Archives are an accumulation of stories and artifacts taken from a period of time, and can affect the “history, memory, and identity” of that period (Carter 221). If the archives are fully representative, they may even be able to “address past injustices and [can be] fill[ed] … with a polyphony of voices” (Carter 233). The article The Hundreds of Life Stories Found in Coroner’s Reports From the 19th-Century South by Rebecca Onion introduces a “digital history site.. [that]  holds 1,582 digitized coroner’s reports from six counties in 19th-century South Carolina” (Onion). In this article Onion brings to light an extraordinary example of an African-American woman, a possible slave, who was murdered for defending a young boy who was being physically harmed. The most enraging and disappointing part of this account, in my opinion, was that, in the end, the man who bludgeoned the woman, physically harmed and possibly emotionally scarred the young boy was let go because the jury decided that the murderous actions were “what most men would have done in such a case” (Onion). Onion briefly mentions at the beginning of the article that those in charge of the case against the man’s reprehensible acts were “not interested…  in justice… they were interested in something more supple—a satisfactory conclusion.” This opinion included in the archive aligns with Rodney Carter’s main point “that archives are spaces of power … the power to allow voices to be heard”(16). In view of this case and its outcome, I claim that it is necessary to consider the issue which both Carter and Onion recognize, that those in power control not only the outcomes of some situations, but also what events and histories are to be recounted pertaining to them. In the case of the African-American woman, the prevailing social environment at the time affected the outcome of her killer’s trial and public opinion of her,  while the archive provided a revised view of the situation, apart from prejudices that had once existed. The voice of this woman and the events that occurred around her death were effectively silenced at the time because this brutality was made to seem reasonable and acceptable in the prevailing social context; but as the documents were exposed to a wider audience beyond such a context,the wrongdoings of those in charge, and therefore responsible for justice, were exposed. I would like to argue that the curator of this archive, Stephen Berry, chose to create this archive to illustrate the struggles of marginalized people and bring the plight of such people who have suffered wrongdoings to light, thus bringing justice to those who were left with no defenses after their passing and were subsequently forgotten with time (Carter 217). Stephen Berry found what Carter calls a “gap” which, through the use of archives, can be filled to give mistreated and forgotten people who would have been erased out of history and memory “a voice” and influence how groups of people are remembered (Carter 216-17). Onion only focuses on this one murder case in his article; however, there are thousands of other stories that are just as important to explore and analyze, potentially leading to fundamental shifts in understanding of the past.

Works Cited

Carter, Rodney. Archivaria: Of Things Said and Unsaid: Power, Archival Silences, and Power in

Silence. Association of Canadian Archivists, 04/01/2006. Web. 26 Feb. 2017.

Onion, Rebecca. “The Hundreds of Life Stories Found in Coroner’s Reports From the

19th-Century South.” Slate Magazine. N.p., 19 Feb. 2016. Web. 25 Feb. 2017.

<http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2016/02/19/history_of_the_19th_century_south_

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