Outtake: Archival Silence as a Learning Opportunity

When I first began my research into Dr. Margaret Burroughs’s (2003) life, I had anticipated spending months in Chicago doing research, working from her archive, and crafting a life history of a Black art educator and institution builder. When the pandemic hit, one of the casualties was archival access. Far from my original plan, I was able to complete only one research trip in the fall of 2020. I had to schedule the trip in advance and was limited to what I requested the month previously. By the time I walked into the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection at Chicago’s Woodson Regional Library, I hoped that the archives could help me answer questions I had about Dr. Burroughs’s narrative. A prominent Chicagoan, Dr. Burroughs gave oral histories and even wrote an autobiography, but none of these accounts detailed her life as a teacher. I had hoped that the archives would provide the answers I needed to diversify the currently written histories about Black art educators.