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  • Making Art at the SchomburgAfricana Archives as Sites of Art Making
  • Howard Dodson (bio)

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Howard Dodson

Photograph by A. H. Jerriod Avant © 2014

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Art making has been a critical aspect of the human experience since time immemorial. Among the earliest evidence of human beings as art makers are the rock carvings and engravings found throughout the African continent that date back from the 6th to 8th millennium BC (6000 to 8000 BC). The purpose of these art renderings is unclear, but their existence is evidence of the creative and aesthetic sensibilities and impulses of their creators. This ability to create art was and is one of the attributes that separates human beings from the rest of the animal kingdom.

This creative impulse, which is part of what makes us human, likely found expression in other media as well. Among African people, diverse forms of artistic expression defined and gave meaning to their unique cultures. Rituals and ceremonies of a religious, spiritual, or secular nature included music, dance, and dramatic performances along with sculptures and other visual art objects. In one sense, art was and is the expressive dimension of African cultures and an integral part of African peoples’ day-to-day living and being. Art making, then, has likely been an integral part of life making among African people (and humankind) since the beginning of human societies and human civilizations.

This conference is an exploration and assessment of that millenniums-long phenomenon in contemporary Africana life and culture. Like its sponsor, Callaloo, its focus is on the literary arts; but its scope embraces other forms of artistic expression and includes people of African descent from the African continent and its diasporas. I have been asked to speak on the theme “Archiving Africana” with an eye toward helping you to discover or rediscover Africana archives as repositories of Africana art, as places of historical significance in their own right, and as places and resources for Africana art making and creativity.

Africana archives in the United States trace their origins back to the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. The need for Black people to establish such archival institutions was expressed by Victoria Earle Matthews in 1895, who said:

… the past, present and future of our Race Literature apart from its value as first beginnings, not only to us as a people but literature in general, is that unless earnest and systematic effort be made to procure and preserve for transmission to our successors, the records, books and various publications already produced by us, not only will the sturdy pioneers who paved the way and laid the foundation for our Race Literature be robbed of their just due, but an irretrievable wrong will be inflicted upon the generations that should come after us.

(qtd. in Gates and McKay xxxvii) [End Page 549]

Matthews—a poet, novelist, journalist, and social worker—delivered the address from which this passage is excerpted at the first National Conference of Black Women, which was held in Boston, Massachusetts, in July 1895. Entitled “The Value of Race Literature,” her speech emphasized “the importance of collecting the writings of black men and women, including histories, biographies, sermons, speeches, essays and articles in order to preserve the culture and contributions of people of African descent” (Cash 737).

Two years later, in March 1897, the American Negro Academy, an association of African American “men of science, letters and art or those distinguished in other walks of life” was founded in Washington, DC. The Academy’s purpose was to encourage research, writing, and publication of scholarly works dealing with the global Black experience. Its members were also encouraged to develop an archive of materials by and about peoples of African descent (Moss 1).

The Academy and its members were part of a national network of what anthropologist St. Claire Drake called the “vindicationist school” of Black intellectuals. Responding to what I call the reigning “unwisdom” of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century—namely, the myth that Black people were biologically, intellectually, and socially inferior to Whites—these intellectuals sought to refute those myths through their writings and publications. By the...

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