8 Seconds and 16 Carriages: Contemporary Audio and Visuals as Archival Acts of Resistance
Unidentified, Photographic postcard portrait of a cowboy, early 20th century, National Museum of African American History and Culture; Smithsonian Institution.
In 2018, my grandmother left her home of over 50 years to move into a retirement facility. As my family helped clear out her belongings, we stumbled across a large cedar chest filled with dozens of letters she had written to her mother as a student at Clark-Atlanta University in the 1940s. These letters, surprisingly untouched by their moldy surroundings in the garage shed, were accompanied by family photographs, wedding invitations, and a collection of ephemera saved by my great-grandmother before her passing in 1977.
Though she may not have called herself an archivist, my great-grandmother’s affinity for keeping seemingly insignificant items is the reason I am able to get a detailed glimpse into the young adult life of my grandmother. Over the years, as my research in Black archival history deepened, I grew frustrated with the lack of documented Black American perspectives the further I went back in time. But I soon realized that for our Black elders and ancestors, embodiment is the archive. Stories about lived experiences expressed through art is one of the key ways we are able to understand the history of Black America.
The increase in shared Black historical knowledge since the height of the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement rapidly laid bare the fact that white supremacy and capitalist cultures have infected just about every political system and social construct we know. Though Black people are no strangers to white theft, we press on with the fundamental understanding that our collective memory is more powerful than any attempt at imitation and erasure.
Beyoncé’s newest album, Cowboy Carter, deepens necessary inquiries about the reclamation of Black artforms that have been co-opted by whiteness. The album offers an opportunity to reflect on what it means for Black people to “reclaim” a culture that has always been ours, and to recognize that the labor of preserving histories that are not centered around the oppressor has always fallen on the shoulders of the oppressed.
Nat "Deadwood Dick" Love, 1854- , [full, standing, facing front "in my fighting clothes" in cowboy attire, holding carbine]. Image courtesy of Library of Congress.
The collective memory of Black Americans is imbued with artistic innovation and archival practices, qualities and skills innate to Black culture that provide the foundation for resistance against systemic oppression. We have always known the importance of preserving generational knowledge, even if we do not call ourselves archivists. From elaborate family trees written in the back of old Bibles to printing the faces of loved ones on t-shirts after they have passed away, archival practices are ingrained into the subtleties of Black culture.
While whiteness has historically dictated the histories we are told, Blackness shapes the stories of who we are. Our embodied experiences made tangible through time-based media like music and photography have become key instruments in documenting historical narratives from the Black perspective that can now be accessed and consumed worldwide.
My recent curatorial and archival research interests have led me to discover contemporary Black photographers working to document present-day Black sub-communities across America. Since 2015, photographer Ivan McClellan has traveled across the country to capture the flourishing culture of Black rodeo and ranching. His book 8 Seconds: Black Rodeo Culture is adorned with images of Black communal joy and action shots of rodeo events alongside supplemental oral histories of America’s most legendary Black cowboys and cowgirls.
Prior to the Civil War, Manifest Destiny brought many Black cowboys and ranchers from the Southern states out West as property of their enslavers, but after emancipation, many chose to be employed as stewards of the land. By the late 19th century, one in four American cowboys were Black. With the overarching goal to elevate and encourage the succession of Black Cowboy culture, Ivan McClellan’s photography highlights the descendants of this stewardship and the evolution of a community whose experience of Blackness is rooted in multi-generational agricultural knowledge.
While McClellan’s contribution to Black collective memory features visual documentation of present-day Black cowboys, Beyoncé’s innovative approach to country music deepens our knowledge of Black history through the sampling of archival audio components. Sampling, born out of 1970s hip-hop culture, was popularized by disc jockeys who would mix, loop, and scratch musical breaks together, producing transitions between tracks or creating new songs altogether. Although sampling has expanded beyond hip-hop, its use is clear in Cowboy Carter, and there are many moments where we are blessed to hear original recordings from Black country icons, including but not limited to Son House, Rosetta Tharpe, and Roy Hamilton. These audio snippets date all the way back to the 1920s, paying homage to an ancestral influence expertly woven throughout the album. Beyoncé’s sampling of old recordings continues the legacy of Black artistic innovation and provides a public platform for Black archival material to be consumed by a global audience.
M.B. Marcell, American, 1869 - 1939, California Rodeo, Salinas, 1919, 1910s, National Museum of African American History and Culture; Smithsonian Institution.
Black archival practices do not begin and end at an institutional level such as a museum or library. They exist and evolve within our families, communities, and memories. While institutional archives preserve artifacts in climate controlled rooms behind glass vitrines, the most important qualities of a Black archive are that which can be passed down through the embodiment of experiences. The preservation of audio-visual material and the sustainability of community are both equally important to the longevity of the Black archive. Ivan McClellan’s 8 Seconds and Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter are prime examples of how archival practices that diversify ownership and agency over our stories is our greatest weapon. Through photography and music, they remind us that how we choose to embody our present informs how future generations perceive their past and imagine their future.
Beyoncé says, “We’ve been here.” McClellan says, “We are here.”
Contemporary documentation, innovation, and the dispersal of historical knowledge is necessary archival work that supplements the embodied experience of what it means to be Black. It is an act of resistance against white supremacist attempts to erase who our soul remembers us to be: limitless.
