Ask A D.C. Native: How do we document this moment?

Dr. Izetta Autumn Mobley has always been fascinated by history and the materials and artifacts that accompany it. “I was that kid who was up in the photo albums looking through black and white photographs and trying to figure out ‘where is this in the city?’ and ‘what does this represent?’” she tells me in a recent interview. 

Unsurprisingly, she grew up to be a historian who’s taken on roles such as museum curator, tour guide, and archivist. Her work examines visual culture, art history, medical history, and disability studies, all through the lens of gender, race, and class.

“One of the things that's critical to my work is that I want to look — as we would say — at the receipts. So what is in the archive? What primary documentation, meaning documentation from the period, do we have that explains what was happening during a particular time?” says Mobley, a fifth-generation Washingtonian and founder of The Site Unseen, where she guides tours in D.C. focused on submerged, neglected, or under-examined history and culture. 

As our hometown faces a heightened police presence and threats to home rule, I thought of no better person to offer a primer on how D.C. residents can document a time that will undoubtedly go down in history books. The issue, of course, is how factual the retelling will be. 

Social media is already flooded with videos and images of D.C. streets since hundreds of federal law enforcement officers and the National Guard descended on the city two weeks ago. These visuals are powerful tools. “Photographs really do tell an incredible story and moment in history. I think almost all of us can think of a photograph that is seared in our memory because of its power,” Mobley says. And, as seen in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, recording police misconduct can also be crucial in tracking police use of force and as evidence in criminal lawsuits. 

For posterity’s sake, there are also other effective ways to document this time — more personal, and even seemingly mundane ways of chronicling the moment. And there are ethical considerations that should guide our process. 

Generally, historians say “if it happened less than 50 years ago, it's not history yet, because you can't contextualize it. You can't look at the impacts,” explains Mobley. So then, how do we prepare for that far into the future, even in the midst of what’s happening here and now? During our conversation, we get into all of this and more, hoping to answer the urgent question: how do D.C. residents document this moment in history? 

Below is a transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

As a D.C. native and as a historian, how does it feel to witness another moment where the city's autonomy is under threat?

It is terrifying. I am frightened for my neighbors, I'm frightened for my friends, I'm frightened for my colleagues. It is a very frightening time. 

And I think precisely because it is frightening, it requires us to be courageous and clear about our principles, our ethics, and our commitments. This is a time when it's really important to document — and documenting doesn't have to be this grand gesture where you're using the Dewey Decimal System or the Library of Congress cataloging system — we can document in small, important ways that help us process what's happening. 

How does documentation from everyday people differ – or add to — official records kept by the government or the media?

So in D.C, of course, we house these two entities that are essentially responsible for collecting and documenting the official history and narrative — the National Archives and the Library of Congress. They have specific mandates about what they are supposed to collect, particularly around laws, presidential information, etc. And that's critical and important.

And then there's this other layer of documentation, where if you go to historical societies or libraries, [you’ll find] people writing journals and just talking about their daily lives. And it may be hard to believe, but that actually is very rich. 

Sometimes you'll have the official record and then you'll have people talking about how they were impacted by it — either through an oral history or a journal, or maybe they keep their pink slip or the letter that says they're no longer a federal employee. That rounds out our history and really helps historians to understand the human impact of a historical moment. 

So I think about documenting our daily lives, particularly if you are from a marginalized group, as a really critical aspect of maintaining our humanity, but also of resisting our erasure.

And that’s particularly true in cases where the government's official narrative does not match what is actually happening. 

So, in this moment in D.C., with the National Guard presence and heavy policing of our streets, what should residents capture? And what are some objects they should hold on to? 

I think about photographing the folks who are in law enforcement and seeing them do their work. I think that becomes very important in terms of who says what about what the work was. 

I've seen a lot of posters out and about and graffiti. So taking pictures of that graffiti. If people are thinking about going to town halls or ANCs in their community … the information or flyers they get about what it means to keep themselves safe. 

