Keepers of the scrapbook: volume explores the treasured artifacts of the black diaspora preserved in the Moorland-Spingarn collections.

Legacy: Treasures of Black History Edited by Thomas C. Battle and Donna M. Wells Moorland-Spingarn Research Center Preface by John Hope Franklin National Geographic Books, October 2006 $35, ISBN 1-426-20006-4

I used to wonder if some people weren't "keepers," or collectors, because of cultural or practical reasons. Many people just don't save things for the sake of holding on to them. While working on a museum-planning and design team, I coordinated the exhibit content for several historically interpretive stories specific to the black experience. Although the stories at the core of these exhibitions were compelling and must be told, often the organization proposing the project hardly had any belongings that were specific to a movement, a location or a genre; they owned very few physical objects, such as photographs, papers or artifacts--tangible proof that something happened, residue of some real occurrence.

I thought that perhaps some people didn't collect certain items because they would be reminded of painful practices such as slavery and Jim Crow. Elders who lived through those years often remarked that they simply don't like to talk about "it" However, in the familiar sentiment expressed in the West African Akan concept of Sankofa, we need to know the past in order to move forward.

Likewise, in Legacy: Treasures of Black History, analyst Ronald Waiters refers to "a West African sculpture that depicts a deity with the powers to see both the past and the future at the same time. Collecting and preserving the past for future study can be personified in the same way."

Legacy explores the artifacts of Howard University's Moorland-Spingarn Research Center (MSRC), which is recognized as one of the world's largest and most-comprehensive repositories for the documentation of the history and culture of people of African descent in the global Diasporas.

The center's collections include more than 200,000 bound volumes and tens of thousands of journals, periodicals and newspapers; more than 17,000 feet of manuscript and archival collections; more than 1,000 audiotapes; hundreds of artifacts; 152,000 prints, photographs, maps and other graphic items.

The collection has strong coverage of Afro-Cuban, Afro-Brazilian and Haitian writers and rare editions; and it also contains works by early African American writers, including Benjamin Banneker and Absalom Jones. Thomas C. Battle, the director of MSRC, coauthor of Legacy and author of Black Bibliophiles and Collectors: Preservers of Black History (Howard University Press, 1990), aptly concludes that, "Together, the two collections [the private libraries of the Reverend Jesse E. Moorland and attorney Arthur Barnette Spingarn] present evidence that should have made notions of Black intellectual inferiority and of pseudoscientific racism clearly unfounded."

More than 150 images throughout the volume represent the breadth of the black world: a ceremonial Oba mask from the Kingdom of Benin; 17th-century maps of Africa; 18th-and 19th-century Coptic crosses; a detail of a panoramic photograph of The Riverside Golf Club, organizer of the first African American golf tournament in 1924; and a letter from Langston Hughes to Alain Locke, where he first rendered his poem I, Too, Sing America; a note card of the original painting by Lois Mailou Jones; a precious bell believed to be the only object remaining that belonged to Sally Hemings; the business card of Sgt. Maj. Lewis H. Douglass (Frederick Douglass's son), 54th Massachusetts Regiment, ca. 1863, and a button from his Civil War uniform (both at the left) alongside his carte de visite photo; The Credo Calendar by W.E.B. Du Bois, outlining his beliefs in God, the Negro race, the devil, pride, the Prince of peace, service, liberty for all men, the training of children and patience.

In twelve, thematic chapters, Legacy proposes to demonstrate the place and use of these treasures in telling our stories. Essays by two dozen prominent scholars and activists offer adept and personal discernment on a wide range of subjects.

Although the essays provide context for the objects, it is not an illuminative guide. Many images have no explanation other than the caption. Despite this lack of integration, there is much to be gained in knowing these treasures have been cherished and preserved--great finds for researchers at heart, whose joy is in the finding or getting at the source of a thing. It's sort of like finding the truth as an original word or phrase written in the original hand.

--Reviewed by Atsede Elegba

Atsede Elegba is a freelance photographer and the art and photography editor for Black Issues Book Review.