As archivists and other memory workers turn to the web to document the Black experience online it is vital that we understand the history of the ways Black people have contributed to the technical, cultural, and social development of the web and how that continues today. Scholars studying the Black digital experience have been leading the way in documenting this history and can offer foundational knowledge as Black collecting institutions grow their efforts to archive the Black web. This panel will offer a counternarrative to the prevailing myth Black people were absent from early online digital spaces. They will share research that demonstrates Black people’s online behavior is in fact not new but is part of a legacy of the ways Black people always act as early adopters of technology.

Join us for a lively discussion about remixing and sampling the archive and leveraging social media as a tool to celebrate everyday Black people past and present from across the African diaspora. Dr. Aleia Brown will moderate this session highlighting the work of some brilliant independent Black digital memory workers and their projects. The web and social media platforms in particular have created opportunities for independent memory workers to memorialize Black life in their own ways. Some of the questions this panel will discuss include: What can we learn from the creativity of these projects as the professional archives community shifts more attention towards archiving the Black web? How can we better support the work of independent memory workers building these archives as a way to develop more inclusive and comprehensive models for archiving the Black web? And in what ways can these projects influence scholarship on the Black digital experience?

Living through multiple historical moments that disproportionately negatively impact Black people has left the Black community searching for ways to mourn collectively as well as seek out accurate information that takes into account the nuance and diversity of the Black experience. This session will discuss how racialized harm against Black people is discussed and portrayed in digital spaces and what are some of the ways scholars and memory workers are addressing documentation and storytelling around this issue post 2020. Panelists will discuss how new data projects such as CovidBlack and contemporary Black newspapers such as Black Voice News present new opportunities to better tell the story of these historical moments. Dr. Tonia Sutherland will also discuss what it means to memorialize Black death and suffering in these digital times and the implications for archiving the Black web.

The web has become a critical site of research for historians and other cultural documenters, and as Black participation in the internet economy has steadily grown over the past thirty years, those studying the Black experience have increasingly turned to the web to produce work documenting Black digital life and culture. This convergence of increased Black participation online and a rise in scholarly interests to document those experiences, presents important opportunities to build archives that can support research and other inquiry activities. This panel of Black archivists will discuss some of the challenges and opportunities for Black collecting organizations and others interested in archiving the Black web.

Join us at our social where we will decompress for the day and show some love to our fellow memory workers. Our special “Show Out Showcase” on Thursday, April 29 from 5:30pm – 6:00pm EST will be an opportunity for a few projects to shine with brief presentations covering Black content and culture found on the web or related to archives. The Love Up Love Hour 6:00pm – 7:00pm EST will be an hour of good vibes, great tunes, and networking.

The web and social media have become powerful amplification and advocacy tools for Black activists and organizers. The Ferguson protests and the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement following those protests highlighted the diverse ways activists and organizers leveraged the platforms to share their messages and garner support in their fight to stop state sanctioned violence against Black people. This session of scholars, organizers, and memory workers will address several important questions related to activism and the web including: In what ways are contemporary activists and organizers using the web for their work? What are the implications for archiving the traces of protests and community organizing online? What can memory workers learn from the scholarship being produced about the ways activists use the tools of social media? What are the considerations for community-based archives such as the Southern California Library and other cultural memory organizations as they prepare to do more work around documenting local organizing efforts in their community? 

We goin’ to where the joy reside! What does it mean to document the Black digital experience when stories of Black death, harm, and suffering are prioritized on the web and social media over stories that showcase Black love, Black joy and all the ways Black people create joyful cultural moments online in resistance to the themes of constant Black suffering. Understanding the ways Black joy is expressed online is foundational for building Black web archives that don’t uphold harmful ideas about Black people. Scholars Adam Banks, Meredith Clark and Douglas-Wade Brunton, in their discussion, will interrogate the ways Blackness is represented and consumed online and share why scholarship (and archiving) that prioritizes Black joy is humanizing and necessary in this current historical moment. We are certain you will enjoy this session, and that’s on Mary had a little lamb!

Kimberly Drew will discuss her new archival anthology Black Futures, co-edited with Jenna Wortham. Black Futures pays homage to content (digital and analog) that reflects the diversity of contemporary Black life. Moderated by archivist/writer Stacie Williams, this conversation will touch on several topics including, what it means to document Black culture today, who has agency to tell Black stories, and how do we negotiate what stories, content, and formats are legitimized when documenting Black life and culture? 

From Penguin Random House: “Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham have brought together this collection of work—images, photos, essays, memes, dialogues, recipes, tweets, poetry, and more—to tell the story of the radical, imaginative, provocative, and gorgeous world that Black creators are bringing forth today. The book presents a succession of startling and beautiful pieces that generate an entrancing rhythm: Readers will go from conversations with activists and academics to memes and Instagram posts, from powerful essays to dazzling paintings and insightful infographics. In answering the question of what it means to be Black and alive, Black Futures opens a prismatic vision of possibility for every reader.”

The availability of primary sources is essential to telling the story of how Black people continue to contribute to the development of the web and participate in online spaces. A lack of access to primary sources about Black life on the web poses serious risk to the future study of Black history and culture online for several reasons, including the quantity and rapid rate of production of online content, web content ephemerality, the increasingly dynamic characteristics of web content and the complexity of software available to archive that content, and overwhelming whiteness of current practitioners of web archiving and their lack of knowledge about the diverse ways Black people participate online. Those issues, coupled with the fact of the traditional resistance of the mainstream archival profession to equitably document the lives of Black people means that Black archivists, memory workers, and collecting organizations need to be a the forefront and deeply involved in archiving the Black web, while also developing scholarship, tools, and practices to support that work. In this session ATBW project partners will discuss current and future work to archive the Black web and what support, resources, and networks might be necessary to effectively do the work.