SAA day one: diversity and inclusion

Atanta skyline, as seen from the steps of the Georgia Aquarium, Atlanta, Georgia, 2 August 2016.

 As has often been the case in recent years, I'm attending the annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists on my own dime. Doing so has some obvious drawbacks, but it does have one very real advantage: I don't feel obliged to limit myself to attending only those sessions that relate directly to my current job responsibilities. Instead, I seek out those sessions that align with my other archival interests or promise to illuminate how the profession is changing.

Today, I attended a plenary session and two program sessions that, in various ways, focused on the necessity of and challenges associated with creating institutions that are truly serve all of the communities that make up our pluralistic, stratified society and collections that reflect our varied, complex, and unequal history.

SAA 2014: preserving and making accessible HIV/AIDS history

I'm back home and feeling a lot better than I did last week, but I'm still in the process of settling in at home, getting back up to speed at work, and tending to some family matters. As a result, I'm going to post about this year's joint meeting of the Council of State Archivists, the National Association of Government Archivists and Records Administrators, and the Society of American Archivists as my schedule permits. Archivy is a relay, not a sprint, and it's more important to pass the baton correctly than to hand it off quickly. (That having been said, I was really under the weather last week and my notes and recollections are a little jumbled. Apologies in advance for any omissions or inaccuracies.)

Last Friday morning, I was planning to attend session 410, "Beyond the Floppy Disk: Rescuing Electronic Records from Complex Systems," but the room was stuffed to capacity by the time I arrived. I could have slipped into session 401, "Digital Forensics," but I didn't think I had the presence of mind needed for particular topic. I instead ducked into session 407, "Documenting the Epidemic: Preserving and Making Accessible HIV/AIDS History." I've long had a personal and professional interest in this topic, the compelling (and unabashedly partial) How to Survive a Plague rekindled it, and I'm glad that I had the opportunity to sit in on this session.

Robin Chandler (University of California, Santa Cruz) capably led this session, which took the form of a panel discussion in which participants furnished overviews of their institutions' holdings, identified gaps in documentation, and broadly applicable lessons (e.g., the value of collaboration) they learned as they sought to document the history of HIV/AIDS.

Vicky Harden (retired, National Institutes of Health Office of History) discussed the oral history interviews she conducted with National Institutes of Health personnel who were involved in HIV/AIDS research and her involvement in the American Association for the History of Medicine's AIDS History Group. She noted that, owing to budget cuts and other factors, the U.S. Centers for Disease, which played a pivotal role in tracking the emergence and spread of HIV infection and AIDS in the United States, has not sought to gather archival materials or conduct oral history interviews documenting its HIV/AIDS work.

Polina Ilieva (University of California, San Francisco) discussed the development of the AIDS History Project, which from its outset in 1987 sought to document the crisis in all of its facets and from all perspectives. Its collections include materials created by community-based organizations, clinical and research units, and individual activists, clinicians, researchers, social scientists, science journalists, and people with AIDS. In addition, the project captures content found on relevant websites. Ilieva stressed that, owing to the speed with which community organizations are created, merge, alter course, and cease operations, archivists seeking to document HIV/AIDS must establish and sustain ongoing relationships with creators/donors; she hopes to close some of the gaps in her repository's holdings by tracking some of these shifts in the organizational landscape. In addition, she indicated that we need more oral history interviews with (presumably non-activist) people who are HIV positive or have AIDS.

Ginny Roth (National Library of Medicine, Prints and Photographs Collection) indicated that her repository's holdings, which span four decades, include posters and other ephemera relating to safe sex, myths about HIV transmission, human rights, and other matters. These materials target multiple audiences (e.g., gay men, intravenous drug users) and are in multiple languages. However, the collection does not include photographs documenting past or current activism.

Michael Oliviera (ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives) stated that his institution has a wide array of materials relating to HIV/AIDS, among them: periodicals, records documenting the first theatrical production relating to AIDS, the International Gay and Lesbian Archives' AIDS History Project collection (over 200 cu. ft.), and the organizational records of ACT UP Los Angeles and Treatment Action Group. ONE holds few oral histories and collections documenting the experiences of people of color.

Jason Baumann (New York Public Library, or NYPL) focused on his repository's recent exhibit, Why We Fight: Remembering AIDS Activism, which consisted almost exclusively of materials drawn from its extensive holdings of the organizational records of activist organizations and the personal papers of activists, artists, political leaders, and other individuals. The exhibit exposed significant tensions between those seeking to understand and interpret the history of HIV/AIDS and some of those focused on the suffering and death the disease still causes. ACT UP protested its opening on the grounds that it gave people the impression that HIV/AIDS was a thing of the past, and two young Canadian activists incorporated reproductions of two posters featured in the exhibit into a new poster entitled "Your Nostalgia Is Killing Me" -- much to the dismay of the creators of the original posters.

NYPL dealt with the uproar by, among other things, co-hosting a symposium that brought together the creators of the original posters and the creators of "Your Nostalgia Is Killing Me." Although he didn't explicitly identify this experience as a lesson learned, I can't help but think that it is. Archivists (myself included) tend to be introverted, mindful of their subordinate position within institutional power structures, and unnerved by the prospect of controversy. However, we sometimes need to treat controversy as an opportunity to engage, learn, and enable others to do the same. If we can't acknowledge the existence of difference or probe the status and power differentials that give rise to archival silences, we can't document society equitably and comprehensively.

Baumann did identify as a lesson learned something I found a bit surprising: NYPL's customary donors were not willing to fund the processing of collections relating to HIV/AIDS activism and the activist groups themselves were focused on treatment, human rights, and other pressing concerns, but NYPL found that corporations were quite willing to do so.

The panelists wrapped up the session by discussing the possibility of jointly developing and administering a survey that would identify all of the archival collections that in some way documented HIV/AIDS in the United States. They agreed that this would be a mammoth undertaking, but it seems that serious discussions are underway. I for one would like to see this project get off the ground.

Image: shadow cast by Alexander Calder's "Red Polygons" (c. 1950), Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, 16 August 2014.

SAA 2014: integrating history

 One of the advantages of paying my own way to SAA is that I don't have any reservations about attending at least one session that interests me but doesn't have anything to do with my work responsibilities. Yesterday morning, I passed up two interesting-seeming electronic records sessions and sat in on session 309, "Integrating History: A Search-and-Recovery Effort in Alabama Archives." I'm glad I did: of all the sessions I attended this year, this one was my favorite. (N.B.: I was really ill on Friday, so what follows might be a bit hazy.)

