ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

WE WOULD LIKE TO THANK Toni Cade Bambara, for her words, works, and incredible legacy, through which we gain tremendous inspiration. Her daughter, Karma Bambara Smith, has generously supported this project from the moment we appeared in Atlanta to ask for her blessings.

In July 2016, we made our first trip to Bambara’s archives at Spelman College, and in March 2017, we returned to present our findings at the 16th annual Toni Cade Bambara Conference organized by Dr. Bahati Kuumba. The conference theme, “Thinking Deep, Talking Loud and Acting Up,” urged participants to “extend Toni Cade Bambara’s legacy of building community, developing revolutionary consciousness and forging social justice action.” [1] Like pages that flew out from The Black Woman; Gorilla, My Love; The Salt Eaters; and other texts by Bambara, we encountered Black and Brown, genderqueer, and Trans scholars and organizers—from inside and outside of schools—who combined archival research with healing methods, and community storytelling with movement campaigns. Students from the Toni Cade Bambara Scholars/Writers/Activists Program hosted speak-outs and workshops, as elders from Bambara’s collaborative circles nodded approval at the beautifully directional ruckus. Syrian author, poet, and academic Mohja Kahf and her daughter, Banah, were the keynote speakers at the conference. With their messages on the necessity to fuse activism, self-care, and love, and their generous, fiery spirits, these women were embodied examples of Bambara’s legacy. Louis Massiah, Founder and Executive Director of the Philadelphia-based Scribe Video Center, shared an early version of his documentary, “The TCB School of Organizing,” at the event. Karma gracefully attended and listened to presentations throughout the weekend, indulging us in our immoderate gratitude for her mother’s lifelong contributions.

Holly Smith and Kassandra Ware of the Spelman College Archives have set the standard for an archival experience to be both intellectually illuminating and communally affirming. Archives can sometimes be cold, clinical, institutionalizing places. Right away, it was clear that we were dealing with something entirely different. Archivist-activists Smith and Ware run the Spelman archives with warmth, generosity, and radical fire. One of the most memorable moments of our visits was when a discussion on the current political climate led to a spirited chant of “Black Lives Matter!” It felt like a revolutionary healing act, akin to how Bambara recognized collective inquiry, direct action, and wellness as symbiotic. Thanks to Dana Pride Jones—a force to be reckoned with—who runs the Women’s Research and Resource Center at Spelman College. It is a special place—staffed by people who are truly carrying Toni Cade Bambara’s legacy forward. Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall, thank you for your gracious welcome and wonderful fellowship. At the City College of New York’s Cohen Library, Sydney Van Nort and her team helped us track down some of these elusive City College materials. We also thank the supportive staff of the Radcliffe Institute’s Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, where we found more of these City College materials in Adrienne Rich’s archives.

Conor is also grateful to the 2016-2017 Scholars-in-Residence seminar at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture for the invaluable feedback on earlier drafts and research of this work. Profound gratitude to the Lost & Found pedagogy crew at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Together we nourished a dream over the last two years to develop chapbook projects on the teaching legacies of Toni Cade Bambara, June Jordan, and Audre Lorde, after some of us created a 2013 chapbook of Adrienne Rich’s teaching materials from the City College of New York. After writing retreats, public dialogues, performances, conference calls, one-on-ones, and multiply enwoven drafts, we are proud to circulate these Black feminists’ visionary practices of radical learning that emerged from the university and city in which we all learn, work, and struggle. Immeasurable thanks to Miriam Atkin, for extending a calm, soothing presence and grounding feedback; Iemanjá Brown, for your camaraderie and consistency, and the helpful dose of composition salve from the woods; Talia Shalev, for patiently asserting the poetic power of words to change worlds; and Lauren Bailey, who believed in this project from the beginning. erica kaufman, Lara Rodriguez, Wendy Tronrud, and Kyle Waugh were essential to the archival transcriptions, and their excitement about their contents re-energized our more weary moments.

Ammiel Alcalay, creator and general editor of Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative has been a mentor, guide, friend, and comrade throughout our graduate school experiences. We are so grateful to know him and to take part in a wonderful collaborative project that, slowly and surely, can revive counter-cultural works and relationships from the 20th century into our own moment. At the Center for the Humanities—the hardest working epicenter of ideas, actions, and interventions in the Graduate Center—these present and past magicians gracefully helped us conjure the pages you hold: Kendra Sullivan, Stephon Lawrence, Kate Tarlow Morgan, Sampson Starkweather, Alisa Besher, Jordan Lord, Shea’la Finch, and Aoibheann Sweeney.

We thank you all for your gracious support and collaboration

[1] These words are taken from conference organizer Dr. Bahati Kuumba’s Thank You email to participants.