with Black people whose stories and voices are condemned to the margins, this practice is a way we can restore dignity, humanity, and care. In this way, Dr. Hite argued that archival practice gives life to even the most mundane of records like notes scribbled on napkins, letters to friends, family, and lovers, and telegraph notes. All of these documents can represent just a small piece of Black interior and exterior life, but serve as reminders of the wholeness of these figures as people.

I really resonated with Dr. Hite’s comments on keeping private journals to express our thoughts and capture our lives, especially in this time as privacy and security have become mere options that you must opt out of in this current surveillance state. I think that it’s part of our responsibility to use our knowledge and use community systems to control the keeping of archival tradition and the records of black life in a way that is truthful, especially considering how we’re constantly being conditioned to lie. 

 After the panel discussion I also had the opportunity to visit the MLK collection housed at the Woodruff library archives. I was really inspired by some of the records that have been kept of King and some of his work while he was at Morehouse and in corresponding with different key figures that offered him insight and inspiration in some of the early stages of his development of civil rights tradition. This reminded me of an essay I read for my Africana Studies theory class which really emphasized the sites of memory and the importance of places like Auburn Avenue and the Sweet Auburn District, Morehouse, and the church as places that really shaped King’s early understanding of civic responsibility and of care for his community. I was thinking of how Spelman is becoming a site of memory in my own development and of the many people who have had profound impact on my life trajectory and work. 

In the MLK collection, King has an essay where he’s in conversation with Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), and they’re talking about people turning into theater to find metaphors to describe encounters in black life, and I found this interesting in the context of my feminist, film, criticism class, and a particularly prompted the questions: What responsibility does film have to narrative and metaphor? What does it allow us to imagine about reality? Because we’re frequently in conversation about how the black body is portrayed on screen and what that means for what we understand about black life,  I think that King would be surprised to see the level of content that we easily have access to. Most people have become so blinded by the pursuit of money, though, that I don’t believe they are cognizant of the narrative they’re contributing to in constantly documenting and exposing the intimate moments of their lives. Ultimately, my visit to these archives and sparking of this question illuminates to me the importance of protecting our narrative in the way that we keep up our archives and in the way that we tell the truth as we continue the Black archival tradition. 

By: Mackenzie Hickson