The article presents a reflection on the motivations of individuals in collecting and organizing private collections about slavery in Brazil, as well as offering the perspective of biographical studies of Africans in the diaspora as a methodological possibility of breaking the desire for control over what matters to remember and forget. Thinks about collective memory through the power of decision over the history that can be told by the privatization of sources and documents on the subject of slavery.
Keywords: private collections; slavery; memory; testimonies from Africans; biographies.
