Background
The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. is known as one of the largest libraries in the world, containing approximately 173 million items. Academic libraries in the United States generally use the Library of Congress Classification System (LC) to organize their collections. Call numbers based on LC include both a classification number (class number) and a cutter number. The classification number refers to the subject of the book. If a single cutter number is used, the cutter number refers to the main entry of the work (the author or, if title main entry is used, the title). If there are two cutters, the first cutter is used to bring out a more precise aspect of the subject and the second cutter usually refers to the main entry of the work. - Yale Library
As the field of Library and Information Science becomes increasingly diverse critiques surrounding past and present LC organization practices have grown increasingly prominent, with librarians of marginalized identities leading efforts to rename classifications and cutters that reinforce discriminatory practices and oppressive structures.
In February 2021 Deborah Thomas proposed a change to the Library of Congress in cutter number from PN1995.9.N4 to PN1995.9.B585. The N4 category represented the outdated term negro, which Thomas proposed be changed to B585, or Black. The Library of Congress accepted the proposal, and made the change in summer of that year.
The Project
At Barnard Library, cataloguers underwent a reclassification process which entailed manually identifying and renaming the .N cutter in our own stacks to “.B” or “.A” for “Black or African American.” Libraries, often heralded for their capacity for information accessibility and community outreach, are often falsely characterizes as spaces that are inherently neutral or should always strive to be. However, libraries do not exist in vacuums, and are just as susceptible to oppressive hegemonic standards that inform any other institution, including the university itself. Students navigating Barnard Library are encouraged to view the library as a site of critique in and of itself. In undertaking this process, Barnard Library seeks to highlight how the first step to moving through the library stacks, is to call attention to the racist classification system that organizes them.
Pejoratives Signifying Property
From the initiation of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the English language has been weaponized against Black as a tool of dehumanization. Scientific racism created new language to support racial categorization and bioessentialism, classifying Africans as inherently barbaric and more akin to animals or an archaic, not quite human species wholly distinct from "civilized" European society. In doing so, Europeans manufactured consent for the mass trafficking, enslavement, and torture of millions of Africans, attempting to solidify their status as mere property by estranging them from their own humanity. The N-word, normalized throughout this era, persisted beyond the abolition of slavery, though cultural shifts meant that the term was now largely considered a perjorative term. Still, the term has been and continues to be used as a tool of dehumanization to justify acts of violence against Black people.
"Colored" Signifying Segregation
With perjoratives like the N-word rightfully becoming viewed as such during the early 20th century, the term colored became the more politically correct identifier to use. From the late 19th to early 20th century, Black people would refer to themselves as colored, with many freedmen adopting the term as a source of pride in their capacity to define themselves on their own terms. Early civil rights organizations, such as the NAACP, or National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (founded in 1901), included the term in their title. However, the term would also come to signify the horrors of the post-slavery Jim Crow era in the United States. During this time, colored acted as a marker of segregation, featured on buses, school buildings, water fountains, establishment entrances, and practically every facet of public life.
Self-Identification Through "Negro"
Alongside colored arose the term negro, which became the most common term for self-identification within the Black community. The term was largely accepted by those who fell under its classification, with Black activists like W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington even promoting its usage. Langston Hughes would famously claim in his 1925 essay, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain": “Why should I want to be white, I am a negro – and beautiful.” Unlike prior labels, both colored and negro had the capacity to be claimed by Black people as a source of pride—the latter more so than the former. By the 1940s, there were no new organizations that included colored in their title, suggesting that negro emerged as the preferred term between the two.
"black" and Radical Movements
With the rise of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, some notable African-American figures within the movement in the United States, particularly Malcolm X, began to reject negro outright, deeming it another reminder of enslavement and systemic discrimination not much different from colored and prior racial epithets. Black, previously perceived as offensive, was reclaimed by radicals within the movement, birthing popular slogans such as Black Power, Black is Beautiful, and I'm Black and I'm Proud. The mainstream adoption of black amongst the Black community coincided with a celebration of Afrocentric beauty, fashion, and aesthetics.
"African-American" and Other Ethnic Categorizations
In the 1980's there was somewhat of a turn towards African-American, considered by some to be more politically correct than black. In recent years, critiques have emerged which take issue with the term being used as a blanket statement which inaccurately describes Black people from across the Diaspora who may not be from the United States. Variations of the term, such as Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latino, etc., have become increasingly popular to accommodate various Black ethnic groups throughout the diaspora.
Back to "Black"
Alongside African-American and its variations, Black has remained the most popular contemporary racial signifier for Afro-diasporic people within the US. In recent years, there has been a push to capitalize the B in Black, distinguishing the racial group from the color.
In her writing, Zora Neale Hurston frequently contends with formulating a sense of self through a racialized lens. In her famous essay, “What It Feels To Be Colored Me”, Hurston describes this process as deeply personal and informed by her own lived experiences. Hurston lived during the period of US history when the terms colored and negro were most commonly used to describe Black people. However, Zora had not always perceived herself through the lens of such terminology. In her essay, she recounts her childhood, where growing up in the all-Black Eatonville meant she never perceived herself as colored because race never served as a factor of differentiation between herself and her community. It wasn’t until she navigated predominantly white spaces, including Barnard’s campus, that she understood herself as “colored” and was “made to feel her race”. Notably though, Hurston proclaims that she does not see herself as “tragically colored”. She rejects any connotation between the label and any sense of racial shame, rather choosing to perceive the hypervisibility that comes with coloredness as an advantage. To Hurston, coloredness connotes a vast expanse of possibility, unburdened by the spectre of violence that she suggests haunts white Americans.
In her literary work, particularly that which focused on rural Black communities in the South, Hurston makes use of several markers of identity, both those considered politically correct at the time, as well as those considered outdated and offensive. Hurston, committed to accurately reflecting the vernacular of the community she grew up in, was committed to accurately portraying how Black Southerners talked to and about each other, both in terms of the language they used, and the cadence of their speech. This is reflected in Hurston’s dialogue, which features phonetic spelling and heavy usage of regional slang and idioms. Though many of her Black literary peers of the North denounced her writing as a result, Zora remained unapologetic, refusing to devalue authentic Black southern culture for the sake of respectability. In Hurston’s steadfast commitment to empowerment in her own terms above all, we can observe the historical phenomenon of reclamation - wherein an individual or group twists language and narratives originally meant to dehumanize, and makes them serve the needs of the individual or group instead.