Two of the archivists who participated in this session are employed by repositories that have traditionally reflected the experiences of white Alabamians, and two work at historically black universities. All of them spoke with passion and nuance about the challenges of comprehensively documenting their communities and institutions, and in the process discussed a host of things familiar to archivists working in a variety of settings:

• The ugly way in which an ever-growing processing backlog reduces institutional visibility and makes it ever harder to obtain the resources needed to tackle the backlog.
• How differences in power and perspective fuel tensions between small, resource-starved archives and large, well-funded collecting repositories.
• The importance of and hard work involved in winning the trust of donors, particularly those whose experiences have in the past been under-documented.
• How efforts to document previously under-represented groups may force one to confront the unsavory past of one's own community, one's own uneasy relationship with that past, and anger and fear in those who have a vested interest in maintaining certain archival and broader societal silences. 
• The importance of intimately knowing one's own collections and working collaboratively with repositories that hold related materials. 

Rebekah Davis (Limestone County Archives) discussed the importance of collecting materials that not only documented the history of the county's black community (e.g., programs distributed at community members' funerals) but also what that community had to live with (e.g., color photographic prints of a Ku Klux Klan rally that took place in the 1970s). Quoting fellow presenter Susannah Leverman, she emphasized that even though she and her colleagues at times felt deeply uncomfortable about accessioning and furnishing access to some of the materials in the latter category, "to pretend things didn't happen is to take away the victory of those who overcame it." Davis also stressed the importance of making sure that older white volunteers who expressed distaste when they encountered collections documenting the county's African-Americans understood that they could privately believe whatever they wished but needed to understand that bigoted statements reflected poorly upon the archives and to keep their opinions to themselves while working there.

Susannah Leverman (Huntsville-Madison County Public Library) highlighted her institution's efforts to build relationships with her community's African-American inhabitants. Although the library has collected materials documenting African-American art and education, segregated city directories, church histories, portraits, information about black-owned businesses, and other aspects of African-American life, Leverman was convinced that the documentary record was incomplete. She began going to black churches and civic meetings, hosted a traveling exhibit relating to Lincoln, created a public history exhibit commemorating 50 years of school integration and a related sub-exhibit concerning the Ku Klux Klan, developed a phenomenally popular exhibit relating to African-American sports history, and tries to ensure that other exhibits accurately reflect the community's diversity. The library also hosts talks focusing on Huntsville's black business district and other topics and posts recordings of them to YouTube. She described her approach thusly: "we need to provoke people into thinking instead of forcing them to remember or memorize." It seems to have paid off: the library has recently acquired collections documenting civil rights activism and a substantial collection of African-American sheet music.

Veronica Henderson (Alabama A&M University), who is relatively new in her position, discussed her efforts to tackle a decades-long processing backlog, create finding aids, sharpen collecting efforts, and sort out some custodial issues. The Alabama state legislature established the State Black Archives and Research Center in 1989 and charged it with acquiring, preserving, and providing access to materials documenting the state's African-American history. Henderson determined that the collection included some materials that didn't relate specifically to the history of black Alabamians, and she has sought to refocus the collecting scope. She's also trying to smooth relations with alumni of a defunct black high school who are questioning why the university archives has some of their memorabilia; the university doesn't have a deed of gift, but it did have a longstanding and close relationship with the school's administrators. Fortunately, at least some of the alumni are satisfied with digital reproductions.

Dana R. Chandler (Tuskegee University) also discussed his university's efforts to tackle a large processing backlog and to identify and recover items that have gone missing. He also recounted his repository's efforts to right an old wrong: in 1943, the Library of Congress (LC) took possession, with the university's consent, of a body of materials that it called the Booker T. Washington Collection but which were actually the early organizational records of Tuskegee University. Chandler found that the agreement that enabled LC to take custody of these records specified that the university would receive a microfilm copy of them. However, LC filmed the records only after Chandler pushed it to do so and maintained afterward that it retained the copyright. and I've held them to this; LC had to spend approximately $69,000 to microfilm the records. LC tried to maintain that it held the copyright, but Chandler's position is that these "papers" are in fact the records of a public university.

Chandler then profiled two phenomenal collections that came to light when Tuskegee addressed its processing backlog:

• Records of the Southern Courier, 1965-1968. The Southern Courier was a civil rights newspaper run by Harvard Crimson volunteers. It was unprocessed for years, and Chandler and his colleagues discovered that it contained detailed accounts of the dangers and difficulties that staff faced, including mad dogs, beatings, and death threats. They also found evidence of young black and white people working together toward a common goal -- a story not commonly associated with Alabama. 
• George Washington Carver Notebooks. Scholarly biographies of Carver published to date conclude that he did not make any significant scientific discoveries. However, Tuskegee has six notebooks containing Carver's scientific notes, drawings, and observations, and Carver's work must be reassessed in light of these manuscripts. 

I was particularly heartened to learn that the longstanding informal collaboration between the presenters and other Alabama archivists seeking to ensure that the state's documentary record is equitable and balanced may give rise to a multi-institution Web portal centered on archival materials documenting the lives of black Alabamians. Alabama archivists have a long track record of working together and accomplishing amazing things with modest resources, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if this proposed portal is a rousing success.

Image: anemone buds peek out from behind a bench on the grounds of Washington National Cathedral, Washington, DC, 16 August 2014. Anemones symbolize, among other things, anticipation.

Sunday reading: rescue, thievery, and the archival salvage heap

Oh, the things you find when you're procrastinating on the Internet.  I was avoiding working on upcoming presentation when I came across "The Book Thief," a thought-provoking Tablet article by historian Lisa Leff.  Any archivist interested in the history of archives, the transatlantic movement of European Jewish cultural heritage materials, or the impact of war and genocide upon the historical record should read it.

Leff focuses on pioneering historian and archivist Zosa Szajkowski (1911-1978), who spent most of his young adult life in France and emigrated to the United States in the early 1941.  He returned to France in 1943 as a U.S. soldier and devoted his wartime and postwar years to tracking down materials that documented the history of French Jewish communities and giving or selling them to American repositories.  To many American archivists and Jewish community leaders, Szajkowski is a hero who ensured that archives and rare books documenting the history of French Jews were rescued and rehomed inAmerican repositories.  To many French archivists and Jewish community leaders, Szajkowski was a thief -- he was arrested in 1961 for stealing documents from the Strasbourg Municipal Archives -- who robbed French Jews of their cultural patrimony.  Leff examines the social, political, and cultural currents that led American Jews and many European Jewish emigrés to conclude that European Jewish cultural heritage materials should be brought to the United States and French archivists' postwar efforts to rebuild their damaged institutions and concludes that both perspectives are partially correct. Before and during the Second World War, Szajkjowski helped to save materials that might otherwise have been lost or destroyed.  However, after the war, he became a thief -- as evidenced by his 1961 arrest in Strasbourg and his arrest for stealing rare pamphlets from the Judaica Room of the New York Public Library (!) a week before his death.

