Dread Archive

I t had taken so long. And I was the first. I had called and emailed archivist Taronda Spencer and assistant archivist Kassandra Ware too many times, but finally the archival papers of the Black lesbian feminist socialist warrior poet mother Audre Lorde were processed and available for scholarly research at Spelman College. I went to Atlanta immediately. I was underwater during those 9am to 5pm days in the archives. Meaning I lost my breath. And I didn’t want to come up for air. I didn’t want to take a break to eat or to respond to any text messages or even to reconnect with my mentors and friends on campus. Under saltwater. I looked thirsty waiting by the door every morning as the staff arrived. I only left at the end of the day out of respect for the fact that the archives staff had other things to do. If not for my gratitude and respect, I would have barricaded myself inside . I ordered photocopies that are now soft, fraying from how many times I’ve touched them. I held Audre Lorde’s journals in my hands and made decisions about my life that I am still growing into. I kept notes that I can barely read now, garbled evidence of fast typing. I remember a lot about that sacred time in the archival sanctuary of gray boxes and book cradles. Off-white ropes, golf pencils and request slips. But there is no question about which was the most memorable moment in my first trip to the Audre Lorde collection. Audre Lorde had thought about her legacy. She knew that her life as one of the first and arguably the most visible and successful out Black lesbian poet ever was historic. Indeed, she had kept everything from her childhood poems to box after box of correspondence and a lifetime of journals. An ivy league trained librarian herself, Lorde had kept her drafts, her writings, other people’s writings, transcripts, syllabi, what people wrote about her, the research that informed her writing, flyers from events and correspondence with the writers and activists she collaborated with around the world. Spelman College had not been slow to collect the work of Audre Lorde. Quite the contrary. Spelman’s first Black woman president Johnetta Cole worked with Lorde very specifically during their years of friendship to make clear to Lorde that her collection was central to Beverly Guy-Sheftall’s vision of creating a repository for Black women writers at the premiere college for Black women in the United States. In letters to Lorde and even in her memorial program she emphasized how much it meant to her to have Lorde’s sacred archive held within the reach of the current and future Spelman students she called her “surrogate daughters.” Beverly Guy-Sheftall, founder of the Women’s Research and Resource Center wrote the grant to the Arcus Foundation that allowed the papers to be processed offsite, organized multiple conferences and events celebrating the archive and co-edited a book with Johnetta Cole and Rudolph Byrd that included unpublished speeches by Lorde from the archival holdings.