Rachael Keri Williams (She/Her/They)
Executive Director of SOAL (Saving Our Ancestors Legacy) and Founder of Action4Heritage initiative, restores unkempt graves at Lincoln Cemetery.
Every generation inherits a choice: protect the stories that shaped us, or let them be erased. At Action4Heritage, we choose to fight for memory. Not just for us today, but for generations beyond us.
Without the truth of history available for the future, our youth will suffer the consequences. This is about securing a better future. We’re mobilizing communities across the country to archive the photos, records, oral histories, and cultural treasures that hold our shared truth.
Join us on the right side of history by preserving it.
Across the U.S., vital pieces of our history are under threat. Political agendas, budget cuts, and censorship are erasing archives that tell the stories of Black, Indigenous, LGBTQ+, immigrant, and other marginalized communities.
When archives vanish, so do the voices, struggles, and triumphs they hold. Without them, future generations lose the ability to understand the full truth of our past — and those in power get to rewrite history unchecked.
We believe preserving these stories is urgent. We’re building a nationwide, people-powered movement to digitize, protect, and safeguard historical records before they’re lost forever.
Together, we can make sure our history survives and remains in the hands of the communities it belongs to.
Black history & Civil Rights archives (in libraries, museums, and heritage clubs)
Indigenous treaties & oral histories
LGBTQ+ archives (physical artifacts, and undigitized documents)
Immigrant narratives (oral histories, interviews, books)
Digitize 5,000 pension files from the National Archives (representing thousands of Black families).
A very involved process that requires our deployment.
Expand Urgent Data Rescue deployments to 10 small museums, libraries, and cultural institutions holding fragile, undigitized records.
Train 50 new community archivists to carry out preservation work locally.
Activate everyday, passionate people like you into conservationists of Black-focused American History.
Scale and launch WebAnansi — a public access tool so these stories can be searchable, findable, and taught in classrooms.
When history is at risk, we can’t always wait for institutions to act. Guerilla archiving is the grassroots, rapid-response effort to save vulnerable cultural heritage before it disappears — whether due to censorship, neglect, or political erasure.
It’s not about breaking laws or trespassing — it’s about using the tools you have to protect the truth. Anyone can be a guerilla archivist, from a librarian with a flatbed scanner to a neighbor with a smartphone.
Look for materials that are one-of-a-kind or hard to replace — old family photos, letters, oral histories, flyers, local newspapers, event programs, protest signs, or recordings.
These can be in personal collections, community centers, or small museums.
Use your phone, camera, or scanner to make high-quality digital copies. For documents, try apps like Adobe Scan or Genius Scan.
For audio, record with apps like Voice Record Pro. Always save files in multiple formats (JPEG/PNG for images, PDF for documents, WAV/MP3 for audio).
Back up your files in at least two places: one personal (like an external hard drive) and one secure offsite or cloud location.
Share with trusted archives, libraries, or preservation networks. Redundancy is safety.
Learn more about the various types of equipment for quality archiving that will last for years.
Ready to jump into guerilla archiving and save our ancestor's legacies? Get started here.
