‘The Future Has a Past’: On Information, Memory, and the Black Feminist Hereafter

This chapter uncovers the lives and archival traces of two largely unknown Black women librarians, Margaret Reynolds Hunton and Emma Ophelia Bryant Lewis, situating their professional presence within the framework of the Black feminist hereafter. Using a methodological blend of evidence-inquiry and analysis (EIA) and descriptive–analytical–narrative (DAN) construction, the study reveals how minoritized records, such as yearbook entries, wedding invitations, postcards, and photographs, carry deep informational, mnemonic, and spiritual value. Rather than focusing on exclusion or lack, the work reorients information history toward abundance by centering personal artifacts as portals into community knowledge, relational labor, and affective legacy. Framing the archival encounter as a spiritual and epistemological journey, the chapter positions these women not as historical footnotes but as “ghosts” whose presence disrupts dominant narratives of library history. The term “Black feminist hereafter” is conceptualized as an orientation toward care, voice, memory, and communal continuity, drawing upon the theoretical contributions of bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins, and others. Ultimately, the project demonstrates how Black women’s informational lives, though often obscured, are enduring, radiant, and foundational to reimagining both the archival record and the future of library and information studies (LIS).