Leff's analysis of Szajowski's complicated career also leads her to qualify the arguments that Derrida and Foucault made about archives and state power:  instead of serving as a centralized monument to state power, the archives that document Europe's Jewish communities are scattered in ways that reflect the disasporic nature of Jewish settlement and the postwar rise of the United States as a center of Jewish life.  They also highlight aspects of the archival endeavor that some people might find distressing:

On the one hand, the creators of archives rescue the past for us.  They gather together and preserve records from the past, making it possible for historians to study them.  On the other hand, there is also violence in the project of archiving.  The very process of making an archive re-contextualizes documents and -- in subtle or not-so-subtle ways -- changes their meaning.  Rather than the work of the powerful, some archives, at least, are actually the work of the powerless.  If our understanding of archives is broadened to include all those who shaped their histories, these institutions look less and less like a coherent monument and more and more like a salvage heap.

 Read this article. It's well worth your time.

 "The Book Thief" is a distillation of arguments that Leff made in "Rescue or Theft? Zosa Szajkowski and the Salvaging of French Jewish History after World War II, Jewish Social Studies:  History, Culture, Society n.s. 18, no. 2 (Winter 2012): 1-39.  If you have access to JSTOR or Project Muse, you should be able to access this article.

Hillsborough: archive as memorial

We archivists devote a lot of thought to the informational value of archives, but archives can also have profound symbolic value. Recent developments in the United Kingdom highlight just how closely informational value and symbolic value can intertwine.

On 15 April 1989, two British football teams -- Liverpool and Nottingham Forest -- were scheduled to play a Football Association Cup semi-final match in Sheffield's Hillsborough Stadium, which featured a mix of seated areas and standing-only terraces.  Two of the terrace "pens" allotted to Liverpool fans became horrifically overcrowded.  Spectators at the front of the pens were pushed against the safety barriers and fences installed at the front of the terrace, and by the time the match was suspended -- six minutes into play -- dozens of people were dead or dying.  Some fell to the floor and were trampled underfoot, and others died of compressive asphyxia while still on their feet.  Ninety-four people died on 15 April, and two others later succumbed to injuries suffered in the crush.  Hundreds of other fans suffered serious injuries, and countless others were traumatized.

The Hillsborough Disaster, as it is commonly known, was the subject of several high-profile official investigations that identified the failure of the South Yorkshire Police to control the crowd as the chief cause of the disaster.  However, several of these investigations also concluded that spectators' drunkenness and last-minute rush to enter the stadium were also contributing factors, and none of them examined the police and medical response to the disaster as it unfolded.

Several organizations representing survivors and the families of those who perished as a result of the disaster continued to press the British government to conduct a more comprehensive investigation and to release public documents reviewed by previous investigative panels, and in 2010 the government established the Hillsborough Independent Panel and charged it not only with identifying the causes of the disaster but also with examining authorities' response to it and making investigative materials accessible to survivors, families, and the public at large.

The panel released its final report a few days ago, and its findings are damning:

• In 1981, overcrowding on the terraces during a Sheffield Wednesday Football Club match at Hillsborough very nearly resulted in tragedy, but the club, which didn't want to spend large amounts of money to upgrade the facility, and the South Yorkshire Police, which was more concerned about crowd control than spectator safety, neglected to take steps to avert future incidents.
• On 15 April 1989, South Yorkshire Police, which again was chiefly concerned about crowd control, failed to monitor conditions on the terraces and made a series of decisions that routed large numbers of Liverpool spectators to terrace pens that were already dangerously over capacity.
• Police and stadium officials were slow to recognize that fans at the front of the pens were in desperate trouble, and even after the gravity of the situation became apparent they neglected to follow their own emergency response procedures.  The failure to bring in medical personnel and supplies in a timely manner and establish systematic triage was particularly devastating:  post-mortem reports suggest that as many as 41 of the 96 people who died might have survived had they received prompt, appropriate care.
• South Yorkshire Police gathered detailed statements from all personnel who had been assigned to work at the stadium that day -- and senior officials altered 164 of these statements in an effort to save face and minimize financial liability.
• Contrary to police and press allegations, Liverpool fans were not drunken hooligans, did not conspire to rush into the stadium immediately before kickoff, and did not attack or impede emergency personnel.  The people who died had consumed alcohol in quantities that might be expected of people enjoying an outing, and the overwhelming majority of those who survived followed police orders before and during the disaster and did whatever they could to save the dying, aid the injured, and assist police and ambulance crews.

The panel's charge also compelled it to "work with the Keeper of Public Records in preparing options for establishing an archive of Hillsborough documentation, including a catalogue of all central governmental and local public agency information and a commentary on any information withheld for the benefit of the families or on legal or other grounds," and one chapter of the report details its efforts to develop a Permanent Archive for the Hillsborough Disaster.  This archive, which currently consists of digitized images of 25,000 of the 450,000 pages of records that the panel examined, brings together materials created by approximately 80 organizations and a number of private individuals.  It will exist only in digital form; the paper originals will remain in repositories in Sheffield and  Liverpool and at the National Archives facility at Kew.

 The report explains that the Permanent Archive is designed to increase "public understanding of the context, circumstances and consequences of the disaster and why no satisfactory resolution of the issues raised by the families and survivors has been achieved."  Its contents "provide the most complete record of events available, disclosing the decisions taken and actions progressed by those involved throughout an extended period before and since the disaster." 

The Permanent Archive is also meant to serve as "a lasting national memorial to those who died, survived or were affected by the tragedy [emphasis added]."  That a collection of documents might serve as a memorial may seem a bit odd, but in this instance, it seems entirely fitting.  Erik Ketelaar has argued that archives should be seen as"repositories of meaning," and Hillsborough Independent Panel -- whose members include a former Keeper of Public Records -- clearly see themselves as revealing the existence of meanings and truths that had been suppressed or denied:  as the panel's chair, the Right Reverend John Jones, explains in the report's foreword, the documents that comprise the Permanent Archive provide conclusive proof "that the fans were not the cause of the disaster" and "that the bereaved families met a series of obstacles in their search for justice." The creation of the Permanent Archive is, in and of itself, an acknowledgement of "the legitimacy of the search for justice by the bereaved families and survivors of Hillsborough."

