Digital and Physical Archives

Digital and Physical Archives

The decades of the 1970s and 1980s are often dismissed, even though it was a time transformed by the exuberance of women’s movements; the floodgates of cultural expression opened by lesbian/gay movements; the urgent responses to violations of human rights, international social justice, and nuclear madness, and the continuities of African-American civil rights movements and labor movements of earlier decades.

Over the years, we maintained an archival record that filled file cabinets with correspondence, contracts, and press clippings; promotional materials representing hundreds of cultural events; rolls of posters from events in Japan, Mexico, Kentucky, and California; video and audio recordings of performances, and behind-the-scenes network building.

Unfortunately, the facility where our holdings were kept was not secure and the material was sold without the consent or knowledge of any Roadwork representative. This precious archive is now gone and possibly destroyed. Twenty years of irreplaceable cultural artifacts documenting unique musical performances, hard-won coalitions, and local organizing may be lost forever.

The lack of archival records leaves the experience of our communities open to distortion in, or even deletion from, the historical record.

Although we have lost a vast amount of artifacts, we are moved by the amount of material that people have contributed to help rebuild our collection.