Reaching for our Roots: Engaging in Radical Memory Work in Apocalyptic Times

The 6th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture Series commemorates the anniversary of Dr. King's assassination and happens on or around April 4th to promote awareness and appreciation of racial and ethnic diversity.

This year, Librarian-Filmmaker Miriam Neptune and queer Trinidadian artist, radical librarian, and educator Bekezela Mguni present Reaching for our Roots: Engaging in Radical Memory Work in Apocalyptic Times. Uncover a legacy of Black radical librarianship that includes a long list of thinkers and activists such as Arturo Schomburg, Augusta Baker, Miriam Matthews, Regina Anderson, Dorothy Porter, Audre Lorde and Mariame Kaba, who created library and archival practices to resist the erasure of Black history and culture. This memory work was and is a practice of holding and caring for the stories of past and future Black ancestors, and making the Library and the Archive into multi-generational spaces of resistance.