The report and the Permanent Archive have already spurred other efforts to right past wrongs.  Over the weekend, the editor in chief of the tabloid The Sun, which in 1989 published a front page story alleging that Liverpool fans picked the pockets of the dead and dying, urinated on a constable as he attempted to resuscitate a victim, and assaulted other first responders (is it any wonder many Liverpudlians still boycott this paper?), issued an abject apology.  Families of many of the victims, whose deaths were ruled accidental after abbreviated inquests, are pressing for new hearings.  Earlier today, the Home Secretary stated that officials who broke the law in the wake of the disaster may be subject to criminal prosecution. Twenty-three years after the Hillsborough Disaster, a national coming to grips is finally taking place.

SAA 2012: archives and social justice

Of all the sessions I attended at this year's annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists, “In Pursuit of the Moral Imperative: Exploring Social Justice and Archives” was the most thought-provoking and satisfying. I had the option of attending not one but two electronic records-focused sessions during the same time slot, but this one promised to speak to the deeper convictions that I bring to my work. I enjoy working with records and messing around with digital stuff, but these things are only the means to an end: doing whatever I can, in my own very small way, to help build and safeguard an equitable and open society.

Imagine my surprise when the cartoon above popped up on my Facebook feed this morning. I've often referred to appraisal as the “archival superpower” – the ability to determine who is or is not reflected in the historical record – and in its funny way this cartoon really drives home the extent of the power we wield. (Thanks to Russian Serbian archivist Arhivistika for posting it to her Facebook feed, archivists around the world for making it go viral, and my colleague Suzanne for sharing it with me and all of her other friends.)

All three presenters are still graduate students at Simmons College, two of them were presenting at a conference for the first time, and all of them gave polished presentations that adhered scrupulously to the session's time limits. Some of my more seasoned colleagues could take a lesson from these rising archivists.

 Noting that archivists often link their work to social justice issues but don't define “social justice” with any precision, Erin Faulder asserted that archivists need to move beyond their usual focus on human rights and governmental accountability and think of social justice as an everyday archival concern. Citing the work of philosopher Iris Marion Young, whose theory of social justice moves beyond issues of equal access to and distribution of resources and asserts that the profession would benefit from examining the work of philosphers and political scientists who have attempted to define social justice. Drawing upon the work of Axel Honneth, who asserts that recognition of an individual's dignity is a prerequisite of social justice and that injustice is the withholding of this recognition, she noted that archivists are the keepers of materials documenting this recognition (or lack thereof) and that our collecting efforts in and of themselves help to legitimize individual identity Faulder also asserted that archivists should look to the work of Iris Marion Young, who moved beyond issues of equitable access to and distribution of economic resources and asserted "social justice concerns the degree to which a society contains and support the institution for the realization of these values: (1) developing and expressing one's experiences, and (2) participating in determining one's actions and the conditions of one's actions." Young stressed that oppression is always contextual and that it often takes the form of myriad small actions, and Faulder noted that the processes of oppression that Young identified – economic exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism and violence – almost always leave records behind.

Faulder ended with a provocative question: what if we sought to document the social forms of oppression, not identities, and started pointing out to political scientists and philosophers that our records support their theories?

Amanda Strauss focused on the work of Chilean archivists who have sought to document the extrajudicial killings, torture, and other human rights violations that took place during the seventeen-year dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet and its broader implications for archival practice. As Strauss noted, the Chilean archivists engaged in this work recognize that it is inherently political -- some Chileans still are still ardent defenders of the Pinochet regime -- and many of them are actively involved in the Chilean human rights movement, which has placed great emphasis upon documenting the regime's abuses. Noting that social justice is based upon the premise that every person has inalienable rights (among them the right to be recognized as a person before the law, not to be tortured or punished unjustly, and to be free in thought and worship), Strauss offered her own definition of social justice. Drawing upon Norwegian archivist Goodman Valderhag's assertion archivists can collect the records that enable courts, tribunals, and legislatures to pursue social justice, James O'Toole's conception of a moral theology of archives, Latin American liberation theologians, she asserted that for archivists, social justice means service to the society one documents.

As a concrete example of this sort of service, she cited the Museum of Memory in Santiago, Chile, which actively seeks to collect materials that shed light upon the people who actively committed abuses, those whose quiet consent allowed the regime to keep operating, and those who suffered at the hands of the regime. In an effort to ensure that all Chileans have access to its holdings, the museum has created numerous traveling exhibits that bring documents out of the stacks and into spaces in which a wide array of people can access them. Strauss argues that this practice challenges “the archival temple” and makes it plain that these documents are owned not by the archives but by the Chilean people themselves and that the acquisition of human rights archives is, in the final analysis, not about the archives but about the men, women, and children whose rights were violated by the regime. Strauss concluded that the call of justice requires that archives be open, and although I can think of more than a few instances in which withholding specific records would better protect the rights of individuals, I generally agree with her. I'm also heartened by her closing assertion concerning the nature of archival power: if social justice requires that the archivist serve the community, allowing the community to create the archives allows for the sharing of power between the two. Archives should be places for discussion and the finding of common ground, not remote temples staffed by people oblivious to the ways in which their collecting activities may reinforce or subvert existing inequalities.

 Jasmine Jones focused on the development of community-based North American archives documenting the Ukrainian famine of 1931-1932, which are spaces for debating – on the Ukrainian emigrant community's own terms – the contours of their experiences and fostering transgenerational memory of what transpired. These archives were established because of the archival silence that surrounded the famine: the Soviet government, which pursued agricultural policies that caused the famine, actively sought to obscure its role in causing the famine and restricted access to archival records documenting its policies and their impact upon the Ukrainian people. Even after the Soviet Union collapsed and its archives were opened, the continued silence of the Russian government has prompted Ukrainian emigrants living in the United States and Canada to continue documenting the experiences of famine victims and survivors.

Jones emphasized that the Soviet conception of multiculturalism required that one identify as primarily Soviet – and that doing so required that one suppress one's past and normalize one's conception of self so that it matched that articulated by the state. However, one does not forget trauma, tragedy, or the details of one's struggle to survive, and the men and women who started gathering materials documenting the famine were trying to take back their own sense of self-direction by rejecting Soviet conceptions of culture and self and claiming their status as survivors.

