Archival Instagram Accounts Are Teaching Forgotten Histories
People of color are informing others of those who need their flowers
Until recently, Instagram was not known for its political potential. The app was widely understood as the land of influencers, curated realities, and vapidness — and though its political potential has recently been harnessed by the proliferation of social justice “Instagraphics,” this view of the app has ignored the work of archival Insta accounts that seek to build communities around forgotten or ignored histories.
It is no secret that the history we are taught is sanitized, whitewashed, and sexist, but this knowledge does not make these hidden histories easier to excavate. Instagram accounts like @Race_Women attempt to make these forgotten histories more accessible by posting archival photos and materials that disrupt the notion that the histories that matter are solely about White men.
Founded in 2016 by Brooklyn nonfiction writer and editor Maya Millett, 34, Race_Women was born out of anger at not being taught that Black women had been instrumental and active in the fight for racial equality in the 1800s and early 1900s. Millett came across this erasure when working on a research project about a collection hand-drawn statistical charts by W.E.B. Du Bois and his students at…
