Black Women: Visible and Heard BY IRMA McCLAURIN ’76MFA, ’89MA, ’93PhD PHOTOS COURTESY IRMA McCLAURIN BLACK FEMINIST ARCHIVE Founding the Black Feminist Archive at UMass 40 > UMASS When students use primary mate- rials and navigate archives, they go through a powerful process of discovery. They can see how notes become a published manuscript, or how correspondence and personal journals reveal a backstory of important moments, enhancing his- torical analyses and interpretations. But in my own experience conducting research in archives, I oſten found that Black women were poorly represented—unless they had achieved a modicum of fame or were public figures. As influential archivist Rodney G.S. Carter notes, the gaps and “silences” in archives have “a significant impact on the ability of the marginal groups to form social memory and history.” The establishment of the Irma McClaurin Black Feminist Archive, known as the Black Feminist Archive (BFA), was officially announced in 2016 when I was honored as a UMass Amherst Distinguished Alumna, but the idea began as an unexpected collaboration with the Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) in 2014. I reached out to the late Rob Cox, the SCUA’s then- director. That moment stands out in my memory, because, aſter describing my vision to preserve the academic, activist, and artistic contributions of Black women— I felt heard. Both Cox and I agreed on this fact: “The profound contributions of scholarship and activism made by Black Feminists … are still seldom seen in archives, so that the full record of their achievements remains under-recognized and underappreciated.” As a champion of documenting and preserving Black cultural memory, I enact a form of social change activism through the BFA that seeks to break up and break out of what Rodney Carter calls “archival silences” and shine a light on the myth of archival neutrality. Carter writes, “It is now undeniable that archives are spaces of power.” There is an urgent need to liſt up Black women—to celebrate and preserve their experiences and nar- ratives that reflect “whole lives” of activism, resistance, creativity, and intellectual production. Their lives and myriad forms of input (artistic, social, political, scientific, etc.) have played a major role in the develop- ment of a fuller American story. The intersection of Black women’s lives around race, gender, class, sexual orientation, and other overlapping forms of oppressions and experiences (poverty, ageism, LGBTQ status, ableism, sexism, sexual assault) demonstrates that our stories are a necessary (and sometimes secret) ingredient in a recipe of impactful social change in America and globally, and must be preserved. She Will Not Be Forgotten Beyond preserving my own mate- rials, the BFA is intended for Black women like Miss Archie Henderson Jones, who will be 97 years old this year. I first met “Miss Archie,” an anthropologist, in 2004 while teaching Black Feminism at Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, North Carolina, where I founded the Africana Women’s Studies program. Later, it became clear to me that Black women like Miss Archie Our stories are a necessary (and sometimes secret) ingredient in a recipe of impactful social change in America. SUMMER 2021 41 >