Otherwise Lost or Forgotten: Collecting Black History in L. S. Alexander Gumby’s “Negroana” Scrapbooks

This essay examines the scrapbook collection of Harlem socialite and rare-book collector L. S. Alexander Gumby. Arguing against the idea that scrapbooking is an act of preservation rather than creation, as well as the logic that puts preservation at odds with creation, this essay demonstrates how Gumby’s scrapbooks piece together stories of black history and experience out of early twentieth-century ephemera, and by calling upon collage as the aesthetic practice best suited to acts of commemoration and remembrance, represent and enact diverse collective identities across different spheres of black America.