Ghana’s cultural records in diaspora: perspectives from papers held at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York

Abstract

This paper examines two manuscript collections housed at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City which were created in Ghana by two African-Americans during the heady post-independence days there. These archival collections offer unparalleled views into the newly independent nation’s strides to fulfil its socioeconomic agenda; sadly, these are perspectives generally unavailable to the research community within Ghana for a number of reasons. Thus, the paper considers some questions regarding access to cultural patrimony raised by these papers and, as such, seeks to contribute to the debate on the repatriation of cultural records, be they artifacts, artworks or archives, and to offer other paradigms through which we might analyse the issues involved. Using these collections, the paper shows how the interconnections between continental and diasporic Africans that played out in the independence era complicate the notions of cultural patrimony and rights of ownership that often arise during debates on repatriating cultural records. As such, the paper contends that for archives created in diaspora, often out of multiple locations and cultural contexts, the questions of ownership and patrimony are not easily answered.

Keywords: Migrated Archives; Mutual Cultural Heritage; Diaspora; Ghana; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture