The Files Behind Our Books: Why the National Archives Closures Should Worry Every History Reader
What's at Stake With the National Archives Closures
The National Archives has been in the headlines all summer, as historians, archivists, and politicians fight over what gets preserved, what gets access, and who gets to tell the story.
Multiple news outlets have reported on the closure of National Archives branches in Illinois and California, and the removal of records from its Seattle branch. The closures have raised alarm among historians and researchers nationwide, who warn they dramatically restrict access to historical research — at the California branch alone, there are 100,000 cubic feet of documents, many of which have never been digitized.
It's easy to read that as an abstraction: cubic feet, branch closures, a policy fight in Washington. So we want to make it concrete: these branches are critical repositories of American history, holding everything from immigration and naturalization records to land grants, public health records, and tribal histories. Documents and archives that make up the raw material our authors have spent years turning into the books on your shelf.
Here's what's actually inside three of the branches now in the headlines, and what history could get harder to reach if the doors close.
San Francisco: Alcatraz, and the case that challenged incarceration
The San Francisco branch holds records created by federal agencies and courts across California, Hawaii, Nevada, and U.S. territories in the Pacific. Its holdings include the motion to vacate Fred Korematsu's conviction — the case that challenged the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II — along with decades of Alcatraz records.
That history runs through several of our own titles: Silent Scars of Healing Hands, on Japanese American medical professionals who practiced within the incarceration camps; Japanese Americans of the South Bay; the picture-book biography Ruth Asawa; and A History of Alcatraz Island Since 1853, on the small island that's been part of California's story for over 150 years.
FURTHER READING: JAPANESE AMERICAN STORIES
Seattle: the Chinese Exclusion Act, and the Pacific Northwest's own reckoning
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The Seattle branch houses records from federal agencies and courts across Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington — including enforcement case files from the Chinese Exclusion Act and early Native reservation maps. It's the kind of collection that shapes how a region understands its own past, long after the headlines fade. Titles that draw on that same regional history: Chinese in Washington, on how Exclusion-era law reshaped families for generations; Icebreaking Alaska; Idaho in World War II; and Nisqually Indian Tribe, on the original stewards of the prairies and rivers of Thurston and Pierce Counties. |
Further Reading: Documenting the Pacific States
Chicago: the Manhattan Project, and a disaster the city still remembers
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The Chicago branch holds records from federal agencies and courts across Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Minnesota, and Wisconsin — with artifacts touching the Manhattan Project, the U.S. labor movement, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Steamship Eastland disaster. That last one is personal for us: The Eastland Disaster is one of our own, telling the story of the ship that capsized in the Chicago River in 1915, killing more people than the Titanic lost that night on its own maiden voyage. Also drawing on this region's archive: The Underground Railroad in Ohio and Wisconsin's Flying Trees in World War II. Broad National Archives closures threaten the access to history like these. |
FURTHER READING: ARCHIVING THE MIDWEST
Why this matters to us
Our books wouldn't exist without authors' access to resources like the National Archives, and there's real concern that limiting public access to these records risks burying key parts of American history. Groups like Save Our National Archives and the Data Rescue Project are mobilizing local communities to challenge the closures — worth a look if you want to do more than read about it.
As a history publisher, Arcadia and our imprints depend on institutions like these. We wanted to use this moment to shine a light on the research our authors have uncovered there, and to encourage readers everywhere to dig into their own local history, starting, maybe, with what's sitting in a federal records center a few states away. Explore them while you can, before the National Archives closures go into effect.
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Would these books have been possible without the National Archives?
COLLECTION: National Archives Contributions to Local History