thinking thinking thinkingggg about emotions in the archive, specifically grief. the collection i’m currently processing is that of a labor and civic leader. lots of meeting minutes, planning documents, financial statements, correspondence. he was part of the civil rights movement and had some minor interactions with mlk jr. but most of his collection materials concern labor unions and supporting legislation.
today i came across a box i informally dubbed the assassination box, because the creator collected and kept full newspapers from the days mlk jr and robert kennedy were assassinated. no annotations, no clippings, just full newspapers and special editions of magazines stacked in one box (in part of the collection that i call the office cleanout boxes, because it was clearly the result of his children cleaning out his office after he died). the newspapers are, of course, of vast historical significance, but it’s out of the scope of this collection. the newspapers are big papers and are definitely archived in other collections. they have no relevance to his work--but it is so clearly a sign of the immense grief the creator felt when these men were assassinated.
he kept his wife’s bobbins for lacemaking, still in the pattern she was working on when she died, in the early 1970s.
i want to make space in the finding aid for these pockets of grief. they were important enough to the creator to keep them among his materials for decades. it feels wrong to strip them completely away, even though they’re not directly related to his work as a union official and civic leader.