As Jones pointed out, the Soviet regime was able to keep the true causes of the famine under wraps until the 1970s. As a result, the community-based archives established by Ukrainians living in North America were for decades the only repositories that contained substantial bodies of material documenting the famine and its impact. Moreover, these archives also collected records and other materials that documented life in Ukraine before the famine; some mainstream repositories collected a few Ukrainian materials, but only the community-based archives reflected the multiplicity of Ukrainian voices and experiences. The Soviet Union's collapse led to the opening of some Soviet archives, but large quantities of records are still off-limits to researchers. As a result, the community-based North American archives remain an essential source of information about one of the greatest human rights abuses of the 20th century; the predominance of oral histories and eyewitness testimonies within their collections may pose some methodological problems, but the fact remains that these materials played a key role in shaping discourses that countered the official Soviet explanation of the famine's causes.

Jones concluded by citing David Wallace, who has stressed the need for archivists to be aware of the conditions under which knowledge is produced and to reach out to community-based archives.

I'm of two minds about community-based archives. In some respects, I see the emergence of community-based repositories as a sign that the archival profession has failed to serve a segment of the community to which it is answerable. Community-based archives documenting the lives of LGBTQ people dot the landscape because until very recently, mainstream repositories either didn't want to collect materials documenting the lives of “those people” or were afraid that donors or other stakeholders would object. The emergence of community-based archives documenting the Ukrainian emigre community is a sign that mainstream archives weren't paying attention to the emerging emigre communities in their midst – in no small part because their staff lacked the language skills needed to do so.

At the same time, I'm always awed by the passion and commitment that community-based archives display. The LGBTQ people who established community-based archives were convinced that LGBTQ people had worth and a history that was worth documenting, and the Ukrainian emigres in Canada and the United States established their own archives in part because they were not willing to allow the Soviet Union to define their sense of self or paper over their experiences. For community-based archives, gathering the historical record isn't a workaday activity but a political, psychological, and moral imperative. Moreover, community-based archives help to broaden the reach of archival knowledge. Most of the volunteers who start community-based archives aren't professional archivists, but, at least in my experience, most of them want to care for their holdings properly and actively seek out advice and those that don't may have good reasons for not doing so. I also know several top-notch archivists who were pursuing other careers when they began volunteering in community-based repositories, realized that they had a real passion for archival work, and ended up getting graduate degrees in history or library/information science.

During the question-and answer segment, a couple of interesting issues came to the fore. The first centered upon how to avoid coming from a place of privilege, and all of the participants emphasized the need to be aware of how one's own background shapes one's experiences and the need to respect differing experiences and perspectives. Moderator Terry Cook made what I thought was a particularly important point: some communities may experience our ways of acquiring, preserving, describing, and providing access to records as small actions that contribute to their oppression, and we ignore this possibility at our peril. Another hot issue: how do archivists help people come to grips with their mixed histories of both being oppressed and actively oppressing others? Faulder suggested that Young's focus on the processes of oppression may help us stay focused on the records documenting these processes and remind us that we cannot pick a “side” and that we should document people's experiences as broadly as possible. Jones emphasized that we need to promote the idea that our repositories are home to a multiplicity of voices.

Terry Cook followed up this question by asking the panelists whether we should document the lives of neo-Nazis, homophobes, murderers, and the like. Jones concluded that we should focus on documenting all voices, refraining from telling people what to think, and give people the tools to make their own choices. I'm not perfectly happy with this answer. I have no problem, in select circumstances, with archivists asserting that they document some governments, organizations, or individuals precisely because these governments, organizations, or individuals were, in an explicit and sustained manner, actively committed to engaging in the processes of oppression. However, this is an argument that should be deployed with great care and restraint; for example, it's an appropriate approach for documenting Pinochet-era Chile but not for, whatever its failings, the present-day Chilean government. I think that, in most cases, Jones's position is the prudent one.

 I'll end this post with Terry Cook's provocative closing statement. When Chilean human rights activist Ariel Dorfman gave the 2010 Nelson Mandela Lecture, he asserted that communities give themselves the chronicles they need and that nations whose stories depend upon the suppression of some voices are building their foundations upon sand. We need to start thinking about archival documentation in the same way.

MARAC Spring 2011: Archival Ethics and the Call of Justice

1315 Duke Street, Alexandria, Virginia, 5 May 2011. Between 1828-1861, this unassuming brick building was used as a holding pen for slaves awaiting sale in Natchez, New Orleans, or elsewhere; neighboring structures were also part of the city's slave trade district. It now home to the Northern Virginia Urban League and its Freedom House Museum, which documents the lives of the men, women, and children who were imprisoned here.

The Spring 2011 meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives conference got off to a roaring start with Rand Jimerson’s thought-provoking plenary address, "Archival Ethics and the Call of Justice." Jimerson’s words have been bouncing around my head since this morning, and this post is an effort to nail some of them down. First, however, a disclaimer is in order. I’m a little sleep-deprived at the moment, and as a result some of the first half of Jimerson’s address bounced right off my benumbed skull. In other words, this post may not be fully faithful to his remarks. However, what I heard (or think I heard) got at least a few of my mental wheels spinning.

Jimerson began by summarizing several propositions put forth at a 2005 colloquium sponsored by the Nelson Mandela Foundation:

• Archivists must avoid allowing normative conceptions of society to color the ways in which they select, acquire, and furnish access to materials.
• Archivists must fight against destruction or neglect of records that document oppression.
• (Oppressive regimes tend to be really good at documenting their crimes but attempt to destroy their records when their demise is imminent.)
• Archivists must proactively create archives that reflect the full diversity of their societies.
• Archivists should not be passive documenters of society but active participants in efforts to achieve social justice.

All of these propositions are new (or relatively new) to the archival profession, which has traditionally seen itself as objective and neutral. However, archives have traditionally served and reinforced he interests of entrenched power: their holdings reflect the words and deeds of the powerful, the successful, and the educated, and people and groups lacking one or more of these characteristics have either remained undocumented or documented only by records creators opposed to or indifferent to their experiences and perspectives. In recent years, Archivists have consciously started making an effort to make the documentary record more inclusive, but our emphasis upon provenance and upon the written word ensures that we are subtly biased toward the powerful and the influential.

