Steven D. Booth

Image of Steven sitting on a boulder wearing lime green frames, a grey sweatshirt, and cutoff denim.

Steven De'Juan Booth (he/him) is an archivist, researcher, and member of The Blackivists, a collective of trained Black memory workers who provide expertise on archiving and preservation practices to communities in the Chicagoland area.

His work and research interests include photographic and audiovisual materials, Black cultural heritage preservation, community archives, and digital humanities. He is currently Archive Manager of the Johnson Publishing Company Archive for the Getty Research Institute and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

From 2009-2021, Steven worked at the US National Archives and Records Administration for the Presidential Materials Division, Office of Presidential Libraries, and Barack Obama Presidential Library. He has also held positions at Boston University's Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center and JPMorgan & Chase cataloging the archive of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Steven is an active member of the Society of American Archivists (SAA) and served on the governing board of the organization from 2017-2020. He has given talks at the Library of Congress, the University of Michigan's Bentley Historical Library, Brown University's Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage and the Visual Resources Association Annual Conference. [Click the links to watch the recorded lectures.]

In 2020, Steven co-edited with Stacie Williams Loss/Capture, a digital editorial project exploring the state of Black cultural archives in and beyond Chicago, presented by Sixty Inches From Center, a Chicago-based arts publication and archiving initiative.

He is currently working on a book project with Barrye Brown documenting the contributions and impact of Black archivists in SAA. He is also conducting research, funded by the SAA Foundation, with Brenda Gunn exploring archival revolutions, transitional moments, and shifts from 1980 to 2020.

Steven comes from a long lineage of Black cultural heritage professionals who also matriculated from Morehouse College (BA in Music) and Simmons College (MS in Library Science).