Black Radical Archive

Partner(s): Professor Brent Edwards Department of English and Comparative Literature Access: Private Released: January 2010

The Black Radical Archive represents a unique platform for engaging students in the curation of rare archival materials. Its online repository, created by CCNMTL for English Professor Brent Edwards' course Black Radicalism and the Archive, houses images of archival materials that Professor Edwards and his students selected from the Columbia Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Professor Edwards places particular emphasis on self-archiving as an important component of activism. In his course, students are asked to closely explore, categorize, and analyze boxes of rare, unprocessed archival materials from the collections of three political activists—Hubert Harrison, C.L.R. James, and Amiri Baraka. Placing students in the role of an archivist, Professor Edwards has his class take digital pictures of particularly interesting archival materials and upload them along with metadata to the Black Radical Archive. Students treat each box of archival materials as their own set of records to explore and they contribute a "box description" to the Black Radical Archive in which they provide an overview of their analyzed materials and compare their findings to their peers.

The Black Radical Archive is a Digital Bridges Initiative project.

Related project categories:
History | Repositories and Reference Tools | Social Sciences