Jimerson noted that many archivists might have trouble accepting that their work and their holdings reflect and perpetuate existing relations of power and might be deeply wary of the "call to justice" articulated in Johannesburg in 2005. However, he noted that it is possible to maintain professional standards of objectivity while at the same time accepting the impossibility of being personally neutral: as historian Thomas Haskell has asserted, a commitment to telling the truth does not prevent one from engaging in advocacy, but it does place certain intellectual limits on one’s advocacy. Moreover, answering the "call to justice" does not mandate that one adopt a particular partisan affiliation. However, it does mandate that one embrace and defend democratic values (e.g., government openness and transparency, the right of all citizens to participate fully in the life of their society and to have their histories and perspectives documented).

Jimerson then offered a variety of ways in which archivists can answer this "call of justice":

• Ensure diversity in the archival record. The Society of American Archivists has recently identified the need for diversity in the record and in the profession as one of three key priorities, and this is a step in the right direction.
• Welcome the stranger into the archives. We seek to include previously marginalized groups in archival documentation and ensure that they are full partners in the recordkeeping process. In the end, the entire community must be the provenance.
• Base selection and appraisal decisions should be based upon clearly articulated and widely accessible criteria. We need to document our decisions.
• Listen for oral testimony. Many peoples throughout the world -- including some residing in Canada and the U.S. -- do not write down their histories. If we do not seek out oral testimony and conduct oral histories, we will not know large parts of the world from the inside.
• Make archival description sensitive to power relationships and conscious of the coded language that describes the social dynamics that led to their creation.
• Make records accessible freely and openly, within the bounds established by privacy concerns and cultural concerns (e.g., access to tribal records).
• Embrace new technologies. Social media and electronic records make it easier to make information widely available. Moreover, we need to embrace Kate Theimer’s conception of Archives 2.0: promote openness, flexible, user-centered, efficient, assessment-oriented.
• Support open government, transparency, and democratic values.
• Engage in public advocacy, which may include becoming whistleblowers when powerful people and groups try to destroy or alter records.

As noted above, Jimerson’s address was provocative. First, it made me painfully aware of the manner in which I still privilege the written word and literary aptitude. I came to archives as an aspiring labor historian seeking to recover the experiences of men and women who created few written records. My earliest work in archives focused on increasing the inclusivity of the documentary record, and I will argue to death the importance of ensuring the comprehensiveness of the historical record. I am nonetheless unduly impressed by people who “write well” and can be quite uncharitable toward people who are not proficient writers (especially if they’re hard-partying or unfocused undergraduates -- hence my decision not to finish my Ph.D. and go into academe).

I don’t think I will ever overcome this bias -- and in some respects I don’t really want to -- but Jimerson’s words were a stinging reminder that I need to be aware of it and to ensure that I go out of my way to treat with respect records creators, researchers, and other people who don’t embrace the written word as I do, to understand how they understand the world and document their histories, and to do what I can to ensure that they are equitably represented in the documentary record.

I also started thinking about the ways in which Jimerson’s ideas seem to be rooted in relatively recent developments in historical scholarship. The historians who pioneered the "new social history" -- "history from the bottom up" -- in the 1970s and 1980s began scouring records created by elites for information about the lives and perspectives of non-elite people: slaves, laborers, women of all classes, and racial, ethnic, and religious minorities. Barbara Hanawalt’s superb The Ties that Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England, which mines records of royal inquiries into unnatural deaths for evidence of everyday peasant life, is a superb example of this sort of reading against the grain: Hanawalt was able to reconstruct how these largely illiterate men and women bathed and washed their clothes (yes, they did these things!), cared for children and the elderly, attempted to regulate sexual relationships and negotiate internal social hierarchies, distributed food and other essential resources, and grew crops, tended animals, and produced various necessities of life. Charles Joyner’s Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community, which draws upon plantation owners’ diaries and records in addition to oral histories of and narratives written by former slaves, is another stellar example.

I can easily envision a scenario in which this sort of historical inquiry might be viewed as oppressive in and of itself. For example, one person whose life is partially documented in the records of government social service agencies might welcome the sort of inquiry undertaken by a social historian intent upon treating his or her subjects respectfully, but another might view it as yet another unwelcome and painful intrusion perpetuated by yet another educationally, socially, and economically privileged person. However, it strikes me that the philosophical commitments of the new social historians (e.g., belief in the inherent dignity and value of all persons, desire for a comprehensive and equitable historical record) are closely related to those of Jimerson’s justice-focused archivists. The new social history is still reshaping the archival worldview -- and, in my view, that’s a very good thing.

New York State Archives Triangle Shirtwaist Fire exhibit

Floor plan showing the layout of the ninth floor of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. From Factory Investigating Commission, Press Clippings Concerning Commission Activities, 1911, 1913-1914. A3023-77, Box 1, Folder 19140401, 4, New York State Archives, Albany, N.Y. Image courtesy of the New York State Archives. A zoomable version of this image is available here, and a Cornell University School of Industrial Relations three-dimensional model of the floor plan is available here.

One hundred years ago today, fire quickly spread through the cramped, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, which occupied the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors of the Asch Building (now the Brown Building of Science) on New York City's Washington Square. Most of the employees on the eighth and tenth floors were able to escape, but those on the ninth floor learned of the fire only when flames began spreading around them. A locked exit, a woefully inadequate fire escape, and elevator cars stopped by heat and the weight of the bodies of desperate women and men who jumped down the shaft hampered their escape. Dozens were overcome by smoke and flames, and dozens more -- many of them on fire -- leaped to their deaths before the fire could claim them. Within roughly half an hour, 146 workers, most of them young women or teenage girls who had immigrated from Italy or Eastern Europe, died. Six of those who perished remained unknown until earlier this year, when a dogged researcher who spent years combing through archival and library collections and old newspapers finally established who they were.

In the wake of the fire, New York State took dramatic action. It established a Factory Investigating Commission that began by examining fire safety issues in manufacturing facilities throughout the state and ultimately probed every aspect of the state's industrial economy. It then passed an ambitious series of laws concerning fire safety, working hours, and worker safety. Many other states and, ultimately, the federal government enacted legislation modeled upon New York's post-Triangle laws; Frances Perkins, who headed the Factory Investigating Committee's fire safety investigation and later served U.S. Secretary of Labor, asserted at one point that, in some respects, the New Deal began on 25 March 1911.

Several of my New York State Archives colleagues have created a new Web exhibit that brings together images of Triangle workers held by the Library of Congress and our own images of Factory Investigating Committee records highlighting the unsafe conditions, long working hours, and low rates of pay that investigators found in facilities located throughout the state. Please take a moment to check it out -- and to remember that sprinkler systems, fire alarms, accessible exits, and many other things that we take for granted were once rarities in the United States and are still rarities in many parts of the world.

