 Hello and welcome everyone. My name is Kirsten McNally. I'm a member of our learning team here at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. And welcome to our virtual program, illuminating Du Bois, examining the legacy of a sociologist and historian through research and design. We have live captions available for today's program and you can access them by hitting the CC button on your zoom menu and hitting show subtitle. And I'll be your contact person for accessibility today. So if you have any issues during our program, you can send me a private message on zoom to let me know and we will do our best to meet everyone's needs throughout today's program will be 90 minutes long. We'll begin with a brief introduction to Cooper Hewitt's current exhibition deconstructing power W.E.B Du Bois at the 1900 World's Fair with curator Devin Zimmerman. We'll then hear from our wonderful speakers which include Cheryl D. Miller, graphic designer, author and theologian and our 2021 National Design Award winner for design visionary, Wallace Gentry-Brown, a genealogy specialist at Smithsonian Libraries and Archives. Nilda Lopez, a reference librarian at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum Library and Library Liaison for National Museum of the American Latino. And Cara Ollage, associate director for collections and discovery at the Getty Research Institute. So each of our speakers today will speak about Du Bois legacy and the way it connects to their work. And it will be moderated today by Lenisa Kitchener, chief of the American African and Middle Eastern division of the Library of Congress and consulting curator for deconstructing power. We will end with a few questions from the audience which you can drop in the Q&A box. And very importantly, this program is a collaboration with Smithsonian Libraries and Archives. So with that, I'm very pleased to hand it over to Tamar Evangelestia Doherty, director of Smithsonian Libraries and Archives to tell us more. So over to you, Tamar. Thank you very much, Kirsten. Good afternoon, everyone. It's my sincere pleasure to welcome you to the inaugural program of Smithsonian Libraries and Archives research collections and conversation series, which is a collaborative space where the rich research collections of the Smithsonian go beyond our institutional boundaries and into conversation and connection with research communities across the globe. I'm Tamar Evangelestia Doherty, director of Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, and I have the pleasure of kicking off our program today. I want to first acknowledge and thank our pan institutional partners at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum for their collaboration and coordinating this event. We are really excited for today's conversations for several reasons. The first being that Smithsonian Libraries and Archives created this series of conversations because like every library archives and memory institution, our services and collections influence every aspect of scholarship and research. This series of programs seeks to bring together a diversity of research repositories and community voices into a collaborative space in order to foster with authenticity, collective knowledge and a recent drain of all research collections and a deep awareness and consideration of our shared research environment. In keeping with that spirit, we're really thrilled about today's panel. In addition to our own Smithsonian colleagues, representatives from the Library of Congress, Howard University, and the Getty Research Institute, who like the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives are all influencers when it comes to knowledge production and center and research collections. We are also excited because today's program is in honor of Black History Month, which is a collective time to celebrate the achievements of Black Americans by recognizing their contributions throughout history and culture in America. As it also happens, it is only two days away from February 23rd, which commemorates the 155th anniversary of WEB Du Bois' birth. We feel that it's especially appropriate to illuminate the legacy of this great sociologist and historian through interpretations of his research. And beyond the celebratory, there lies an additional impetus and inspiration for our program. The Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum's exhibition, Deconstructing Power, WEB Du Bois at the 1900 World's Fair. This exhibition places decorative arts from the Cooper Hewitt's permanent collection and dialogue with 20 innovative data visualizations that Du Bois created for the 1900 Paris World's Fair. He wanted to explore how design can both reveal and mask dynamics of power and equity. The data visualizations used in this exhibition are a loan to the Smithsonian from the Library of Congress, which seemingly only seems transactional, but it's the first loan of its kind for these data visualizations, which is quite symbolic and serves as an examination of the many patterns of influence connecting Du Bois' work with library and archival research in a much broader sense. The presentations you will see today are a reflection of how we as scholars, designers, librarians, genealogists, and archivists, all as intellectual and interdisciplinary collaborators can more holistically be influenced by and engage our work and research in the legacy of WEB Du Bois'. The exhibition was carefully curated by Devin Zimmerman, Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art. In consultation with Lanisa Kitchener, Chief of African and Middle Eastern Division at the Library of Congress, Lanisa will serve as our moderator for today's panel discussion. But first, I will turn it over to Devin to explain a bit more about his curatorial approach to this amazing Du Bois exhibition. Thank you. Over to you Devin. Thank you so much Tamar, and thank you everyone for tuning in this afternoon for what will be a fantastic and wide-ranging discussion on Du Bois and its impact across a number of different scholarly fields. So my name is Devin Zimmerman. I curated along with Lanisa, who I will introduce shortly, as well as Yao Fengyu and Christina de Leon at the Cooper Hewitt Deconstructing Power, WEB Du Bois at the 1900 World's Fair. With this exhibition, we wanted to critically examine the 1900 World's Fair in Paris as an object of design. One crafted from a logic of nationalism and colonialism that framed nearly all aspects of the fair itself. Central to the story were the over 60 groundbreaking data visualizations produced by sociologist WEB Du Bois and his students at Atlanta University and presented at the fair. The project grew out of an invitation to contribute to the exhibit of American Negroes organized by the lawyer and publisher Thomas J. Callaway. It was really an archival project, a consolidation of documents and information by black Americans illustrating the social, economic and cultural gains made since emancipation. The exhibition consisted of several sections. The first was a display of tools and other agricultural products and patents in swing cases sent by leading black industrial schools such as Hampton and Tuskegee institutes. The second section consisted of a selection of nearly 250 volumes of black literature compiled by Daniel AP Murray, assistant librarian at the Library of Congress, who is also responsible for acquiring the contents of the installation for the LOC. And finally, Du Bois and his student collaborators at Atlanta University presented an uncompromising archival display, emphasizing documents and data on the daily lived experience of black America. These included the over 60 information graphics, but also a rich collection of commissioned photographs of black Americans, as well as a 400 page handwritten transcription of the black codes of Georgia, tracing a genealogy of legal oppression within the state. A multidisciplinary project, excuse me, that intersected fields from social research to politics to design the exhibit of American Negroes deconstructed myths and misrepresentations that buttress white supremacy, and upon which much of the World's Fair circulated. Drawing upon this critique, we set Du Bois this project in dialogue with the 1900 World's Fair and designers and manufacturers exhibiting there to probe several of the entrenched narratives that surrounded the fair. We did so across four lines of inquiry. The first around the theme of mobility looks at how Du Bois's diagrams tapped into the fair's obsession with signs of progress and reframed its focus by privileging and prioritizing a movement towards equality and equity. The second, entitled designing the nation, we prompt visitors to question for whom and by whom is a nation defined, and how design plays a crucial role in this dynamic. The third, called