Intended Silence? Understanding the multiple meanings of silence in Black Women's Archives

What would your archive say about you? Do you get to decide? For Black women, archival legacy is often left to a footnote. They are buried by the history of enslavement or are forced to live within the shadow of the men in their lives. Finding Black women’s voices calls for a non-traditional approach to archival research. Silences are often imposed by power structures seeking to limit the voices of marginalized individuals. But sometimes those silences are intentional.

In some cases, the forgotten pieces were a means of survival. As archivists continue to uncover Black and Brown voices, they must leave room for the parts of the narrative that were meant to be hidden. In my work studying the archival gaps in the papers of Belle da Costa Greene and the women of the Canterbury Female Seminary, we can begin to see how some archival silences speak louder than what is written. For these women, as well as many others, race defined their life experiences. How we interpret their archives gives new perspectives on how women fought back against societal definitions and chose for themselves how they wanted to be remembered.