From the Cite Black Women Collective, “There has been a total disregard when it comes to recognizing and respecting the intellectual property of Black women. For centuries, people have listened to our ideas and reproduced them without citation. For centuries, people have been content with erasing us from mainstream bibliographies, genealogies of thought, and conversations about knowledge production.”
Below are five guiding principles from Cite Black Women to engage in radical citation practices.
To further your research, visit their website, engage with their bibliography, subscribe to their blog/podcast, and take to heart their guiding praxis.
Dorothy B. Porter was a librarian and bibliographer. She became the first black woman to receive a Library of Science degree. She began working for the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University in 1930. During her time there, she created one of the world's strongest collections on Black history and culture. The library collection she created made Howard the "authority in the new field of Black Studies." She not only grew the collection, she expanded the Dewey Decimal System to include more categories under Black history and culture, she brought Black scholars to the university to speak, and she wrote bibliographies listing books by black scholars about black history and culture. These bibliographies are the standard for current academic library collections.
Bledsoe, K. (2018, August 22). What Dorothy Porter’s Life Meant for Black Studies. JSTOR Daily. Retrieved from https://daily.jstor.org/what-dorothy-porters-life-meant-for-black-studies/
Image courtesy Moorland-Spingarn Research Center/Howard University