the Whiplash line delves into the global entanglements of resource concentration and labor oppression that funded the beautiful objects of Art Nouveau design around 1900. This section unpacks how design can mask, or in the case of Du Bois, reveal these dynamics. And finally, in a section titled Imperial fantasies, the exhibit takes Du Bois's anti-colonial address to the nations of the world, given at the first Pan-African conference as a jumping off point to analyze how the World's Fair was organized by and perpetuated a colonial logic ubiquitous in the 21st century Euro-American culture. These lines of inquiry are just a few of the countless threads that could be pulled when examining Du Bois's work at the fair. It is for this reason I'm thrilled to that Cooper Hewitt and the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives collaborate and bring together this amazing panel of scholars to lend their expertise and pull on more threads. Thank you all once again for attending and I hope you'll be able to visit the exhibition before it closes on May 29. And it is now my great pleasure to introduce Lenisa, who will be moderating this fantastic panel. Thank you again. Lenisa, over to you. Thank you, Devin. Thank you, Tim R. Thanker. Thank you, Cooper Hewitt. Thank you, Smithsonian Institution and to all who are in attendance today. This is a wonderfully exciting opportunity to talk about the underbelly and the beauty of design, its political, sociocultural elements and how they are interpreted and impact our everyday lives drawing on the good work of W. Du Bois, starting with the 1900 Paris World Fair, but also looking at the impact of his life and work and its contemporary relevance today. I'm wonderfully excited about this gathering of scholars, this gathering of professionals who range and expertise from masters of the archives to genealogists who can help us unpack the elements of the exhibition, as well as its commentary on Du Bois' work. Without any further ado, I'd like to turn it over. I'm so excited about this. I'd like to turn it over to Hollis Gentry Brown to get us started and what I know will be a promising and provocative conversation about the exhibition and its major themes. Hollis, over to you. Good afternoon and thank you to the organizers of this event for inviting me to contribute to the panel and to the audience for attending and participating in our conversation on illuminating the work of W. B. Du Bois and his legacy across disciplines. My portion of this conversation focuses on viewing Du Bois' legacy through other lenses. That is, through the lens of Du Bois, the genealogists, and through the lens of Du Bois, the advocate for libraries and librarians. I asked the question, did Du Bois' personal family research inform or influence his professional research on African American families? I turned to the digital W. B. Du Bois papers held within the special collections and university archives at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to answer that question. Finally, I note discoveries that reveal how his interactions with libraries and librarians developed into an advocacy for the promotion of African American library staff in the New York public library system and for the establishment of African American research collections and libraries around the world. Genealogists employ research methods similar to ones used by sociologists and historians to document families. Thus, it should not have surprised me to discover that Du Bois was his family's historian. In 2007, I learned that one of Du Bois' ancestors served in the Revolutionary War. I was a genealogist at the time with the Daughters of the American Revolution, the DAR, a lineage society. I helped compile a resource book titled Forgotten Patriots, picture to the left of the slide, which identified the war service of African American and Native American patriots. I also learned that the Sons of the American Revolution, a male counterpart to the DAR, rejected Du Bois' membership application, but I did not have access to the files to reveal his ancestor's name or uncover the reasons for the rejection. I needed that information in order to check it against the research that I was compiling for the Forgotten Patriots publication. Years later, I found this military service evidence pictured on the right side of the slide among the Du Bois papers. The document identified Tom, a Negro, as a private and a Berkshire County, Massachusetts regiment in October 1780. Tom did not have a surname at the time. I think your slides might not be available right now. Can you try sharing your screen? I'm so sorry to bother you. I apologize for that. Do you see it now? Yes, if you just hit sledge, there we go. Years later, I found this military service evidence pictured on the right side of the slide among the Du Bois papers. The document identified Tom, a Negro, as a private and a Berkshire County, Massachusetts regiment in October 1780. Tom did not have a surname at the time. The Forgotten Patriots resource book identified at least three other Negro men named Tom who lacks surnames. This was a plausible reason for the application's rejection. Searching further in the Du Bois papers, I found family documents tracing his maternal ancestry, the Burkhart family of Massachusetts that traces to his great-great-grandfather, Tom Burkhart, the Revolutionary War patriot. The letter to the right side of the slide, written on Atlanta University Stationary, was a copy of WB Du Bois's 1908 membership application to the Sons of the American Revolution. The letter summarized the evidence of records he used to trace his genealogy, his mother's death record, his grandfather's death record, and an abstract of the 1790 census, naming his great-great-grandfather, Jacob as a head of a household of three individuals. Turning to the chart on the left, taken from the Negro exhibit titled, proportion of free men and slaves among American Negroes, we see a graph contrasting with percentages, the free versus enslaved African American population from 1790 to 1870. The graph draws attention to the percentages of free African Americans, coded in green, while showing the majority of the population coded in black and enslaved. The percentages reflect the free and enslaved populations in 10-year increments that mirror the years that the federal government counted the African American populations in the census. Comparing the data in the Du Bois application letter, identifying his great-grandfather Jacob as enumerated in the 1790 census, we see that Du Bois's family would have appeared among the 8% green section among the free men in 1790. Although this is not evidence of Du Bois's personal family history, influencing the data in the charts, it helps us to visualize his family's free status in 1790. We see another letter written in 1940 and addressed to another lineage society, the descendants of the American Revolution. And this letter, WB Du Bois reveals the reasons why the sons of the American Revolution rejected his membership application. Pointing to his lack of evidence documenting his great-great-grandfather Tom Burkhart's birth marriage and birth record of his son Jacob. As a result of the letter read, my great-great-grandfather was an African slave, stolen and brought to America. At the same time, I was firm in asserting that these Negroes were Americans. As a member of the Massachusetts Society of the American Revolution in 1908, when however the notice of this election reached the headquarters in Washington, the secretary, a Howard Clark, the Smithsonian Institution demanded proof of marriage of the ancestor of Tom Burkhart and record of his son. He knew, of course, that the birth record of a stolen African slave could not possibly be produced. My membership was therefore suspended. Continuing my search in the Du Bois papers I located another letter written in 1940. I'm sorry, pardon me. I skipped here. The first papers include more than 350 digital, biographical, genealogical and historical records of the Burkhart and Du Bois families, mostly written or authored by WB Du Bois. An excerpt from the Burkhart family history reveals the motivations for tracing his lineage and answers the first half of the question. I asked at the beginning of my presentation. The answer is yes. Du Bois drew inspiration in part from his family's history and applied it to his studies of the African-American family. Portions of the family history read as follows. It is my purpose to trace the family to trace the history of the family and note what advance it has made from slavery and 150 years. An inquiry may be of use in several ways. First, it will be a contribution to a somewhat neglected topic, the status of the Northern slave and the conditions of his descendants. Secondly, it will show to some extent the concrete