About

Racial Reckoning is an initiative by the Center for Mason Legacies (CML) in partnership with George Mason University Libraries and its Collections Research Center (SCRC) and the George Mason University Department of History and Art History. It collects and freely shares digital materials that document modern-day protests of the legacy of slavery, white supremacy and racism that are experienced by its students, faculty, and staff.

Project staff

• Dr. Wendi N. Manuel-Scott
• Dr. Benedict Carton
• Dr. George Oberle
• Anne Dobberteen 
• Anthony E. Guidone
• Jessica Clark
• Alyssa Toby Fahringer

Racial Reckoning is influenced by the following projects

• Pandemic Religion (2020)
• Trump Protest Archive (2016)
• Preserve the Baltimore Uprising Archive Project (2015)
• Hurricane Digital Memory Bank (2005)
• The September 11 Digital Archive (2001)

Additional resources

Collecting protest materials is complicated: how do we inclusively document this moment while ensuring the privacy, safety, and consent of everyone involved? Why should we be concerned about gaps or omissions in the archive we are creating? The following are a good place to start thinking these questions through.

• How do "silences," or omissions, happen in the archive and what harm can they can do? Click here.
• How can protest images on social media be used by police? Click here.
• What are the challenges of documenting student activism safely and respectfully? Click here.
• How can we collect social media content ethically? Click here.
• Why is collecting trauma-related materials for an archive problematic? Click here.
• 5 tips from the Blackavists for anyone documenting movements. Click here.