Frank Woodruff Buckles, 1901-2011

I woke up today with the intention of posting about the electronic records workshop that I taught last week and about New York in Bloom 2011, but I learned this morning that Frank Woodruff Buckles, the last American veteran of the First World War, died yesterday at the age of 110. The last surviving French and German veterans died in 2008, the last surviving British soldier died in 2009, and the last surviving Canadian veteran died last year; as a result, Claude Choules, who served in Britain's Royal Navy, and Florence Green, who served in the Women's Royal Air Force, are likely the last living people who served in any capacity during the First World War.

Buckles led a fascinating life. A native of Missouri, he lied about his age in order to enlist in the Army and was sent to England and France, then came home and found work in an Oklahoma City post office, the Toronto offices of a steamship company and a telegraph firm, and a New York City bank. Upon realizing that he most enjoyed working in the shipping industry, he took jobs on passenger and cargo ships sailing to South America. In 1940, he accepted a shipping industry job that took him to Manila. He was taken prisoner when the Japanese invaded the Philippines, and spent three and a half years in prison camps. After the Second World War ended, he lived in San Francisco for a time, got married, and decided to purchase a farm near Charles Town, West Virginia, where his forebears had initially settled. He spent the rest of his life working his farm -- he gave up driving a tractor in 2006 -- and as it became known that he was one of a handful of surviving First World War veterans, he began speaking out about the need to honor the men and women who had served in the 20th century's first total war.

The War to End All War has never captured the American public imagination in the way that the war that followed it has. We entered the First World War late and thus were spared the horrific casualties that the other combatant nations suffered. Moreover, most Americans have few moral qualms about our nation's role in the Second World War: we were fighting aggressive regimes that repressed their own people, oppressed the peoples living in the nations they conquered, and, in the case of the Nazi regime, committed genocide. It's a lot harder to construct such a compelling narrative around our entry into the First World War.

However, the war's influence can still be felt all around us. The manner in which the peace was brokered ensured that Europe remained perilously unstable. The continent again plunged into war twenty-one years after the War to End All War ended, and Soviet communism, another product of the First World War, survived in Europe until 1989. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire created the modern Middle East, which is still struggling toward stability and responsible governance. The war gave rise to a genocide -- a word that became depressingly familiar as the 20th century wore on. As Paul Fussell brilliantly explains in The Great War and Modern Memory, the readiness with which we see raunchy double entendres in innocent statements, our appreciation of irony, and the cynical humor with which we often regard various social and political institutions are the result of cultural changes wrought by the First World War.

Moreover, the First World War does have an object lesson for us. In discussing the impact of the First Battle of the Somme, which saw 60,000 British troops killed or injured in a single day, Paul Fussell notes that:

Whatever the main cause of failure, the attack on the Somme was the end of illusions about breaking the line and sending the cavalry through to end the war. Contemplating the new awareness brought to both sides by the first day of July, 1916, [English poet Edmund] Blunden wrote eighteen years later: "By the end of the day both sides had seen, in a sad scrawl of broken earth and murdered men, the answer to the question. No road. No thoroughfare. Neither race had won, nor could win, the war. The War had won, and would go on winning."

Sometimes -- most of the time, actually -- war wins, and everyone and everything sucked into its maw loses. We forget that at our peril.

Approximately 16 million people died as a result of the First World War, and roughly 21 million people were wounded. It's hard to make sense of those numbers, but it's a lot easier to grasp the enormity of the loss when focusing on the individuals -- breathing, warm-fleshed beings with needs, aspirations, dislikes, passions, and plans -- who were caught up in the war and, all too often, never made it out. Frank Buckles, who quietly led an extraordinary life, was a living reminder of the war's enduring impact, as were all of the other men and women who were drawn into the conflict, survived, and went on to lead quietly extraordinary lives.

Thankfully, Frank Buckles's life will likely not be forgotten: a documentary film about his life is in the works. The lives of other American veterans of the war are documented in archives throughout the United States (my own repository among them) and in productions such as the superb radio documentary created by the World War I Living History Project. As an archivist, I would be the first to argue that the documentary record constitutes an essential, inextricable, vivid tie to the past. It is nonetheless sad and sobering to see the documentary record become the only thing that connects us to a given point in the past.

Requiescat in pace, Frank Buckles.

MARAC Fall 2010: Commemorating the Civil War

Pennsylvania Railroad Bridge and Reading Railroad Bridge, Susquehanna River, as seen from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 12 November 2010.

Even though, in all likelihood, I won't be actively involved in my employer's or my state's efforts to commemorate the Civil War sesiquicentennial, I was drawn to this morning's "Celebrating the Sesiquicentennial: The 150th Anniversary of the American Civil War" session. New York State just wrapped up a quadricentennial commemoration, and the nation as a whole is a bit agitated at the moment; thankfully, we don't seem ready to slaughter one another, but I think I'm starting to see how Americans might come to believe that taking up arms against one another is necessary and justified.

I'm incredibly glad I opted to attend this interesting and thought-provoking session, which highlighted commemorative activities underway in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, and Maryland, and I'm going to devote this post to what were, for me, the session's takeaway points:

• Diversity of perspective and experience will be at the forefront. Barbara Franco (Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission), who served as both session moderator and panelist, set the stage by noting that commemorations say more about the values of society at the time of commemoration than about past events, and, in one way or another, the panelists drove home this fact: Franco, Liz Shatto (Heart of the Civil War Heritage Area, Maryland), Mark Snell (Shepherd University and West Virginia Sesiquicentennial of the American Civil War Commission), and Laura Drake Davis (Library of Virginia and Virginia Sesiquicentennial of the American Civil War Commission) all asserted that their state commemorations would foreground the experiences not only of the white male citizens who made up the bulk of the combatants but also those of African-American soldiers, civilians, and slaves, male non-combatants, women and children of all races, recent immigrants, and other people affected by the conflict.

• The Web will be central. Pennsylvania, which has a statewide commemorative planning committee, and West Virginia and Virginia, which have official state commemorative commissions, are building Web sites that will serve as portals to information about events held throughout their states, digitized archival materials, and other resources. Many organizations in Maryland, where local and regional organizations are spearheading the commemoration, are also using the Web to drive interest in the sesiquicentennial. Moreover, the Web is also being used to drive citizen participation. All four states are using social media to publicize commemorative events, and Virginia is encouraging citizens to bring family letters, photographs, and other Civil War-related materials to special scanning sessions held throughout the state and to allow the resulting images to be posted on the Web. Pennsylvania, which has incorporated a scanning station into its mobile exhibit, is encouraging citizens to allow scanned materials to be posted to the Web; it's also encouraging citizens to use a Web-based form to tell their families' stories.

