TCNJ

33 WINTER 2026 so that they could be digitized. Tanks explained the inherent subjectivity in the language archivists use to describe and categorize objects. This can be particularly true when the materials are connected to complicated and contested histories. "Archivists have a lot of power over how the story of an artifact gets to be told," says Riley, who learned how to record data about each item that would best preserve the full truth of the collection. Debra Schiff, TCNJ's archivist, also pitched in. She arranged a series of five workshops to teach Riley how archives are organized, how to care for and catalog artifacts for long-term preservation, and how researchers might someday use the archive she was helping to develop. With Jaksch, Riley listened to music, watched films, and read about the history that gave context to the items that they were discovering in the boxes — a woven Zulu hat; the cap and badge of a South African police officer; anti-Apartheid issues of DC Comics; and countless postcards, maps, photographs, books, and slides that shed light on a time in history. Jaksch was right to suggest that it would be an emotional journey. Much of the collection reflected the trage- dies of Apartheid and its aftermath: decades-old cassette tapes featuring interviews with women who were imprisoned and tortured during Apartheid and reproductions of an iconic photo from the Soweto uprising, in which 18-year-old Mbuyisa Makhubo carried 12-year- old Hector Pieterson, shot by police, in his arms. MORE THAN 20 YEARS' WORTH OF MATERIALS WERE STREWN ACROSS STORAGE UNITS IN MULTIPLE STATES AND WERE BOUND FOR THE LANDFILL. A lot of the materials really speak to resilience and resistance, not just trauma," Jaksch says. "Although the trauma exists, too." EVEN IN SEEMINGLY INNOCUOUS OBJECTS, Riley found layers of meaning. A princess doll made her question its implications for South African girlhood. A small wooden model of a Soweto house revealed to Riley the significance of careful and considerate archival work. At face value, the figurine was once available for purchase at the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, suggesting it may have been treated as a decorative souvenir or keepsake. But houses like this one were used to relocate Black families displaced by the Apartheid govern- ment, making it both a home and an embodiment of their pain, as Riley described in the details she wrote to help future researchers properly understand the object. facing page: Archival items include a figurine that represents housing injustice and pins that reveal how activism spreads. below: South African police badges

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