causes which have kept for years, a large family hovering on the brink of pauperism. Thirdly, it will throw some side lights on the connection of pauperism and the present Negro problem and suggest methods. So here Du Bois is turning to his own family for insight on solving the Negro problem that is often the subject of his research. In this next slide we have two examples of genealogical and historical records, also in the Du Bois papers. The document to the left of the slide titled the history of a pauper family includes the lineage beginning with Tom tracing through his son Jack and grandson Othello, who was WB Du Bois' grandfather. The lower side of the page includes words from a song sung by Du Bois' paternal grandmother. Du Bois may have attempted to create a family crest with the words from the ancestor's song of possible African origin surrounding a drawing of chains and a sword, symbolizing his family's enslavement and freedom as a result of his ancestor's service in the Revolutionary War. The document on the right tracing deeds of transfer of Burkhart family property contrasts with the pauper lineage featured on the left. The documents also reflect how Du Bois applied diagrams and visualization techniques from his professional work to inform his personal family history. The collection of books and papers numbering in the thousands. On May 7, 1957 Du Bois gave an acceptance speech after being honored with the installation of a bronze likeness of his head at the Schaumburg Library in New York. His acceptance speech traces love of books and libraries back to a childhood in Massachusetts and mentioned libraries he visited around the world. Du Bois' papers contain correspondence files totaling more than 95,000 items, hundreds of which included letters to and from librarians. He developed a long lasting friendship with Mrs. Regina Andrews, a librarian who worked at the 150th Street branch today known as the Schaumburg Research Center. Du Bois launched a campaign in the late 1920s advocating for the public library system to end discriminatory practices that prevented African American library assistants and librarians from promotions to higher positions. In 1938, after 15 years of pressuring library administrators to change policies, Du Bois' activism succeeded. Mrs. Andrews became the first African American supervisory librarian at the 115th Street branch, now known as the Harry Belafonte branch, paving the way for generations of minority library professionals to serve in all capacities within the New York Library public system. And finally, I've come round full circle to where I started and close with an image of the WB Du Bois Library in Amherst, the tallest academic library in the United States, dedicated in his honor in 1994. It is also the home of the WB Du Bois Center and the Digital WB Du Bois Papers. I invite all attendees to search within the Digital Du Bois Papers to find your connection to his legacy. Thank you very much. Hollis, thank you so very much for that wonderful presentation that challenges us to rethink how we think about the archive, how we can mobilize the archive to better understand who we are, who we've been, who we are becoming and the critical role of libraries and museums in helping with that important work. Our next speaker will be Cheryl. Cheryl is a theologian, author, designer, visionary designer, and the National Design Award winner. Cheryl D. Miller, over to you. Welcome everyone and I am so honored to be with everyone and Hollis indeed I have found thank you so much for that. I indeed I have found a place to connect with Du Bois's legacy and he has given me the final stretch of the research that I have dedicated my life to and further do with that let me share and reveal findings that have changed my life and given me more purpose in my work. I'm sorry. I lost my barn weight to share and need to share. Kirsten I'm in a loop here I can't share. No problem I'm happy to share on your behalf one second. All right. Am I still connected. Yeah, there we go. All right. I can. I can try to share now or do you have it. I have it, as long as folks can see it I think just give me a next slide and I'm ready to go. I don't see anything yet. I can't see. And why can't I see. I'm sure if you if you mouse over to your zoom. It might be available there. Yeah. Okay, I tell you what why don't you stop sharing. Okay. And I see it up. So let me see if I can get it again. All right. No problem. Let's try this. There. Are we up. Can you see it. Yes, here we go. Thank you. All right. Sorry for the delay. It'll be worth the wait. So welcome. And again, my life's work, if you're familiar with my story. I have had I've been on a life's questing question in my entire career that has. I would say. Central size down to where are the black designers, black designers missing in action. Why have we been lost in our design history and storytelling. I was in search of the first black graphic designer this has been my legacy work. In addition to my design practice, this has been my advocacy. I've been on the path at 17 years of age. And so the, the, the advocacy for understanding all of our questions as BIPOC and black designers has been my quest. My maternal heritage and lineage from, from my mother's family. In West Virgin Islands, Danish West Indies, indigenous family, having been raised up out of the Danish and Canadian slave trade. I knew the black designer was found in Africa. And, and in the history of slavery. And all of the things that I grew up with around my house pointed to a West African influence that had to have come here through slavery. I had to prove my theory and the synoptic studies would give me an answer. He was in slavery, and he was the slave artisan running away constantly. I have followed him through synoptic studies of advancing through our canonical historical eras of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, industrialization, Victorian era, and so forth. And then juxtaposing that same era to the transatlantic slave trade, the Danish Canadian slave trade, all the way through many of the points of African American history. I'm parallel studying synoptic studying, and I'm looking for the proof that I know that the first black graphic designer is the African. In my studies I get to the Victorian era, where the concept of the World's Fair is. It begins with 1849 with Queen Victoria's husband. And I discover in that conversation, studying this era of canonical design, canonical history, I discover the 1900 Paris exhibition and the visualization charts. I don't want to go over the history of the exhibition, but there's an interesting little artifact there that I have that shows all of Paris coming in to the exhibit. The boys begins to whisper the answer to my journey's quest in the charts. Two charts in particular. 20, there are actually three charts that begin to tell me my answer where is the black designer, and where did he come from. The first chart is shows us 23% of the of the Negroes up from slavery are businessmen to charts in particular. And the second point to, well, there's there the designers. This chart shows us Negro newspapers and periodicals. The second chart shows us Negro businessmen and publishing editors. Well you can have newspapers and periodicals publishers and editors. I wrote graphic designers typesetters press men, the whole technological industry of what it takes to publish and communications. This chart tells me that we are active. So I begin to unpack. Where am I going to find more than the chart. I discover his writings. It's more than chart data. I discovered his reports and essays. The Negro artisan, the African artisan, the Negro American artisan, the antebellum Negro artisan. These are these are vintage reports and essays, and he writes me my answer, more than a chart. He tells me that the Negro American artisan lands in the first cargo of Negro slaves and sold to the settlers in Virginia. He tells me the first African graphic designer as a slave artisan lands in Virginia. He tells me the different tribes. And in my interest, my family is is Canadian descent. Again from DWI US Virgin Islands. And he tells me that the Ashantees are among the West Africans who are the slave artisans. He tells me that the Negro slave was the artisan of the South. He explains the systemic practice races of of exclusion and why the black designer is missing had gone missing. He wants to find out his origins, and it's another thing to find out why, why the story of my community in design is not recorded in the canonical main canonical design history books. The first thing that he points to in his writings is the jealousy of white artisans towards Negro competition. So a part of the systemic white supremacist practice to to erase and obstruct the slave artisan is rooted in jealousy of