And then maybe you might see something that's like a real difference [in city life]. So I have noticed that some restaurants in my neighborhood and across the city are posting signs that say we're closed because of staff shortages, because everyone is calling out in concern of their safety. And that might not seem directly related to what's going on, but it's certainly reflective of the times. So, capturing a photograph of that could be really important to see how this is impacting people in their daily lives. 

I also think oral histories, you know, talk to people. We do have this technology that makes it easy to record. So ask people what they're noticing, what they observe, what they think about what's going on. Because for historians, 50 and 75 years from now, that gives them a sense of what people were actually thinking and saying — not just people in the highest levels of power or people who are constantly documented, but what did the person on the bus say about what they were seeing. 

How do ethics play a role in documentation? 

So, there are two museum scholars — Black women who I absolutely adore their work — [Tonia] Sutherland and [Zakiya] Collier. They talk about what is a Black, liberatory archival practice. They get into things like, are you respectful with the material, are you mindful of the moment that you are capturing, are you preserving a moment of deep trauma, and then what is your responsibility around that moment of deep trauma? Are you thinking about this as a practice of liberation, or are we thinking about a simple spectacle? 

So I think being ethical is things like, if I take this image of a protest and people are doing direct action and you can see everybody's face and people are being identified, do I post that immediately to social media? Is that ethical and responsible and safe for those people?

It isn’t that we don't document it, especially in this age where part of the documentation is about being able to say what happened when there are multiple versions of what happened. It’s to say be very mindful about where and how that gets posted, and to be very thoughtful and ethical about that.

How can groups and communities like churches, schools, neighborhoods, and families collectively capture these moments and keep records? 

Churches and community organizations have kept really extensive records. A lot of historians — particularly historians of African American history — will go to church records because there will be a genealogist who's able to piece back that history.

So I think it’s really important to teach those skills and carry them on to a new generation. How do I do this digitally? But also, how do I go look this up on a map or deep back in the filing system … the hard skills of being with a bunch of papers and trying to figure out how to organize them.

Also, you never know what your family has. I think my grandmother kept every single funeral program from every funeral she ever went to. And that really matters because you can start to see that Black people are buried in different places. And you can understand the desegregation of cemeteries. We don't think about those things, but those are part of how we collect and document.

How do people preserve these objects? And do they just hold on to them for 50 years until a museum is like, ‘hey, we're collecting stuff now’? 

Well, you know, the National Museum of African American History and Culture did a call for people to bring in their objects. And in fact, sometimes people will go up into the attic, and there is a Green Book or some other object that’s there. So yeah, sometimes people have this stuff, and you don't even know until you're cleaning up the house.

If you have lots of paper, there's an archival principle to have lots of different copies. So you might have the physical copy, scan it, put it on a hard drive, but also put it on the cloud … and maybe you also take a photograph of it. Lots of copies in many different places to protect it. 

Then, we all know that paper can attract all types of different creatures, so being mindful of how you preserve the paper, making sure that it's in a place that's not damp … that it's boxed up and protected really well.

If you're doing photographs, I know for most of us it's all digital. So have it on your phone, but maybe upload it to the cloud and hard drive, and then print images out as well. And make sure that photographs are in a place that isn't getting direct sunlight or direct heat and that they're properly covered. So you can get a light box or storage box and put those in there.

But you'd be amazed also … like sometimes our elders have just stored stuff in their attics, and amazingly it survived. Or people are just storing things in file cabinets, and amazingly, it survives. So we don't always have to be super precious with the object, but we should always be careful and mindful of it … like are you getting your hand oils all over it, are you spilling coffee on it? Those are different kinds of things to think about [in terms of] preservation.

How do you think future historians will look back on this moment in D.C.?

In 50 to 75 years, if we are allowed to be honest about history, I think there's going to be a lot of people asking, ‘How did this happen?’ and really trying to understand the apparatus that made this happen. I think people will be doing a lot of research about the connection between COVID as a mass disabling event and people's inability to check in to the political moment. I think people will be trying to write a great deal about what is the experiment of democracy.

But we're in a moment where museums are going “under review” about slavery by people who have no expertise in said slavery. So there's a real question about whether historians will be able to tell the truth, which is why us being citizen documentarians of our lives actually matters. Otherwise, it's very easy to erase what the impact was.