postcard Archives - CONTINGENT

Postcard from a Southerner in Harlem

A visit to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

At museum conferences, there are usually no easily-portable solutions. Institutional differences matter.

Dogs can be found laying on cooler surfaces or in the shade. Cats saunter into the canteen meowing for attention but also a bite of your lunch.

Seeing Railway Mail Service badges makes the postal carriers and clerks that I read about in other archives seem more real.

The divided research trip is a necessity for a full-time high school teacher.

Archival research can be like spending eight hours looking for lost keys.

The architect of the contemporary anti-immigration movement comes from Petoskey.

When visiting these archives, the violent and extractive history of Belgium’s presence in the Congo was impossible to ignore.

Tiny figures locked in endless battles.

Always talk to your archivist.

It was a family trip.

Thousands came here in the spring of 1947, attempting to flee famine in eastern and central Ukraine.