Black archives, white philanthropists: Pan-African worldmaking in the interwar United States

Abstract

This paper examines the development of key Pan-African collections in the United States during the interwar period, a time of heightened Pan-African consciousness among African Americans. The emergence of professionally trained Black curators and the growth of major US philanthropic organisations fostered a concerted effort to archive and document the global Black experience. These collections, housed at institutions such as the New York Public Library and historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), became significant sites of ‘worldmaking’, establishing Pan-Africanism as a distinct and transmittable field of study. In this context, Black activism intersected with white philanthropic ambition. While activists saw archives as tools for social change, philanthropists viewed them as sufficiently apolitical to meet their preference for ‘uplift’ rather than activism. The paper underscores the capacity of archives to hold multiple, conflicting interpretations and shows how a geographical approach can help avoid narrow, singular understandings of collections in the present.