competition. Specifically, jealousy of competition afraid of free free slaves slaves after emancipation, they become competitor competitors to labor and making money. And the jealousy of competition of taking business is the core reason for the systemic practice to keep us. To keep us out of the racer to keep us out of the business to throw out us to keep us from advancing. And it's the jealousy of competition of the free slaves after emancipation is the core root of why we became missing it after slavery fear of slave competition he writes and tells me that the white artisan is afraid. This is where the systemic racist practices level up to really annihilate us from being practitioners in this business, but his charts tell us that we have our own periodicals our own publishing houses. Now we we are competent in the tech in the technology, the canonical history is not documenting us, and why are we have why we have been missing and why this has given me my life's work. It's right here. The white artisan is afraid of the slave competition. He also tells me, I'm looking, are we in this business. He tells me we're in the business. Our American artist is an architect designer engraver paper operatives printers lithographers pressmen photographers to my community here. We were in the business. The publishing has done us a disservice by not exposing and letting our community, the design community know that we are practitioners, the boys has informed me that indeed Miss Miller, you guys are here in this story, all the way from Africa. He also tells me of the female Negro artisan, and he documents the first fashion designers and graphic designers from Spelman Seminary, and he tells me that the women designers are about to so the women black designers. He documents in in the Negro artisan. He discusses their presence and at Spelman Seminary. In summary, his work has impacted mine with these conclusions and of course I you know if you follow me at all you know I'm full of other scholarship and footnotes, but these are my concluding notes from specifically from his charts and his writings. The West African is the slave artisan the woodcuts and engravings were used for pamphlets the slave artisan didn't get credit the slave artisan is the first black graphic designer slavery created free labor emancipated created from what what had been free labor. Negro artisan labor created both competition and fear among white laborers unions were threatened and began practices of white supremacy to keep the Negro out and inspiration for a cat for academia was created to separate design thinking from the trades. Kind of putting us hanging over lack of thinner in the printer, the printing press. Anyway, this is the beginning of a deep dive of all of the research that I have to date of where we were where we originated where we are how we got here, our first and basically the erasure and why we've been toward it, and my community has been catching up ever since. And my, I found the answers to my questions from the voices scholarship. Who is running the presses behind the scenes. And I love this poster from the Smithsonian, a history is often is often painted prettier than it really was. And the exposition won a gold award, and I thank you for this time of sharing and I think I got it in in 10 minutes. Thank you so much. Cheryl. Thank you. Thank you for such a remarkable presentation of the lineage of graphic designers going from the assentee to the early arrival of enslaved Africans in the Americas to the present tenor of our time. unpacking how fear and jealous tendencies prompted the erasure of black designers and how Du Bois's charts demonstrate high accomplishment in design in publishing in every facet of society, despite the most horrific predicaments and conditions. Our next speaker is Nilda Nilda is reference librarian at the Cooper Hewitt Museum. Nilda, I turn it over to you. Thank you. I'm going to start my screen share. I hope everyone can see. So, thank you. It is a pleasure to be on this panel and explore wd boy and his legacy. We hear the panel text of the exhibition. History is told by the facts found in libraries archives memory ephemera, and in both the written and heard word, but we choose to collect and discover provides layers of stories and narratives. The collections throughout the several research centers at the Smithsonian libraries and archives, and in particular, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Library, provide not only beautiful but interesting and complex dives into design history as we continue to uncover and address the multifaceted and complex story of American history. We hold over 100,000 items at the Cooper Hewitt Library of General Collections related to decorative arts and design and over 15,000 special and distinguished collections, notably for this discussion, infographics, and an extensive World's Fair collection. We see pictures of our reading rooms, we are open to the public by appointment and happily accept requests from researchers, designers, teachers and students to visit our library and your collections. Besides our general collections that we can be viewed on our sats are distinguished materials, maybe use have been used by national international researchers for publication exhibition display and furthering the historical narrative of design. I know our conversations today will not only discuss W. E. D. Boy as a scholar, a man and advocate, but the tools he used to share and raise the value of knowledge in his community. A World's Fair, known as a universal exhibition or expo where and are large international exhibitions designed to showcase achievements of nations. The libraries and archives house is an extensive collection of World's Fair with a notable portion residing at the Cooper Hewitt Library, and our collection starts with the 1851 Great Exhibition held at the Crystal Palace in London. The World's Columbian exhibition of 1893 is best known for its coined Chicago Ferris wheel, designed by George Washington Gale Ferris Junior, the centerpiece of the Midway set in Chicago, Illinois. I just opposed with a different item in our collection, a full photograph I will album of the same fair of the women's building detailing design and crediting a female designer, miss Sophia Hayden, a scholar of architecture. These images are available online and available freely on our website. They have been digitized cover to cover with great researcher and donor support. We see a drawing and a photograph from two separate World's Fair collections items depicting the 1900 World's Fair in Paris. I imagine the overwhelming and fully intended feeling of all at its magnificence, the large gatherings of intellectuals, visitors and innovators of their time to meet, greet and share their wares for a lack of better term. The exhibition of the American Negroes was a social display held within the palace of social economy. The goal being to demonstrate the progress and commemorate the lives of black Americans at the turn of the century through books, photographs and the stars of the show, the handmade graphs and charts. If you haven't seen it, it is treasure to see at their museum. Earlier, the tools used by the boy, the 20 innovative, innovative data visualizations currently on display serve as infographics graphical visual representations of information data or knowledge to present information. As a design library, we have several instances of such, and also the boy's intention to showcase his place in a very cultural setting may have inspired several offshoots of design representation, which I display here today. Here are some examples in our collection of isotypes, an example of infographics intended to convey information quickly and easily to the masses in the library's collection. These books are by Otto Carl Wilhelm Norath, an Austrian born philosopher of science sociologists and political economists credited for inventing the isotope. I show images of two of his works, the international picture language from 1936 and basic of isotope from 1937 isotopes stand for the international system, a typographic picture education, which offered a new alternative for representing the different human races, and how these symbols can create a chart representing the world population through size and repetition. Otto Norath greatly influenced other contemporary designers, such as Lattice Larve, Suthenar, Herbert Byer, and Henry Dreyfus, the original owner of our New Earth books. We currently hold several of their works and the Cooper Hewitt Museum holds the Suthenar and Dreyfus archive, excuse me. But let's roll back a bit to 1870. With Francis Amasa Walker, an early infographic designer and creator of the statistical atlas of the United States from the census office. This is the ninth census atlas that marks race, birth distribution, and even indicates wealth disparity, crop growth and mental illness. On the top left of the center image, it details its orientation. 