Setting the record straight: digital collage as a practice of Black memory
Date
2025
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
This thesis paper serves as the supportive document in a thesis project that addresses the role of police violence in the persistence of anti-Black violence alongside the historic persistence and contemporary relevance of Black resistance to anti-Black violence. The Water Remembers: Correcting the Archive Through Black Joy, Memory, and Resistance is a digital exhibition that examines the police response to the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 as a microcosm of police behavior nationally. ☐ As a supportive paper Setting the Record Straight argues that art can fill gaps left in the archive by creating a more complete picture of both police behavior and Black Resistance. Viewers of The Water Remembers are welcomed to explore a digital exhibition that consists of 6 collages that address police violence, emboldened vigilantes, and Black resistance. Each issue has two corresponding photographs that help the viewer to connect the police violence of the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 to the anti-Black violence that remains prevalent today. ☐ Critical fabulation is used as a methodology to make connections between what we can easily discern from the historical photographic archives and what scholars have uncovered overtime. Police refusal to protect Black communities and their willingness to engage in violence emboldens white supremacy and anti-Black violence; yet Black Americans have always fought back against it. ☐ The Water Remembers and Setting the Record Straight offer a bold and intentional declaration that police violence is at least partly to blame for anti-Black violence.
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Keywords
Anti-Black violence, Black joy, Black resistance, Chicago Race Riot of 1919, Collages, Police violence