it's not realistic in this day and age
institutions are running on fumes man
there has to be some profitability for something like this or this could take them under.

40 mil ain't something to sneeze at

i used to work at the historical society here in SD. their collection has over 2 million images. of that, not even a 1/4 of it is digitized. they are running on 3 permanent staff members, a few interns and a few ppl funded on grants.

they don't have the man power to digitize that stuff to make it readily available. then there's the issue of storage.

nobody is saying that this shouldn't be housed by a blk institution but honestly, even regular ass white institutions are having trouble housing their own shit.

it's should go to whomever is willing to put 100% into taking care of the material.

honestly the best place would be the library of congress. that way it will become public domain and be way more accessible to the public. but even then, some shit you gotta pay for. as a person who heavily uses archival material, i'm fine with that, as long as the shit is taken care of.