Award-Winning Historian Erika Lee on the Closure of the National Archives facilities in San Francisco and Chicago

Erika Lee is the Bae Family Professor of History at Harvard University. She researches and teaches the histories of the United States, with emphases on immigration and Asian American history and the histories of race, xenophobia, law, gender, and society. The journal California History has just published her essay discussing the proposed closure and the impact this will have on American history.

“I know what it is like to try to research and write histories of immigration and race without these records and without the expertise of professional NARA archivists… [At the National Archives at San Francisco,] I spent […] several years researching and writing what would become my dissertation and first book. And I never really left. All my subsequent projects have heavily relied on research conducted at NARA centers in Washington, DC, College Park, MD, New York City, Seattle, and especially San Francisco. The scholarship produced by my colleagues, students, and myself over the past three decades has depended on full access to NARA holdings and has had a wide-reaching impact: award-winning books and articles, documentary films, community-based archives, and public history initiatives. We have contributed to the National Historic Landmark designation of the Angel Island Immigration Station and consulted on exhibitions, including the Attachments exhibit at the National Archives in Washington, DC, and uncovered personal histories—including my grandparents’ wedding photograph, now featured on NARA’s website—and brought them into the public record.”

Read Lee’s essay Cutting Off History at its Roots: The Plan to Close the National Archives Center in San Francisco.
(Posted in full with permission of the author)