Library storage exists because libraries run out of space. More often than not, it is where books go to die. Unless your research and the catalog lead you to Akasha Hull’s work or Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s diary, it is rare that you will encounter these texts on a curated table or a featured shelf. Today, as I requested two books from Brooklyn Public Library’s central storage, I asked the librarian, “Is there a reason books end up in storage beyond lack of space?” She answered pl

In Arturo Schomburg's "The Negro Digs Up His Past," his first few lines call me to action: "The American Negro must remake his past in order to make his future--History must restore what slavery took away, for it is the social damage of slavery that the present generations must repair and offset. So among the rising democratic millions we find the Negro thinking more collectively, more retrospectively than the rest, and apt out of the very pressure of the present to become t

Lately, my late nights have taken on a different appearance. The scene is now set with my laptop open, the same Miles Davis record...

(Erica Buddington in Brooklyn, 2014) I looked down at the new schedule and shrugged. It was time for my ninth-period history course. I...