350,000 inhabitants to the square inch. Each square is divided by vertical lines into three rectangles, the left representing foreign, middle, native color, and right native white. On the top left is the comparison is the colored map of the birth rate. It has been on display at the museum for two separate occasions as completely digitized and available on our website. And it is to focus since Dubois use these types of sentences to create his color designs. My understanding of Dubois was the use of his words, visuals and his understandings of the mind. He uses some multi dimensional understanding of color and language as tools to spread this message of education and insights to the black community of America. We see installation shots of the case titled the spectacle of colonialism with our world's fair books side by side with objects telling the intentional narrative of Africans as savages during the 1900s fair. The dichotomy, the smart and educated black American in one room versus the poor and animalistic black native in Africa and another. Dubois is an inspiration to us all moving forward through contextualizing the double consciousness and the various views of the black persona, or even broader that of the other, which is still being discussed today. Thank you so much. Nilda. Thank you for such a wonderful presentation on the breadth and depth of the collections at the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum library really appreciate your insight. Thank you so much. Our next speaker is Cara Oledge Cara is associate director of collections and research collections and discovery at the Getty Research Institute Cara over to you. Thank you. And I am appreciative and so happy to be on this panel today with everyone. Today I want to talk about the boys is working tools that he's left us in terms of the research that we do in black culture institutions and also on with with additional organizations that have joined the effort. The title of this presentation is black agency front and center because that's absolutely what the boys does with this particular event. And so I will start with my presentation. And so, as we see with the next slide. Please thank you. Just give me one second to do this. Okay. So, as noted by a while shoes article, what WB Du Bois conveyed in captivating in his captivating infographics. He actually addresses a concern that I to be Wells puts forth in her pamphlet in response to the 1893 Chicago exhibition. Wells notes that there's absence of black people in the celebration and rights the wealth created by the industry has afforded to the white people of this country to leisure, essential to the great progress in education art science industry and invention. Well, it would be in 1900 at the exhibition of in Paris that Du Bois will address this this remark. He looks at the exhibition universal 1900 as a celebration of the achievements of the 19th century, with an eye to the future of the 20th, 20th century. His personal achievements and activism confronts the idea of wide exceptionalism was interrogating the idea of the modern subject that is a self defining subject. It's a project that he has taken on in his life work and prevents and presents brilliantly presents at the 1900 rules fair. And just a quick timeline to give some context for what is happening. We know that 3037 years before 1900 fair that the emancipation proclamation is issued. We have years before this particular event that reconstruction happens, and then it's only four years before the the fair in Paris that we have this institutionalized Jim Crow, which is would become one of the most horrific in in terms of subjugation of black people in the south to exist for the transit black Atlantic trans transatlantic slave trade. And so what we're looking at is that Du Bois makes a clear argument that if anyone would represent the self assigning a modern subject it would be black people. And he makes the point clear in three points one is the resilient resiliency under the brutal subjugation of the black Atlantic slave trade as well as continual subjugation of black people in the United States and abroad. He also is concerned with visibility as remarked in strong shell Smith's book entitled photography of the color line that the feasibility of blackness as noted before with the tropes of the primitive black, the uneducated black. And so he is combating that as well. And then lastly, he is combating this to a very complex position of cosmopolitanism. It's complex because he's actually using the idea of race, which he does understand and argues is a social construct, but he's using this idea of race as a way to address these ideas of race as a cultural platform for black and political social uplift, while at the same time debunking the white supremacist and scientific racism that has created it. Let's go to the next slide. And so what are the tools that the boys has given us and how we do research and how we what I would call plotting plotting blackness. You know, in his infographics, the one that's here that you can see here is the land owned by Negroes in Georgia USA 1870 1900. What the boys is doing is that he is using a combination of geospatial data, the map itself of the land. And then he's also complicating that with a racial geography, which is a racial narrative of how the questions of race, contributing to what's rooted in anti racist and anti colonial struggles struggles presents itself. And so here he maps out exactly the expansion of blackness, the resilience of blackness, and one of our key keys of key focuses or what is related to in terms of citizenship which is land ownership. These technologies that are presented in the boys is infographics can now be seen in the works of the NWCP to use digital mapping to illustrate disparities and housing, voting and even food deserts in the country, but also in more creative spaces, such as Julian Chambliss digital humanities project mapping black imaginaries and geographies, which plots out black cultural production activism and knowledge using Afrofuturism as a framework. Next slide please. And then I'd like to talk about cultural metadata. I think one of the, I think one of the most brilliant aspects of the boys is work. It is that the metadata that he presents at the fair. And as we can see in the photograph here there are nine African women seated on the steps of a building at Atlantic University. And this was presented at the Paris exposition in 1900 the photo is Thomas he asked you comes from the library Congress. What he is doing is that he is really using three aspects of metadata. And these are all grounded in a black mythology that really situates our lived experiences how we think move at the knowledge that we produce and consume is that you need to, to our community in to the experiences of the West and how we relate to the West. And so these metadata descriptive metadata administrative that metadata and structural metadata are all deployed, and that authorship and defining relationships between infographics books and photographs are rooted in a black mythology as discussed earlier. Next slide. I want to talk about some of the work that I'm currently doing. My work has been as a former deputy director of the Schoenberg Center and executive director of the arms out research center. The work that we have done and continue to do in this area has really been about the legacy of the boys is work and his approach to sociology, anthropology and sciences. Now at the Getty research center, I'm entering a different stage. And one of the things I want to talk about is predominantly white institutions, and where we are in the work that we're doing in these institutions as black people operating in them and doing both the psychological work and the labor of what we call the double consciousness with the boys defined as double consciousness, and what institutions are trying to achieve. And that they want to talk a little bit about the Getty research center and our mission, and what we are focused on with two projects. So, the first is project that we are working on is we have started African American art history initiative. And this is really because of looking at this legacy and history of particularly the fair in 1900 and what has come out of that work through black research is that the white institutions are realizing that they need to write the record and that they have not looked at the visibility of African American work, particularly in the arts. And so now there's a wave of work that is being done in this area. Right now within this initiative, we are working to celebrate the 20th century with two particular projects the Paul Revere Williams project that