Happy Black History Month and Upcoming Queer Legacies Project
Explore TFI Digital Archive Black History Month Selections and learn about the Queer Legacies Project, happening March 10, March 17, March 24, and March 31 at the Edie Windsor SAGE Center in NYC.
Happy Black History Month
Happy Black History Month from TFI! As an organization documenting and uplifting feminist culture, highlighting contributions from Black feminists is essential to infilling and creating an accurate, inclusive cultural record. Below is a thoughtfully curated list of incredible organizations, archival collections, and cultural projects preserving Black feminist history to explore, in addition to Black History Month selections from the TFI Digital Archive.
TFI Digital Archive: Black History Month Selections
Dindga McCannon Capsule Collection
Dindga McCannon, A Week in the Life of A Black Woman Artist, 2000s.
Copyright held by Dindga McCannon; digitized through a partnership with The Feminist Institute, 2023.
See record.
The Dindga McCannon Capsule Collection includes ephemera, photographs, and artworks from the artist’s decades-long career and activism. McCannon was born and raised in Harlem, New York City. She retells the stories and histories of Black women through her mixed-media fiber practice. In the early 1960s, she participated in several activist groups, leading her to join the preeminent Weusi Artist Collective, a group that supported and gave voice to Black artists, allowing them to express and exhibit their ideas freely. Together with Faith Ringgold and Kay Brown, McCannon later formed Where We At, pioneering a new form of community-based arts education.
Salsa Soul Sisters
Salsa Soul Sisters Card, exact date unknown.
Image courtesy of Cassandra Grant. Copyright held Addresses Project; ingested into the TFI Digital Archive through a partnership between The Feminist Institute and Addresses Project, 2022
See record.
The Salsa Soul Sisters is the oldest Black lesbian organization in the United States, operating in New York City from 1974 to 1993. The group emerged from the Gay Activists Alliance, where members formed the Black Lesbian Caucus. The Caucus reconfigured itself as Salsa Soul Sisters, Third World Wimmin Inc. During its active years, the group participated in protests, demonstrations, and community organizing, while meeting weekly to discuss political and social issues. The group regularly hosted guest speakers, such as Audre Lorde, Betty Powell, Pat Parker, and Barbara Smith. To learn more about Salsa Soul Sisters, check out Cassandra Grant’s Oral History Transcript in the Addresses Project Collection in the TFI Digital Archive.
Queer Legacies Project with The American LGBTQ+ Museum and SAGE
Ephemera courtesy of Cassandra Grant, Lisa Cannistraci, and Wanda Acosta. The Addresses Project is New York City-based archive of lesbian and queer space and memory, created by Gwen Shockey in collaboration with Riya Lerner.
See Addresses Project collection
Queer Legacies Project (QLP) is an in-person workshop series developed by the American LGBTQ+ Museum in partnership with The Feminist Institute and SAGE, a service and advocacy organization for LGBTQ+ elders with centers in the Bronx, Harlem, Chelsea, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. QLP aims to illuminate the personal histories and ephemera of NYC’s LGBTQ+ elders through facilitated archiving workshops. The project will convene LGBTQ+ elders to emphasize the importance of their personal archives and stories within the greater narrative arc of LGBTQ+ history in the U.S. These workshops will help participants preserve their personal archives for future generations by cataloging the stories and ephemera that reflect the valuable histories of their lives.
The workshop will be held in person at the Edie Windsor SAGE Center on March 10, March 17, March 24, and March 31 from 1-4 pm. For our interested 60+ readers, SAGE membership is highly encouraged for all archiving workshop participants. We will have staff on hand to help you sign up on-site if preferred.
Queer Legacies Project Guest Archivists
Stephanie Alvarado (they/she) is a queer disabled antidisciplinary archivist, artist, poet, and creator of Fotos y Recuerdos, a community photo archive workshop and collective memory experience hosted on public parkland and virtual spaces founded in The Bronx, NY. Alvarado currently serves on the board of The Literary Freedom Project, is a co-curator and archivist for The Kathleen Cleaver Family Archive and leads the Disability Artistry Initiative at BRIC Arts Media Center.
Jessica C. Neal (Jes–they/them) is a millennial archivist, curator, and oral historian from Mobile, AL, whose work centers on preserving and documenting Black and brown histories through Vanguard Archives Consulting. Passionate about documenting Black life and culture, especially in the arts, literature, LGBTQ+ communities, the U.S. South, and social movements, Jes contributes to various archives and arts initiatives, spanning from community archives to institutional collections. Committed to equity and collaboration, they advocate for post-custodial models to ensure marginalized voices are historically represented. Recognizing the power of archives and storytelling for self-documentation, intergenerational communication, and legacy-making, Jes’ work currently focuses on the development and sustainability of community, personal, family, and organizational archives.
Christopher Stahling. I am a witness. Harlem, native, visual artist, life coach, chef, and a passionate advocate for all things Black and queer. Christopher comes from a legacy of community workers who fiercely protect, share, and illuminate Black life. Christopher is a graduate of City College, CUNY, with a degree in Psychology and minor in Studio Art. With his extensive background as an employee and volunteer of the Schomburg Center, Christopher has honed his skills and continues to do archiving work with his oral history archive project; Everybody Needs A Witness: In The Life Archive 2.0. As a mental health professional, Christopher empowers people to consistently ask probing questions about how and why, in order to gain deeper insight. Christopher is committed to contributing to the legacy of archiving Black LGBTQ folks because he believes that there must be evidence of how we lived, loved, and found joy so that our stories won’t be reduced to a footnote. If in this life, we don’t bear witness to each other’s light, then who will.
Steven G. Fullwood is an archivist, writer, and editor. He is the co-director of the Nomadic Archivists Project, an initiative that partners with organizations, institutions, and individuals to establish, preserve, and enhance collections that explore the African Diasporic experience. Fullwood also serves as the coordinator of Marking Time, Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, curated by Dr. Nicole R. Fleetwood. He is the former assistant curator of the Manuscripts, Archives & Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Fullwood’s published works include Black Gay Genius: Answering Joseph Beam’s Call (co-edited with Charles Stephens, 2014) and Carry the Word: A Bibliography of Black LGBTQ Books (co-edited with Lisa C. Moore, 2007). His latest publication, Living and Sustaining a Creative Life: Writing (co-edited with Seph Rodney, 2025), features thirty-two chapters where writers share their insights, offering pathways for others to follow. They delve into how they balance multiple roles, the choices they made, the challenges they faced, and the successes they achieved.
Allison Elliott is an archivist and queer historian with a deep commitment to exploring the archive as a dynamic source of creative material and a platform for information activism. She currently serves as the Archives and Programs Manager at The Feminist Institute, where she oversees content partnerships, curates digital collections, and spearheads TFI’s annual Pop-Up Memory Lab. To date, the Memory Lab has digitized over 2,500 materials, supporting nearly 75 feminist artists, activists, and media-makers. Within this initiative, Allison has organized four workshops on topics ranging from personal digital archiving and tape digitization to the ethics of digitization and building feminist legacies. The 2024 Memory Lab introduced a new Creative Archival Works Showcase, featuring four short films that incorporated archival materials into their narratives. In addition, Allison has contributed to the re-presentation of The Dyke Show with Joan E. Biren, conducting essential release work. Allison’s research interests span feminist and queer information networks and activism, feminist citationality, HIV/AIDS activism, and community archives.
Now this is peak intersectionality 🙌🏽🙌🏽