• Visual and multimedia materials are also important. All of the panelists stressed the need to make history accessible and compelling, and several of the mare using audio and video productions to capture the interest of students and adults. West Virginia has prepared a DVD containing several 20-minute video segments and has distributed a copy to every public school in the state, and a DVD designed for classroom use is also a key component of Virginia's commemorative effort. Maryland's Heart of the Civil War Heritage Area is working with an acclaimed documentary filmmaker to produce a 60-minute film and will be involved in a variety of other commemorative film and video projects. Nicholas Redding of the Civil War Preservation Trust, which seeks to ensure that battlefield sites are preserved, noted that his organization has made extensive use of posters and other materials created by volunteer graphic artists.

• Policy makers want to see economic benefit. Mark Snell emphasized that West Virginia opted to create a formal commission to oversee the commemoration because it hoped that commemorative activities would attract tourists to the state, and Barbara Franco, Liz Shatto, and Laura Drake Davis also noted that their state and local leaders hoped that well-done commemorative events would boost the local economy. They may be on to something: as Snell noted, research indicates that, as a rule, visitors to historic sites stay longer, spend more money, are better educated, and are more likely to make travel recommendations to friends than the tourist population as a whole. (I suspect that people who travel to conduct archival research also fit this profile.)

• Absence of a state or national commission isn't necessarily a liability. At this time, it is highly unlikely that a U.S. Sesiquicentennial Commission will be formed, and Maryland is not alone in opting against establishing a state commission. Although such commissions can help to guide and sustain commemorative events, they are not all-powerful. For example, the U.S. Centennial of the American Civil War Commission, which was formed as the civil rights movement was at its peak, proved unable to stop numerous Southern states from commemorating the war in a racially exclusive manner; in fact, both Mark Snell and Barbara Franco noted that the current emphasis upon the diversity of Civil War experiences and perspectives is in part an effort to overcome this bitter legacy. Moreover, although federal and state commissions that provide financial and other forms of support can be helpful, local governments and regional organizations can be extremely effective. As Barbara Franco noted, grassroots enthusiasm, not centralized planning, was responsible for the initial success and the lasting impact of the U.S. national bicentennial celebrations that took place in 1976. When you think about it, this observation makes sense: it's a lot easier to channel enthusiasm than to generate it, "grassroots" is not a synonym for "disorganized," and commissions run the gamut from extremely effective to profoundly dysfunctional.

What a great session. I came away from it energized -- I really want to find out more about New York State's commemorative plans -- and a bit wistful: I became an archivist because I had a deep passion for the mystery and contingency of history and a belief in the immense value of the historical record, and at this point in my career I don't spend as much time with records as I would like. I'm more than a bit envious of all of the archivists who are doing lots of hands-on work relating to this commemoration.

Catching up: Cologne Archives; the Stasi and recent German history

I planted three "Tiny Bee" Asiatic lily cultivars last year, and they didn't do very well. I didn't expect them to survive, and was very pleasantly surprised when they sprang to life earlier this spring. As of today, they have more than a dozen full blooms and a like number of buds. Interesting things -- most of which aren't as pretty as these lilies -- sometimes pop up unexpectedly . . . .

Sorry for the light blogging over the past week. I've been struggling to meet multiple deadlines at work, combating (organically and non-lethally) the squirrels that are attacking the lettuce, beets, and other produce in the container garden, and getting used to the feeling of having a trio of staples in my scalp; there's nothing like a minor household accident to keep an archivist's life interesting.

Next week's blogging may be similarly light: I'm planning to attend a National Digital Information Infrastructure Preservation Program grant partners meeting during the last full week of June, and as a result must devote next week to wrapping up some loose ends, meeting some additional deadlines, and preparing for departure.

However, before any more time elapses, I wanted to comment on a couple of archives-related developments that have taken place in Germany. Neither one is particularly new, but the first is really encouraging and the second highlights the role of archives in shaping -- and, in this instance, destabilizing -- collective understandings of history.

The first piece of news concerns the records Historical Archive of the City of Cologne, which collapsed on 3 March of this year: the archive's staff and other experts on the site have been stunned and pleased by the condition of the records that have been recovered to date. As of 1 June, approximately 85 percent of the archive's holdings have been recovered (the remaining 15 percent is submerged in groundwater), and roughly 75 percent of the recovered material is relatively intact. Although archivists still anticipate that it will take approximately 30 years to recover from this disaster, they also expect that digital technology will aid the process: special software developed to reassemble documents shredded by the Stasi, the East German secret police, in the days before the collapse of the East German government may help them reassemble torn and badly damaged documents.

The other archives-related development of note also relates to the Stasi. The records concern an event that took place on 2 June 1967, when police officer Karl-Heinz Kurras shot and killed Benno Ohnesorg, an unarmed, at a political protest. Ohnesorg's death triggered mass protests throughout the nation and helped to shape the political views of countless young Germans who saw Kurras as a far-right extremist. Forty years after Ohnesorg's death, many Germans identify 2 June 1967 as an important date in their nation's history: the upheaval that followed in the wake of Ohnesorg's death profoundly affected life in the Federal Republic of Germany. Some Germans believe that it made the Federal Republic more democratic and more open, while others are convinced that it ushered in an era of social decay, but everyone agrees that it was significant.

on 21 May, two historians who were conducting research in the vast archives of the Stasi announced that they had inadvertently discovered compelling evidence that Kurras had been on the Stasi's payroll since 1955. Kurras, who was tried but never convicted of any crime, roundly denies that the Stasi ordered him to shoot Ohnesorg, and to date, no records indicating that the Stasi ordered Kurras to kill have surfaced. However, it is widely known that the East German government actively sought to destabilize the Federal Republic, and questions about Kurras's motivations have led many Germans to ponder their nation's recent past. If Kurras's Stasi ties had come to light sooner, would the the mass student and women's movements fueled, directly or indirectly, by outrage over Ohnesorg's death have been as large or as influential? Would the left-wing terrorist groups that plagued the Federal Republic in the 1970s existed had young radicals widely known about Kurras's true political beliefs? Would the Federal Republic be better or worse off?

In sum, a handful of archival records may ultimately cause an entire nation to reassess and reinterpret its recent past.