"Information enhances my freedom."
Marion Stokes, Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project
Marion Marguerite Stokes was an American access television producer, businesswoman, investor, civil rights demonstrator, activist, librarian, and prolific archivist, especially known for her archiving of hundreds of thousands of hours of television news footage spanning 35 years, from 1977 until her death in 2012, at which time she operated nine properties and three storage units. According to The Los Angeles Review of Books review of the 2019 documentary film Recorder, Stokes's massive project of recording the 24-hour news cycle "makes a compelling case for the significance of guerrilla archiving."
Marion Stokes Movies, Audio & Video Collection:
The Marion Stokes Papers contain documents related to the life and activism of Marion Stokes (1929-2012), civil rights activist, feminist, and news archivist. Stokes’ social activist career began in the 1950s, and encompassed numerous areas of left politics during a particularly transformative time in America. Her groundbreaking television show (co-produced with her husband John S Stokes Jr), Input, addressed various pressing issues, and much of it remains relevant today. Additionally, Stokes amassed a huge archive of videotaped television news, which is slowly being made available through the work of the Internet Archive.
Still from Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project
Marion in her own words:
“Having information enhances my freedom.”
We love her because:
Marion Stokes loved us enough to document how mainstream news changed night to night by local and national news sources. She knew there was power in being given the opportunity to evaluate information, in essence, to help create a critical media consciousness among the masses.
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