celebrates the most significant African American architect of the 20th century, particularly in Southern California California city of Los Angeles, and documenting his work from the 1920s inspirations onward. And then also the Johnson publishing company which is a collection spanning more than 4 million photograph print slides negatives, and currently takes up 2,500 linear feet in Chicago. The magazine produces a chronicles the history of African Americans for the 20th century. So a significance in terms of the research is unparalleled. The point to be made in the work is that one of the things that we want to ensure as we continue and think about what the boys is articulating arguing about the black modern subject, as well as the contributions of blackness is that that work is met and valued, but also that the people who are doing the work in institutions are provided the research, the support needed to continue the work, and that there is a representation of the idea of blackness rooted in a black methodology and not blackness rooted in a white methodology or Western methodology. And so the next slide. Here we see what I believe is what, what I think about Du Bois' work is what Octavia Butler remarks. She has a quote that says there's nothing new under the sun, but they are new sons. And when I think about the legacy of Du Bois and the incredible work that he has presented us and also the challenge, the charge that he is, has given us. And I urge those other sons that this is what our life work is about and that his life work was about. And as we can see here that unearthing of other sons. There's image of James Baldwin from the Johnson Publishing Collection. And then there's home, and then there's a picture of Alvin Ailey and Carmen de la la in the photo as well in the lower to celebrate the creative genius of blackness and the activism and resiliency that we have employed to be a thriving and remarkable and brilliant community. And lastly, last slide is the idea of San Cofa. In Du Bois' final years, he moves to Ghana at the invitation of President Kwame Nkrumah to work on if you edit the Encyclopedia of Africana. And so he passes in Ghana, but I thought that this was the perfect image to land with the image of San Cofa. And in that image, you see the bird was head turned backwards, which is really from the Akin language, the Akin language, and it really means to, you know, to know your history, to know your heritage, and to know yourself. These are all things that Du Bois presented and gave to us, and that the world is better to us and that we can move the world forward when we do so. So thank you for this time. And I will close my presentation now. Thank you. Thank you for a wonderful presentation on how Du Bois' Center's agency plots blackness, deploy, structural, administrative, and descriptive metadata rooted in black mythology, and also on the critical role of institutions, institutional responsibility to redress past erasures through intentional initiatives like the ones that you are engaged in at the Getty. And a wonderful presentation from all of the speakers. I'm very, very grateful. And I think at this point in the program, I can invite us all to open our cameras for conversation. We'll have a few that I'll pose and then we'll open it up to the audience. If you could please place your questions in the chat. I think we'll have a bit of time to unpack them. I'll start it with the first question. If that's okay. I'm, I'm thinking about where we are now, how far we've come from 1900. Here we are 23 years into the 21st century and over the past. So, at least five to three, well, three to five years with increasing intensity there has been considerable conversation about racial reckoning in America. In particular, I'm wondering, and I'm posing this question to to all of the panelists. I'm wondering from your perspectives, where you see black design now drawing upon and advancing Du Bois' work and where you see it headed. Where are we now and where do you hope for us to go. Cheryl, please. The minute you say designer and I have to raise my hand first. And if anything else I don't know about I'm a designer. I've been on this platform with it. Let me share with you what I know about life. We want answers. You know, we all have life's events. Life's occasions. We're all born into some drama. We just are, you know, what, why did this happen? Why did that happen? How did I get here? I think Du Bois' work and my discovery of the footnotes. It first started with the charts. I wasn't even aware of the book. I was in my deep dive about the World's Fair. And I found the archives online. Then I found the charts and I said he wrote he has to write. One essay and one report after the next he started proving and I could it's almost like he was saying, Cheryl, yes, you're right. We're Africans, the first Africans, you know, study the, you know, the Ghanaian slave trade is your people. All right, you know it. And so where we came from was the first question. See my community, you have to know where you came from. You know, the only tree in Oto where we're going. And so that's the first thing. And then why in the world have we been erased? Why have we been obstructed? Why aren't we in the design books? Where's the core cancer of this? This gentleman tells me it was fear of competition. And now elated us after slavery. Once slavery was over, then you got to compete. And the trades killed us. So if I can get that message out in a footnote in a lecture in a book, listen to my people who are designers. We are African and specific tribes in my world, Ghanaian. I don't have time I can't share the platform, but we're African. And the slave trade bravest first stop wins blood presses. And then after slavery. The reason we've been having so much drama is because of fear and competition and keeping note no union cards. Jim Crow, I need you to understand why so now you can compete. You know who you are. We have an aesthetic. It belongs to us. People appropriate us all the time, go forth and compete. Okay, so that's all I have to say, because you know I can go on it on for hours with this. Thank you. This is Cara. I think one of the things and thank you Cheryl because I think I want to to your note I think we how to design work moves forward is looking at how we live with design design is all around us. And I think that one of the things that we don't highlight which is why I'm excited about Paul Revere Williams project is that there are things about black design that live with us every day that we don't know. There are ways that you know young people are using well I'll say emerging artists and scholars are using design and their work at like I said about the, the, the black imaginaries you know geography project I mean, you know, they're wonderful ways that this is coming out I think what's interesting though is that the way we use it is that that link back to Du Bois's work, like this discussion to me was so incredibly important because you see that trajectory. And you see that how it's grounded in a black methodology that a lot of people don't understand and know so I think when we move it forward, we should always always move it with that thought in mind, and how people are building on it and we document that. Because you know, I just relocated from New Orleans, a different kind of design element in that city to moving to Los Angeles and there's different type of design here and I'm captivated by all of it. And so I think it's about the lived experience and how design impacts our lives that we can move forward with an everyday experience that I think would be really incredible to think about and move through. Sarah, thank you. I'm going to turn to some of the questions that are popping up in the chat, as I encourage others to post in the Q&A. I'm sorry, Timmar, please. Coming from the point of view of, you know, the archives and our work as memory workers. I also think it's up to us, especially those of us who work in predominantly white institutions to look at the narratives that we see created around people of color, and make sure that they just don't stay within a certain margin that they're known for. I never really knew of Du Bois as a designer. I always heard of him as a sociologist and historian. This exhibit opened up my eyes in many ways, and I think one of the great things about this conversation is, you know, it's really up to us to show that we are not one dimensional. And when it comes to, you know, what we express as black people, there's, there's, we hear a lot about black struggle about black tragedy, but there's also black joy. And, you know, as Cheryl said, there's black designers and a lot of times those narratives of joy and success are oppressed. And we have to be the ones who are accountable for showing Du Bois, Elaine Locke, many