Racism History

 

June 23, 2020
As our state and nation struggle to navigate through a place of contention, fear, and uncertainty, the
Alabama Department of Archives and History (ADAH) recommits itself to the mission of illuminating the
path that brought us here, and thereby equipping all of us, together, to build a future characterized by
justice, human dignity, and a commitment to the wellbeing of all people.
Our recommitment includes acknowledgment of these truths.
1. Systemic racism remains a reality in American society, despite belief in racial equality on the
part of most individuals. Historically, our governments, our economy, and many private
institutions seeded or perpetuated discrimination against racial minorities to the political,
economic, and social advantage of whites. The decline of overt bigotry in mainstream society
has not erased the legacies of blatantly racist systems that operated for hundreds of years.
2. The ADAH is, in significant part, rooted in this legacy. The State of Alabama founded the
department in 1901 to address a lack of proper management of government records, but also to
serve a white southern concern for the preservation of Confederate history and the promotion
of Lost Cause ideals. For well over a half-century, the agency committed extensive resources to
the acquisition of Confederate records and artifacts while declining to acquire and preserve
materials documenting the lives and contributions of African Americans in Alabama.
3. As an organization, we remain mostly white, especially in agency leadership and in our archival
and curatorial staffs. Even with a serious, sustained commitment to understand the historical
roots of injustice and its present manifestations, we cannot know the full measure of fear and
frustration experienced by African Americans who have lived different realities in the past and
today. We listen and study with intent and with sympathy, but our understanding requires
ongoing work.
Our recommitment includes these objectives.
4. We will continue and expand efforts of the past four decades to document and tell a fully
inclusive story of Alabama’s role in the American experience. If history is to serve the present, it
must offer an honest assessment of the past.
5. We will be a facilitator of public dialogue, seeking opportunities to build bridges through
mutually respectful discussions of personal, community, and state history. These voices will help
shape our exhibitions and public programs.
6. We will pursue greater diversity at the ADAH through robust recruitment initiatives. These will
include introducing high school students to career opportunities in public history and providing
paid internships to undergraduate and graduate students. We will offer a welcoming, inclusive
community of colleagues, and meaningful opportunities to contribute to the work of the agency.

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7. We will model and advocate for responsible stewardship of historical materials held by
collecting institutions as well as in the public square. As communities struggle with decisions
over Confederate iconography, we assert that options are not limited to static persistence, on
the one hand, or to destruction on the other.
Our recommitment includes the continued development of resources such as the following, useful for
gaining a greater understanding of racism’s origins and consequences.
8. We the People: Alabama’s Defining Documents was a special exhibition of Alabama’s six
constitutions during 2019, the state’s bicentennial year. The exhibit website and catalog let the
historical record speak for itself in explaining how Alabama law stacked the deck against African
Americans during slavery, after emancipation, and for two-thirds of the way through the
twentieth century.
9. Family history can be a challenging pursuit for anyone, sometimes resulting in dead ends and
unanswered questions. For African Americans, genealogy comes with added complexity because
black ancestors almost universally lived in slavery. When African Americans can be found in
antebellum historical records, it is often in a bill of sale written by a slave trader or in an estate
inventory, listed alongside livestock and pieces of furniture. To better understand how race has
bearing even on researching family history, watch our two-part guide to “Tracing Your African
American Ancestors.”
10. For more than thirty years, the Friends of the Alabama Archives have sponsored Food for
Thought, a monthly lecture series bringing scholarship to public audiences. On our YouTube
channel, explore playlists containing talks on topics such as “Slavery, Emancipation, and
Reconstruction,” “Race and Equal Rights,” or “The Civil Rights Movement.”
11. Take a visual journey through African American community life in the 1960s with the Jim
Peppler Southern Courier Photograph Collection, containing eleven thousand images of political
activism, religious life, music, sports, and black neighborhoods.
12. Find more content from the ADAH and our partners at Alabama History@Home.