Black childhood in focus: Counter-histories of Black urban childhood in preserve the Baltimore uprising, a 21st century digital participatory archive.

This study examines the (mis)representation of Black urban childhood in the United States and proposes a framework for Black children’s inclusion in historical narratives. Black children have been excluded from constructs of childhood innocence, justifying violence against Black children and perpetuating anti-Black social hierarchies. This study builds on the work of Saidiya Hartman, advocating for a critical approach to studying, archiving, and understanding Black childhood through the lenses of region, race, age, and gender. Using the participatory digital archive Preserve the Baltimore Uprising as a case study, the research explores Black children’s presence and contributions during the 2015 Baltimore Uprising. I analyze the archive's materials to uncover a spectrum of agency and representation reflecting tensions between adult-centric narratives and youth-authored perspectives, structural power dynamics shaping Black childhood, and the potential of participatory methods to challenge archival practices that produce silences in the histories of Black childhood.