Drawing its title from a question posed by artist Theaster Gates, “Who feels responsible for the failure of care around the legacies of great black people around the world?”, this panel explores the urgent task of archiving black culture in the face of historical erasure. It features panelists Bergis Jules, University and Political Papers Archivist at the University of California, Riverside; Simone Browne, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin; Doreen St. Felix, writer at MTV News; and artist, educator, and writer Kameelah Janan Rasheed.

This panel was presented as part of Digital Social Memory. The conference convened a diverse range of experts in various facets of digital social memory for an afternoon of case-studies and conversations addressing the implications of Webrecorder’s model for the web archiving field and for digital social memory as a whole. The program was organized by Michael Connor, Artistic Director, Rhizome, with Aria Dean, Assistant Curator, Rhizome.