others in their multiple dimensions. Absolutely. Thank you, Tim R. If I may, I'll turn over to the chat. There are a couple of questions here and the first one here is from Marcella Leeds, and it's for Hollis. Marcella is curious about why you think it might have been so important for Du Bois to access membership to the societies like the Sons of the Revolution. Marcella poses posits that Du Bois was able to trace his lineage without them. Marcella adds that she is having difficulty understanding what was to be gained by acceptance into the those societies in his mind. And the question I asked. And I tried to, I searched for, I was reading through a lot of the, his correspondence, hoping I would find that answer. And I believe it's in the archive I just wasn't able to uncover it. Part of it stems from the culture in which he was raised in New England, where the sons of the American Revolution loomed very large in the fourth of July and other sort of hereditary historical celebrations in the area. And it was especially profound. The pageantry and everything that went along with membership in the society. Du Bois was very much aware of his ancestors contribution to the founding of the nation and thought that he had every single right to celebrate them and his ancestors, had their own contribution in the way that everyone else did. In the quote that I presented his, his ancestor was stolen from African, he was forced to become an American, and he not only was forced to work without compensation. It was his life in order to assist with the process of our freedom from oppression from another nation. And so I can imagine I never found any kind of really harsh words on his part. I can imagine him saying some unkind words about, you know, the way he was treated and the reasons for rejection. He was probably very angry because he had every single right to celebrate his ancestors to. Have them immortalized in the organization. Du Bois was very keen on documenting his ancestry and the sons of the American Revolution produced publications. They had a journal similar, you know, in fashion to the crisis, they're promoting, you know, the American, the white American heritage. Du Bois is promoting African American heritage and culture. So it was important to him to gain access to the things that he felt he was eligible to celebrate. Thank you. We've got another question here from Stephanie Penningham. Stephanie writes that as an academic in Florida as an alarmed academic in Florida. What are your thoughts about the current anti woke movement in relation to all of this brilliant scholarship. It is another attempt, or is it another attempt to erase non white voices. So you're gonna have to make me you, you guys are throwing me out front with that question. We've always been, we've always been keepers of our own story, no matter, no matter what we go through as a people, we keep our story. So the answer to your question is, I know that in academia to protect our rights to tell the truth. It just moves us into local awareness of raising up initiatives associations our own libraries. You know, in my work. What is concerning to me is that design publishing was not our friend. And so now we need writers to write anyway, like Tony Morrison. You know, I watched her recent documentation, you know, about the prizes that she won and someone asked her well why didn't you write, why didn't you write for white audience. And she said, you got enough writers. I only write for the African American community. And all it does is push us to take care of ourselves to publish to write. You know, in those two charts, he showed me, Gerald, we're writers were publishers. So the answer to the question is, you know, I don't care what they do. I got to do, I got to do me, and I got to do what I know I'm called to do. And that's to inform, and, you know, to inform my community that we were there we are there. If the answer to those questions that the boys gives to me can empower my without fear and strength. Then I'm doing my work for God. And the future is black designers are off the hook. And once you have those answers, he came from Africa, and the systemic racism practice kept you out so let's get busy. Now you know, I can't, I can't worry about the opposition to that question just got to go on anyway. I think what the boys and Carter Woodson showed us is that the power lies in our own hands to document and disseminate and to teach and to share. They left behind volumes of scholarship. They supported up and coming emerging scholars artists everything. And I, I, I dig into the archive from so many different directions. Because there's so many, there's so many spaces where African Americans have existed for a very long time. Someone came along and documented it, and then somehow or another it was forgotten or it was lost or, or it's tucked away somewhere, and we constantly rediscover the accomplishments of earlier generations. And I think what happens is some people rest on laurels, or they think that we've reached some juncture where we, we don't have to worry about that. The examples that Woodson and the boys showed us is that you can never stop. It's like every day you do wake up and breathe. You have to still work towards that until the last day. And then hopefully the next generation will pick up and continue on where you left off. So, I think the, all of the things that are surfacing now with Florida and any other place that are suppressing the teaching of African American history and culture. We still have the power to, to learn on our own. I looked at Du Bois's example, I had a lot of material I wanted to share. But in the 1957 speech, when he was honored at the Schomburg, he reviewed his life from childhood, and he started as a kid, earning, you know, pennies in order to buy books at a time where books were very costly. And then when, you know, he, he lived so long ago that you know libraries were not free. And he relayed the story of how as soon as that library open the free library open, he was first in line and he checked out every book he could. And from that, he developed his own personal collection. So he was always focused on self education. And then he also shared with others. He's got a lot of correspondence with librarians who were developing their African American collections. He was always encouraging emerging authors to write to publish. He was always begging people to submit material to his journal, so that he could disseminate whatever it was that they were doing so he could highlight their accomplishments. If we could multiply people like him. And, you know, we have the ability now without having the obstacles the financial challenges that he had to disseminate things we can use social media in a more constructive manner. So that whatever these folks are who are opposing our history or our culture or whatever. They don't matter. That's my take on it. I want to, to hang on to this point for a little while if we can. And that is because I'm mindful that, you know, we, we carry, you know, you're, you're coming out of the Schomburg, there's Howard University represented in this space. And when we start talking about where we are now it seems that it's an interesting turn to perhaps the 1960s where we are already always always already tapping into historically black institutions. We're talking about institutions and communities that are not unfamiliar with this work, and that we are finding ourselves in a dynamic where we are challenging PWIs predominantly white institutions to play catch up. But that's a heavy burden. That's a heavy burden that's not always promising in terms of the outcome so you know when I when I am on this panel I'm mindful carries with the Getty. And Nilda are with the Smithsonian Institution I'm with the Library of Congress is there even greater opportunity for closer collaboration or better still leadership from black institutions and showing predominantly white institutions the way. A year ago, Kara and I were both on a panel that was called when white institutions happen to black collections, because there was this push after the George Floyd tragedy for PWIs to go out and bring in black collections. I was going to write all the wrongs we're going to mass digitize everything black. We're going to buy everything black, and I was telling them the, and the kind of gist of that panel was that they are still being delivered in a white framework. I don't want to say because Kara and I were both at the Schomburg that there is this myth that when black collections are within a predominantly black institution or institutional color that that means that they are safe from the same kind of challenges of racism as collections and PWIs. Schomburg is in the backdrop of New York Public Library, which is which answers to 42nd Street, the Vivian harsh