A publication co-edited by Skyla Hearn, Sarah Ross, and Tempestt Hazel with introduction by Mariame Kaba. Designed by Neta Bomani. Published by Sojourners for Justice Press.
March 2021

[Link to online publication]

Editors’ Note:

“This collection of essays, interviews, poetry, art and archives honors and reflects the immense influence Dr. Margaret T. G. Burroughs had on the political and cultural life of Chicago and the lives of people she met. Dr. Burroughs was cut like a diamond, each facet of her work shaped another. She was an educator, community organizer, activist, artist, poet, historian and she built some of the city’s great, lasting institutions. A special section of this booklet includes an Unfurling. This is a social practice introduced to this project by Skyla Hearn whereby people, as liberatory memory workers, pull materials from existing archives and share what those materials mean to them. In this iteration, we pulled from existing archives, gathered new materials and also created new works to be entered into the archive of Dr. Burroughs. In this way, this collection iterates the impact of Dr. Burroughs and her politics of culture, care, freedom and love for Black people.” —Skyla Hearn, Sarah Ross, and Tempestt Hazel

From my essay “Sincerely Yours: Letters To and From Dr. Margaret T. G. Burroughs”:

”This letter also exists alongside thousands of letters that Dr. Burroughs wrote to colleagues, peers, friends, students, pen pals, and challengers throughout her lifetime, all of which live quietly nestled in archives and collections that we know and and others that we know nothing about. Many of the writings clearly demonstrate the power of the messages she penned and illuminate the less visible work that happened in the spaces around and within her roles as a mother, wife, educator, painter, sculptor, printmaker, poet, author, institution-builder, and abolitionist (as described by her former students). 

I’m not in a position to offer any conclusive thoughts around the ways in which correspondence has changed between then and now. I can’t speak to anything other than my own experience of how our communication behaviors have shifted with the eavesdropping or insertion of an onlooker through the CC or BCC of our emails. Or to draw connections between the residuals of handwritten and typewritten correspondence that show up in how we email, text, or DM. Or how letters operate at a different pace than email—how they are slower and, in many ways, the stakes are higher as a result. Or how you have to think more deeply about your words as you write them and can’t correct or change your mind as easily without that crossing-out being visible to the receiver—or your being forced to start all over again.

What I can speak to is how reading back through Dr. Burroughs’s letters reminds me that this form of communication warrants and makes way for an exceptional kind of intimacy, consideration, and care. It offers space for the hand and the heart to be discernible, whether the words on the page are sharp or soft. While we don’t hear about it nearly as much as her art, poetry, or institution-building, Dr. Burroughs’ letters are part of her care practice and speak to a tradition of letter-writing being used to advocate for or connect to people who are far from us in thought, physical distance, or due to the isolating tactics of carceral systems.”