Mandated by the 1989 General Assembly to document the work and witness of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.'s (UPCUSA) historic All-Black presbyteries and synods, a committee of six people began work the next year. Led by James Foster Reese of Knoxville College, and Nellye Joyce Punch of Houston’s Fifth Ward, the committee recorded the vast majority of its meetings on audiocassette, and conducted an extensive group of oral histories, traveling from Little Rock, to Charlotte, to Columbia. Along the way, they reckoned with the decline of Black-run institutions, laid plans for the future, and aired out serious questions about power and the production of archives. Their insights were prescient and remain valuable today. Let’s listen.
On one tape, Thelma McCrae Harrison – longtime member of Lebanon Presbyterian Church (Ridgeway, S.C.), moderator of both Fairfield-McClelland and Trinity Presbyteries – shows the committee a packet of her research. One committee member recommends depositing it with the Presbyterian Historical Society, and Thelma relates her encounters with the archivists. A staffer asked her, when she and a colleague were writing a history of Fairfield-McClelland, to incorporate a chapter on the organization/genealogy of the whole PCUSA and the PCUS as an introduction. She said to her cowriter, "When the Church wrote its history it didn't incorporate you!” – challenging archivists’ assumptions that a specifically Black-led history of a Black-led organization must perforce be bracketed by a white point of view. Ultimately, the records held here provide Harrison valuable information – she learns things about her own church that had been lost "because someone had destroyed the minutes."
At another meeting, having just interviewed Robert Shirley, the committee made an appeal for his father’s personal papers. The committee moves on to argue the merits of keeping the personal and family records of Black Presbyterians close at hand, in the family, versus adding them to the archives of the PC(USA). One committee member argues that part of the committee’s budget should pay for shipping and imaging of original records – this is, 30 years avant la lettre, what PHS does through the African American Leaders and Congregations Collecting Initiative. The committee member also asks why Black people should be expected to hand over their family's papers to the archives at all. Costen splits the difference, saying records could be imaged and returned. This is also still true! Archivists style this kind of documentation “post-custodial,” but for the committee it’s just common sense. Finally another committee member cuts to the heart of why racialized and marginalized people might seek out institutional archives – representation, access, and security. "Black people have not been able to invade places of ... sanctums, where you go to keep a thing forever," says the committeeperson, adding that the committee should try to broker trust between donors and the archives, so that people should feel secure "that their papers will be displayed there for years to come." On tape, the committee uncovers truths about archival labor. The work of institutional archives to document the lives, work, and witness of marginalized people works through accompaniment – by welcoming the gifts of those othered, as they come to the stacks and transform the halls of power.
Learn more:
African American Leaders and Congregations Collecting Initiative
All-Black Governing Bodies (1996)
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