collection at young Chicago and Chicago Public Library answers to the big guys downtown. The Mamie Clayton collection although it was independent was struggling to keep the doors open. So I think the purpose of coming together today is to show that we all have to be vigilant. I have a question before about, you know, anti-wokeness. I was once called a disruptor when I was at Cornell University when I was trying to elevate black narratives. I didn't really feel comfortable with the word because when you hear it it sounds negative. But if a disruptor means that I'm elevating black voices, I'm being authentic. And the work that I do around that then I'm just going to keep on disrupting. Yeah, I agree. I think I think that every time we see this rise of nationalism, you know, the rise nationalism is always, you know, in fear of the other and fear of immigrants and fear of everything that isn't what makes folks comfortable. I think that, you know, we've seen as historically from, you know, from reconstruction to the Renaissance, the black arts movement to black lives matters. And I think it's a couple of things. I think that we should demand better of our predominantly white institutions. I think it goes beyond just maybe making a statement about the indigenous land that you are, you know, that you your buildings are on. Or as Tamar said about buying black collections are over the past, I think within the past two or three, three years, we've had maybe roughly 65 to maybe 70 African American appointments and predominantly white institutions. But the question is, is that that is not enough, because we know one of the burden that that takes to be in a white institution and to do, I mean, I mean, when the boys talks about double consciousness. It's in our lives every day it's active and everything that we do we're constantly negotiating and, but I think the point is that we need to demand better of institutions and people who say they are allies. And that comes from doing hard work. And I think that the lessons are in archives if you look at the work that core did and all the opportunities that people can better educate themselves. And I think we need to be challenged by this idea of self curation. We're going to have to address one of the things that we're not addressing in this formula to anti woke anti blackness blackness is the idea of how algorithms are impacting and serving in city is purpose that I think that we need to really a really aggressively address and work that we do. Because I think that that's one of the spaces that we're ignoring the most and it's the, the space that people are getting all their information. And so I think that that's an area we can explore but you know I work in the Getty, I recognize and politicize my body every day there. And my goal is to make sure that if I'm at an institution like the Getty Research Institute and that that institution has to do better. And hopefully we're making those strides will see. I think we need to launch to no study in five years to see where everybody lands if it were still in these positions and not. But those are some of you know my thoughts about this. And I think that we do need to really interrogate these digital spaces and do more advocacy work in those areas. Cheryl please. Yeah, you know, I've journeyed a long way with this. And when it comes to the institutions. Where I'm invited is where I go at this point. And my true allies and institutions are those who have wanted me. And I have to shout out Stanford University came across country and picked up 50 years of my work we have the Sheryl Miller collection. And they have allowed me to start the history of black graphic design North America we have two collections going on at Stanford. They're, they're my ally to our work in this. I have three institutions who want me. Okay, with my courses and my crazy lectures, you know, my first glorious invitation was University of Texas Austin design. And they recognize you can't want me. I'm not performative. I'm not the one I'm not the one you call if you don't want change, you know, and I'm with art center college of design. And I'm with, I'm with Howard. And I say that because we have to listen for those who want change. And as Tamara said, you know, everybody knows I'm a disruptor. So don't, don't, don't call me just to be performative. And so there are institutions you have to listen carefully to the ones that really really want to collaborate with you and be a real source of what it would be, you know, an ally, and they're there. And you just, I just listened carefully to the invitations. And that's what I encourage everyone. It's, you know, it's, it's tough, but there are places that want to change and rearrange. And so I celebrate all of the allies that really want to help us. And, and they're able. So that's how I approach it. I'm invitation only because it's been a journey, otherwise it's a journey guys. I'm telling you what I'm what I'm hearing, or maybe I'm projecting I can't quite tell. But you know it's lonely, being the only, even do boys you know when he, you know was doing his work he was that you know some of the most exalted institutions of that time. Harvard University and making his way over to Germany but ultimately it is Fisk. Ultimately, it is Clark Atlanta ultimately it is these black spaces that that he mobilizes for a number of reasons. In the advancement of his work. We've gotten the cue that we have just two more minutes and we're now down actually to one. And so if I may, I'll just posit this last question before we wrap it up. And the last question that I have here. It really is about design history courses, the question is to do you have any suggestions or wishes for how we may revisit design history. Deconstructing the profession is a good starting place, but would love your thoughts. So I may be a constructive ally. So if you could offer brief answers. Oh, sorry, I would like to say that interdisciplinary approach would be great, because if we look at it in all facets, many of us have mentioned that we only know the boys from one lens. And I think that multiple lens will lead us to be more collaborative and understanding and growing collections, understanding each other better and enhancing others in our narratives, always been focused on this one narrative. I would say one thing I think Cheryl pointed out something earlier that in terms of the publications that were featured in the exposition, the magazines and newspapers the designers were there. And I think we overlooked where they are so now that the archive is becoming digital, we have new tools with which to discover them. They weren't all working for African American publications or businesses. Some were hired for with others. And I think we have to revisit some of the methodologies that we apply to that research to look in places where we wouldn't normally think we would find individuals, designers and such. Oh boy, Nilda, Cheryl, Hollis, Kara, Tamar, Devin, Cooper, Hewitt, audience members. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. This has been a wonderfully enriching informative call to action and a challenge to even greater understanding about who we are and who we are becoming. Thank you so very, very much. Tamar, I turn it over to you. Thank you so much, everyone and closing. Hang with me a minute on behalf of Smithsonian Libraries and Archives. I want to first thank our dear colleagues at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, especially I'm Kirsten and now and Devin, much gratitude to our speakers for sharing their enthusiasm and expertise. You know, I want to say that, you know, Black History Month expresses that, you know, while we're especially mindful of the intellectual and cultural contributions of black people during this month. Like all cultural heritage, black heritage is something that we should celebrate, elevate and educate through our research collections this month, every month and all of the time. Thank you for joining us and I want you to tune in next month for our next Smithsonian Archives, Libraries and Archives research collections and conversations, because we need your help. Every time there is a new museum that is proposed that puts the onus on the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives to create a new library and archives around it and so March is Women's History Month, and we're going to focus on building research collections, centering women's narratives. And I hope you look forward to the panel of speakers that we bring together when we're going to talk about how should we be documenting women going forward. So thank you so much for joining us for this first research collections and conversations. Bless everyone. And I know that I was changed for the better today. And I hope the rest of you are. Thank you. Thank you.