By Carla Robinson

Arturo Alfonso Schomburg set out on a mission. He collected more than 10,000 items that documented the history and culture of people of the African Diaspora, which he used to challenge the notion that Blacks were inferior. In 1926, Schomburg, a Black Puerto Rican-born scholar, added his collection to the New York Public Library (NYPL) system to create what is now known as The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Today, Schomburg’s vision has developed into the leading repository for Black culture in the world. The Center’s collection includes more than 5 million items, encompassing everything from books and manuscripts to sound recordings and artifacts, and housing an exhibition facility and performance space.

Because the Schomburg is many things, some people express a bit of confusion over what it is not. The Schomburg is not a borrowing library, as none of its materials circulate-although it is designated as one of the NYPL’s Research Libraries (an honor it received in 1972). Nor is it a facility reserved strictly for scholars, even though it does sponsor a scholars-in-residence program. It is open to the public, making available educational and cultural offerings including readings, performances, and exhibitions, as well as its collection of reference materials. Additionally, it is not exclusively a brick and mortar building, it’s also a publisher. It has a newsletter in the works, and produces books and exhibition portfolios, among other things.

Names in the Schomburg’s collections read like a virtual who’s who of African America. Works by thinkers such as Richard Wright, Marvin and Morgan Smith, Gordon Parks, James VanDerZee, Phyllis Wheatley, Romare Bearden, John Henrik Clarke, the Black Panthers, Lorna Simpson, Frederick Douglass, Zora Neale Hurston, and CLR James fill the Center’s archives and display cases. Many great contemporary artists and writers are invited to give lectures and lead workshops, allowing them to interact with the Harlem community-at-large.

A trip through the facility yields a plethora of experiences on any given day. In February 2000, Ruby Dee brings a one-woman show to the Langston Hughes Auditorium, where the Fisk Jublilee Singers will also perform a concert. Exhibitions feature Black New Yorkers/Black New York: 400 Years of African American History, which Schomburg Center Director Howard Dodson called “the Center’s New York City Centennial tribute to people of African descent-of diverse ethnic, religious, cultural, economic and political backgrounds-who have helped make New York City the greatest city in America.”

Dodson’s words illuminate the Schomburg Center as a place that validates and glorifies the contributions of the people it was created to represent. It is not only a site for the preservation of Black history, but a history-maker within itself. For the first time, people of African descent are collecting and documenting their own legacy in the name of education and preservation. What began as Arturo Schomburg’s private collection has become a defining symbol in Black self-recognition. Because of this, it is revered throughout Harlem World as well as the world over. For more information on the Schomburg Center, visit its website at www.nypl.org/research/sc. M

February 2000