Schomburg's Life Work: archivist and popular historian of Black history



When I was scheduled to write the last library blog post in February, I had a very clear idea of what to say and how to make essential connections to the work of Arturo also known as Arthur Schomburg for Black History Month. Arturo Schomburg, whose personal collection is the core of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library, is fascinating in his persistent collecting and unique organizational scheme for books about the cultural and historic contributions of people of African descent.  His story is beautifully captured in the picture book Schomburg, The Man Who Built a Library, by Carole Boston Weatherford and illustrated by Eric Velasquez. 

Just in case you are thinking of leaving this post because the students you teach or your own children are beyond the picture book stage, I would encourage you to read Pamela Paul, editor of the book review for the New York Times, and her recent opinion piece, "Your Kids Aren’t Too Old for Picture Books, and Neither Are You" in which she states picture books are the real wizards of the literary world! This book is no exception to that picture book rule. Formerly a selection of the Rhode Island Children's Book Award nominees in 2017, it is a very accessible tribute to a complex man who believed, "History was not history unless it was complete from all angles." 

An ardent bibliophile, Schomburg's collection of 5000 books was purchased by the Carnegie Corporation for $10,000 and donated to the New York Public Library. His collection became the core of the Division of Negro History, Literature, and Prints at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library in Harlem. From 1932-1938, Schomburg served as the curator of that collection. A new Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture opened in 1980 at 515 Malcolm X Boulevard in Harlem and includes etchings, paintings, and sculpture. Schomburg believed these artworks offered visible proof of the accomplishments of African descendants.  

My original intention was to summarize Schomburg's accomplishments and connect our blog readers to the outstanding Schomburg Center's Black Liberation List for Young Readers. This is a comprehensive and affirming list of forty-one titles for ages 0-12. Covering a comprehensive spectrum of genres and reading levels, it is worthy of its own blog post! What happened though, was the more I read about Mr. Schomburg the more I wanted to know. I also came to the conclusion in my search for more information about this man who was instrumental in promoting scholarship about the African Diaspora, Black History Month might not even exist if Arturo Schomburg had not decided at a very young age to prove that "Africa's sons and daughters had a history and heroes worth noting." 

According to Weatherford, during his elementary school years, Schomburg developed a passion for finding evidence in books about the African Diaspora and the cultural and historical contributions of people of African descent after he was told by his teacher they did not exist. Please forgive me here as I take a moment to connect Schomburg's passion and commitment to "the goals of his recuperation of a lost African past" to the inquiry process we strive to develop with sustained curiosity, original research, and sense of purpose in our students. This became Schomburg's life work, persevering through roadblocks and false narratives, he spent uncountable hours in book shops looking for any piece of writing that reinforced his goal and spurred on his desire to know more. Everything he found became part of a collection built over many years and which included pamphlets, books, and other ephemera that had been cast aside by white book shop owners and collectors who saw no value in the story Schomburg was seeking to tell. He realized in his "book hunting"  that no one volume would tell the whole story.

Schomburg came to New York from Puerto Rico with the career goal of obtaining a law degree, although the lack of educational credentials kept him from this goal.  He worked in various capacities in law firms but his true profession was as the architect of a narrative based on the idea that this history must "restore what slavery took away." The manipulation of "knowledge" to preclude the black history narrative meant he had to dig through the books and visual arts to find the experiences of people who were continually buried and marginalized. Schomburg was active in organizations that fostered research as part of the "black-popular-history project" that emerged in the early part of the 20th century. With the end of World War I and a resurgence of the black liberation movement along with the Harlem Renaissance, Schomburg became a renowned author and scholar, widely sought after for his insights into black culture and history. He argued for the "spiritual nourishment of our cultural past so that youth can be nourished on its own milk." Schomburg believed that the increased body of knowledge, scholarship, and growing archival evidence would require the rewriting of a "common American history." He was especially critical of the way historians represented the contributions of black figures like Phillis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass.

To truly understand the importance of Schomburg would require years of research and many more pages than one would want to read as a blog post, thus the "wizardry of the picture book" which excels in the remarkable economy of telling a story through the twin arts of visual and textual storytelling. If we can take away two important lessons from Schomburg though they would be, that curiosity fosters persistent research to build knowledge and develop deeper learning, creating new knowledge and ideally changing our understanding and our world view. The second, this is the work of a lifetime and can lead to unexpected and impactful consequences. We must also acknowledge that while we are reaching the end of Black History Month, Schomburg has taught us that there is no end, there is one more book to find, a pamphlet to read, artwork to view that we have yet to discover in a historic and cultural narrative that has systematically been negated by the dominant culture. This is the work of our lifetime, to acknowledge that what we know as the "American story" is not neutral or innocent and that we like Schomburg must be persistent and sustain the work of bringing in to the light the story of black people and culture which in truth is the antecedent of all other American history narratives. 

Holton, Adalaine. “Decolonizing History: Arthur Schomburg's Afrodiasporic Archive.” The Journal of African American History, vol. 92, no. 2, 2007, pp. 218–238. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20064181. Accessed 25 Feb. 2021.

Weatherford, Carole B., and Eric Velasquez. Schomburg : the Man Who Built a Library. Candlewick Press, 2017.