"People are known for the records they keep," observes the writer Alice Walker. "If isn't in the records, it will be said it didn't happen. That is what history is: a keeping of records."

This pithy observation by Walker was written, like a note to herself, on a scrap of paper and then carefully stored away. This fragment, along with letters, drafts of novels, poems and essays, photographs and memorabilia, is part of the Eatonton writer's archive. Emory University is now privileged to serve as the custodian of Walker's records for this generation and the generations to come.

Certainly an archive is, for a writer, a record of the effort to achieve conscious eloquence. This effort for Walker began in her fifteenth year and culminated in the self-publication of "Poems of a Childhood Poetess," a remarkable volume of her earliest poetry, many written in her own hand, a volume she dedicated, again most remarkably, to herself and then to others.

Since many women writers often chose to publish under a male pseudonym or worse, as anonymous, this self-dedication is intriguing. It reveals, I believe, that Walker recognized her own value and potential as a writer very early in her life. The self-dedication is neither vanity nor egocentrism, but rather a prescient and self-conscious affirmation of her potential, which, as the historical record shows, has been richly realized.

An archive also chronicles the effort on the part of the writer to negotiate the complex relationship between history and memory, between region and its impact upon an artistic imagination. One could select almost any work by Walker to illustrate this claim, but of course none more than her maligned and celebrated 1982 novel "The Color Purple."

And what is the value of an archive for a black Southern woman writer? In a nation whose founding documents reduced African-Americans to three-fifths of a person and where African-American women possessed even less constitutional significance, for Walker an archive is a means of anticipating and refuting the warping effects of racism and sexism. Certainly, the trials of Phillis Wheatley, the founding figure of the African-American literary tradition and a poet much beloved by Walker, provides us with some perspective on the Georgia writer's decision, one made long ago, to leave us with a record of the manner in which genius became legend.

As the author of "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral," Wheatley published in 1773 the first book by a black and the second by a woman in Colonial America. Many were disbelieving, because of racism, of Wheatley's capacity to reason, let alone produce art. To appease this incredulous readership and to boost sales, Wheatley's London publisher included in the volume a letter signed by influential whites who provided assurances that the former slave was indeed the author of the contested volume. This now famous letter is called by scholars an authenticating document, and such testimonials are a defining feature of early African-American literature.

In this singular instance of self-authentication, Walker's archive contains indisputable evidence of her commitment as a black Southern woman writer to the sublime effort to order human experience through the medium of art.

There is a line by the poet Audre Lorde, a comrade, friend and fellow writer to Walker, that is relevant here. In the poem "A Litany for Survival," Lorde writes "We were never meant to survive." In "We," read there African-Americans and all people of color, women and gays and lesbians and all those discredited by the unceasing operations of white supremacy; indeed, all those about whom Walker has written with vision and compassion. In the keeping of records, Walker provides us with the full context for the creation of art, and thus the manner in which she, as a black Southern woman writer, not only survived but also prevailed against a system that meant to destroy her.

And what is the value of Walker's archive for scholars of literature? Certainly, they will be able to map, in ways impossible before, the Georgia writer's evolution as an artist. As Walker saved everything, scholars of literature will be drawn to the handwritten outlines and drafts of novels that provide insight into the process of creation. There is also the correspondence with such writers as Toni Morrison, June Jordan and Gayle Jones. Among many things, the correspondence is a means of reconstructing Walker's place in what scholars term the renaissance in African-American women's writings of the 1970s and '80s.

A national treasure, the Walker archive will open to the public in April 2009. Far more than just the record of a public and successful career, Walker's archive is the record of a courageously lived life devoted to the highest artistic standards and to civil and human rights. A life, as it is distilled in her archive, that educates the heart and mind and nurtures the spirit. A life, thankfully, that is still in process.

> Rudolph P. Byrd is an Emory University professor of American Studies and founding officer of the Alice Walker Literary Society.