Harold T. Pinkett Student of Color Award: Sydnie Martin

Sydnie Martin, a recent graduate of the MSLS program at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, is the 2026 recipient of the Harold T. Pinkett Student of Color Award given by the Society of American Archivists (SAA). The Pinkett Award was established in 1993 to encourage students of color to consider careers in the archival profession and to promote participation by people of color in SAA. The award honors archival pioneer Dr. Harold T. Pinkett, a dedicated SAA member who was the first African American to be appointed archivist at the National Archives, where he worked for more than thirty-five years.

At UNC Chapel Hill, Martin worked as a Carolina Academic Library Associate processing University Archives and Southern Historical Collections, creating descriptive finding aids in ArchiveSpace to support research and instruction. Her work also included conducting, editing, and processing oral history interviews for the UNC Story Archive, which aims to preserve student, faculty, and staff voices into the university record. She assisted in multiple Story Archive campaigns that focused on the creation of the Latinx Center, the 50th anniversary of the Southeastern Gay Conference, and the 50th anniversary of the Theta Pi chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.

In 2025, she worked as a graduate intern for the Black Teacher Archive, based at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she contributed to a centralized database focused on Black educators and Colored Teachers Associations by compiling more than 400 oral histories from multiple institutions.

In 2022, during her Archie Motley Archival Internship with the Black Metropolis Research Consortium, Martin conducted oral history interviews with founding members of DePaul University’s Black Student Union. Of that experience, she says, “Conducting these interviews was the first time I was able to contribute to the archives record, ensuring that Black students’ voices were documented along with administrative collections. This experience deepened my understanding of how oral history can address gaps in the historical record and document marginalized voices, which I have continued throughout my career.” 

Martin has an outstanding academic record and is well on her way to making significant contributions to the profession and her community. She exhibits strong leadership skills as president of UNC’s Student Association of Black Librarians (SABL). “I chose to be an archivist because I wanted to empower other people of color to pursue research on their communities,” Martin says. “Today, my professional goals are guided by that purpose to increase access and discoverability of archives through reference, outreach, and programming. I look forward to involvement with SAA sections like Archives and Archivists of Color and New Archives Professionals.”