An archive is an argument about the future. Someone has to decide that a letter, photograph, program, manuscript or newspaper deserves to survive long enough for a person not yet born to study it. The Schomburg Center’s century of work rests on the radical premise that Black life is worthy of that level of preservation.

That premise was not universally accepted when Arturo Schomburg built his collection. Black history was routinely minimized, distorted or excluded from institutions that claimed to represent American memory. Collecting became a form of rebuttal: the evidence exists, the intellectual tradition exists, the art exists, the record is here.

The challenge today is different but related. Digital culture produces an enormous amount of material while making it easy for platforms, links and formats to disappear. Black archives now have to preserve both physical objects and a rapidly changing digital record.

The Schomburg’s longevity is a reminder that memory does not preserve itself. Somebody has to decide, often before the wider culture understands why, that this history deserves a home.