Scattered and Fugitive Things: How Black Collectors Created Archives and Remade History

by Laura Helton

During the first half of the twentieth century, a group of collectors and creators dedicated themselves to documenting the history of African American life. At a time when dominant institutions cast doubt on the value or even the idea of Black history, these bibliophiles, scrapbookers, and librarians created an enduring set of African diasporic archives. In building these institutions and amassing abundant archival material, they also reshaped Black public culture, animating inquiry into the nature and meaning of Black history.Scattered and Fugitive Things tells the stories of these Black collectors, traveling from the parlors of the urban north to HBCU reading rooms and branch libraries in the Jim Crow south. Laura E. Helton chronicles the work of six key bibliophile Arturo Schomburg, scrapbook maker Alexander Gumby, librarians Virginia Lee and Vivian Harsh, curator Dorothy Porter, and historian L. D. Reddick. Drawing on overlooked sources such as book lists and card catalogs, she reveals the risks collectors took to create Black archives. This book also explores the social life of collecting, highlighting the communities that used these collections from the South Side of Chicago to Roanoke, Virginia. In each case, Helton argues, archiving was alive in the present, a site of intellectual experiment, creative abundance, and political possibility. Offering new ways to understand Black intellectual and literary history, Scattered and Fugitive Things reveals Black collecting as a radical critical tradition that reimagines past, present, and future.

Genres: History

328 pages, Paperback

First published April 16, 2024

Reviews

[Ashlyn-Tierra Bell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scattered and Fugitive Things gave me a new appreciation for the Black stewards of American history. While I already knew the work of Arthur Schomburg, this book highlighted people I had never heard of before: L.S. Alexander Gumby, Virginia Lee, Dorothy Porter, and Vivian Harsh. Each of them had their way of preserving history Gumby and his scrapbooks and Dorothy Porter reorganizing the Dewy System to be more inclusive. Reading their stories inspired me. I visit museums and libraries, archive my family history, and participate in a book club. Many of these activities were included as things they all did to help foster community. Currently, as many people are seeking to erase history, I think it is more important than ever to begin to think and act on preserving it.

[Dede · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for class, so begrudgingly i had to finish it. Surpassingly enjoyed it it.

[Margot Note]

"Scattered and Fugitive Things concerns not only the making of Black archives, then but also acts of making in them. It illuminates the urgency of archive-building to Black politics and aesthetic movements of this period, while also expanding the field of Black intellectual history to include the readers, newspaper clippers, and amateur archivists who embodied what Schomburg called 'enthusiastic antiquarians'" (25).

"Despite their heterogeneous tastes and styles, the collectors chronicled in this book converged around a set of principles that should continue to guide those who collect in their wake: to value Black records, order them capaciously, and take risks to make them accessible" (183).

[Aspasia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dr. Helton examines the lives of six Black collectors and how their unique, personal experiences affected how and what they collected of the Black experience. My favorite chapter was about Virginia Lee and how she successfully navigated her job and created a secret treasure trove of Black History books and documents- for decades!

[Mariella · Rating 5 out of 5]

best and most accessible non fiction I've read in years. incredibly inspiring.