This post is written by Weatherly Stephan, Head of Archival Collections Management, and Rachel Searcy, Accessioning Archivist

In 2019, Archival Collections Management received the Collection on Enslavement in Cuba for accessioning into the Fales Library. The collection consists of documents concerning slavery in Spanish-colonized Cuba between 1809 and 1898, including the infrastructure that supported Spanish and American plantation owners at the expense of enslaved and indentured individuals. The materials are primarily evidentiary and transactional, and include contracts, identification papers, birth notices, marriage and baptismal records, death and burial certificates, purchase and insurance records, and manumission records. The collection was purchased from a bookseller, and was accompanied by an item-level inventory. In the name of both access and efficiency, we repurposed that description with few modifications so that we could provide item-level access to the collection immediately through accessioning. While it was satisfying to provide access to this collection so quickly, the original inventory’s inadequacies remained a source of discomfort. As a department we are actively committed to equitable and anti-oppressive archival practices, and this collection’s description did not meet our expectations in this regard.

Differences between current and previous version of finding aid are available in GitHub repository at https://github.com/NYULibraries/findingaids_eads/commits/master/fales/mss_569.xml

Rachel, who accessioned the collection, asked that we return our attention to it in the summer of 2022. While the original inventory allowed us to provide immediate item-level access, it also contained inaccuracies and confusing information, lacked meaningful context, and ultimately did not treat those represented in the collection with the care and empathy we strive for in our archival practice. Although we worked on a number of reparative description projects during our work-from-home period during the COVID-19 pandemic, redescription for this particular collection required close inspection of the physical items and could not be attempted until we returned to in-person work. Weatherly thought it would be a good collaborative project for the entire department to work on. With everyone chipping in, we could divide up the collection into manageable portions, allowing each archivist to take their time with a small subset of documents while also having teammates to discuss or brainstorm with. Rachel, as the project lead, introduced everyone to the work in late July, and we wrapped up our work by the end of the summer.

Each archivist was assigned about 12 items to redescribe, and we shared the task of revising the descriptive front matter between the seven professional archivists in the department. We allotted around six weeks for the project as it fell during the Society of American Archivists annual conference and summer vacation schedules. Most people spent no more than a few hours on their documents in total. By the numbers, this came out to be a reasonably efficient project, but we were more concerned with how much we could improve the collection’s description.

As a department, we have a few collaborative reparative description projects under our belts, and this one seemed to be straightforward. We relied on helpful resources like Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia (A4BLiP)’s Anti-Racist Description Resources (specifically the section “Describing Slavery Records”) and P. Gabrielle Foreman’s “Writing About Slavery/Teaching About Slavery: This Might Help.” The recommendations in these documents are clear and seemed achievable. Both documents include helpful guidance on re-contextualizing these materials in a broader context of oppression, as well as specific recommendations on preferred terminology (e.g., using “enslaved” or “captive” rather than “slave, using “enslaver” instead of “master”) and the suggestion to include the names of enslaved persons in documents in which they appear. 

We were able to successfully implement these recommendations in many instances. For example, one description from our bookseller’s inventory read, “Contract for a Spanish slave from Palma in the Balearic Islands.” Who was this person, how were they enslaved, and how did they end up across the ocean from their home? We revised this item with a new title – “Contract Enslaving Franc Real” – that recenters a man named Franc and affirms his humanity. We also wrote a Scope and Contents note for the item that provides more information about the document, clarifies the system of oppression Franc lived in, and names the actors who played a role in his enslavement. This new description reads: “La Comision Poblacion Blanca contract regarding Franc Real, a 20 year old man from Palma, Spain, who was enslaved by Aburo S.”1

Another descriptive change is equally instructive. The bookseller’s inventory described one document as a “Manumission document granting freedom to a slave boy who is less than a year old,” which we changed to “Manumission Document for Higinio Guillermo.” Again, we wrote a Scope and Contents note for this item: “Manumission document for Higinio Guillermo, a boy in Habana born to an enslaved woman named Juana Paula. Higinio Guillermo’s father is not named.”² We re-centered Higinio to ensure he is represented as a person, to aid researchers and genealogists, and to clarify that people are not inherently slaves but rather enslaved by others.

In contrast to the clarity we perceived in the A4BLiP and Foreman documentation, this project was far more challenging than we initially expected. While we’re glad we took it on, we didn’t finish with the unilateral sense of accomplishment we may have been expecting. The revised finding aid is much improved, and in better alignment with both A4BLiP and Foreman’s recommendations, but we also recognize the gaps we’ve left. Some of these gaps are quite literal. While initial accessioning focused more on verifying that documents matched the received inventory, Rachel noted that iron gall ink had corroded many papers within the collection. When we returned to read these documents closely, this real, physical loss resulted in incomplete or illegible personal names, place names, or other words that could provide critical content and context. Instead we could only guess or admit that we could not proceed further. To restore names to individuals living through these types of oppression is both an effort to recenter their humanity and to aid in research. It was somewhat disappointing to not be able to accomplish this goal even with a clear directive and the best of intentions.

The collection’s focus and geographic origin presented another challenge for us. While some of us have limited reading knowledge of Spanish, no one in the department is a native Spanish speaker. We were also working with 19th century Spanish colonial documents, many of which are handwritten, adding another layer of complexity for us to contend with. We also realized that we are all most familiar with the Atlantic Slave Trade in the context of United States history, and we lacked the subject knowledge about the history of Spanish-colonized Cuba, specifically how systems of enslavement and indentured labor operated in this context. We considered that some of the terminology recommendations might need slight adaptations to reflect these particular realities, but we did not have a clear enough command of this history to make those alterations with confidence. Taken together, these complicating factors made it quite difficult to implement the recommendations from our resources.

This project without question improved the quality of the archival description by correcting inaccuracies from the original inventory and clarifying the colonial context, but we also want to be transparent about our own limitations. We needed to push past our discomfort with the incomplete information available to us, as well as our own personal limitations concerning language ability and subject knowledge. Beyond these specific challenges, we felt a tension between the marked improvements we made and the limits of what can be accomplished through redescription alone. Redescription is yet one avenue for us to pursue. Digitization, making connections to similar collections at other institutions, and using collection materials in exhibitions or instruction are other actions that could recontextualize the collection in conversations about racism, enslavement, and oppression.

There is an inherent tension between the time and effort that critical archival description or redescription requires and a resource-minded focus on efficiency. Although these might seem to be incongruent approaches, we do not find them to be mutually exclusive. This project illustrates an effort to balance deep research, critical reflection, and time management. Description – including redescription – is an iterative endeavor, and we fully anticipate needing to make further corrections to this collection. In ACM, we strive for an extensible approach to archival work that makes materials available to researchers while also allowing for further arrangement and description to be undertaken as needed. We are thankful for extensible models of archival stewardship and frameworks like information maintenance that empower us to regularly and willingly return to our work and iterate upon it. To be clear, this is not minimal description, minimal effort, or minimal care. In ACM, we recognize that our work is never done, and this approach enables us to operationalize reparative description into our regular workflows.

1. Contract Enslaving Franc Real, 1852; Collection on Enslavement in Cuba; MSS 569; Box 1; Folder 37; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University.

2.  Manumission Document for Higinio Guillermo, 1860; Collection on Enslavement in Cuba; MSS 569; Box 2; Folder 76; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University.