by Roberth Resnick
TO UNDERSTAND the special importance of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, we have to go back over 100 years to when the idea that led to the center's creation was born.
In the year 1880, in the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico-then Spanish colony - a 10 year-old black schoolboy objected to being taught history written by European.
"This is wrong. "the young student taught to himself." We black our accomplishments are being devalued..... Even when we gain our freedom and earn the right to own land and to live and work where we wish, we will not be able to fulfill our potential unless we know what blacks really have accomplished as creative human beings with their own history and culture."
The 10-year-old was Arthur Alfonso Schomburg. His idea-that black people gather and learn the fact about themselves so that they can document their own histories and tell their own stories to all the people of the world-was to led, nearly 50 years later, to the establishment of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
In 1891, young Schomburg moved from Puerto Rico to New York City, where he was to spend the rest of his life.
He moved through a lively world of black fellow teachers, historians, and research scholars. He helped create network of African-American writers, artists, and political business, and religious leaders, collecting their work as well as records of their lives and accomplishment. He helped gain valuable assistance from non-black individuals and foundations, and increased support for his work from government archives.
New York City in the 1920s, with its world-famous " Harlem Renaissance " of African - American life and with its extraordinary intellectual and cultural vitality, was the natural place for Schomburg to pull together the record of achievement.
The New York Public Library gave Schomburg space for his collection in its 135th Street Branch which had been designed by Stanford White, the leading America architect of the day. The building in the most prosperous part of Harlem, near where most of New York's African - American leaders live in the 1920s became the site of the Arthur Schomburg Collection. By 1926, Schomburg's
Schomburg made his collection available to the New York Public Library, of which it remains a part today, with the understanding that it would be housed permanently in Harlem. Schomburg, himself, served as curator of the collection for several years, until his death in 1938.
The Schomburg Collection immediately became a core resource for African - American artists and scholars. Novelist like Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Alex Haley researched their work there. African - American painters and photographers donated their sketches, negatives, and prints. In the basement of the original library building, the American Negro Theater gave support to aspiring play wrights and actors. The Schomburg Collection became a definitive record of black life, first in American, and later worldwide.
An early triumph was a special exhibition in the 1930: "Blacks and the Winning of the west."
The great national saga of mass migration to the shores of the United States and of the movement of pioneers cross the American West in covered wagons had long been viewed by American as an accomplishment of white people. Schomburg had acquired, and now exhibited, records and photo of African-American cowboys, pony soldiers, and farm families who voluntarily took part in the settlement of the West. The exhibition was an enormous source of pride to African-American, and the source of many popular publication and exhibition decades later.
Over the years, the Schomburg Collection completely took over, and then outgrew, the original library building (A new public library building was constructed to the rear of the original.)
With funds from both government and private donors, New York City built a distinguished, modern, four - story structure in Harlem, and in 1980, a vastly expanded Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. In 1987, the Schomburg took the radical but essential step of closing down the new center and thoroughly both it and the abandoned original library to maximize usable space. The center reopened in April 1991.
It was in 1984, when the Schomburg appointed Howard A. Dodson as director of the newly renamed center began in earnest.
A distinguished historian, Dodson had served in Washington with the National Endowment for the Humanities. Like Arthur Schomburg, Dodson seems to know every person in the country with important collection, and every reservoir of public and private financial support, that might be a source of manuscripts or money to help to make the Schomburg the world's leading center for the documentation and understanding of black accomplishment.
A visit to the Schomburg to day reveals the many meanings of the world "leading." First is the sheer size of the center. Arthur Schomburg's original collection of 10,000 items has grown to some 5 million items: 3.5 million manuscripts, letters, draft, and diaries, 300,000 photographs, and 125,000 books, as well as clipping, paintings, sculptures, films, and recordings of music and oral history.
Second is the friendliness and accessibility of the center. Unlike many research library, the Schomburg welcome visitors to all its reading rooms, where volunteers show people around while professional librarians help researches.
Also, the Schomburg is open until 8 p.m. Three nights a week so that people who can not come otherwise can use it. The most popular of the five research divisions is the General Research and Reference Reading Room, to which are directed most of the nearly 400 visits and inquiries made to the Schomnurg every day. It is a warm, well-lit, neat, and friendly place, with original artworks by black painters on the walls.
Perhaps the most incomparably useful part of the Reading Room's collection - one that draws people from all over the world-is a wall with thick loose - leaf binders containing original newspaper clipping from the year Arthur Schomburg arrived in New York and started his collection on subjects of particular interests to African-American: Africa, civil right, education, fair employment, Harlem, housing, labor, and public schools, among others.
The Schomburg's Archive and Rare Books Division contains the private collection of individuals. During one visit, there were clipping in a display case on the life of Ewart Grunie, a recently deceased labor leader who became a scholar and the first scholar and the first chairman of Harvard University's Department of Afro - American studies.
The photographer and print Division has become the repository of choice for collection of photos by or about blacks - many going back to last country.
The Schomburg is now a cultural center as well as research library. There are two theaters and several conference room for performances, lectures, and forums
Since the new building first opened in 1980, there has always been at least one exhibition in a large area inside the Front entrance. The most recent is a comprehensive display on "The African Presence in the Americas." It has been a popular that it has been on display nearly two years.
Now that the Schomburg has the facilities to help those who can visit the center in Harlem, a Dodson priority for the future is to bring the Schombury's record of black achievements to people who do not know about or who cannot visit New York City.
To this end, Dodson has expanded the center's professional staff to more promptly respond to request and to disseminate news of the centers holding and events. As a result, the number of inquiries and visits is expanding rapidly, and now stands at nearly 150,000 a year.
Second, he has initiated traveling exhibitions, which reach 500,00 viewers a year worldwide. In conjunction with these exhibitions, a new school out-reach program brings audio visual packages on the African heritage to schoolchildren.
Finally, the Schomburg is going international. It is now able to duplicate holding on request and donate them to research libraries and museums in Africa and Americas.
And it is helping other countries to start their own libraries and cultural institutions on African history and Accomplishment.
"we are proud of the Schomburg Center's contribution to black pride and to the world increasing knowledge of black achievement." says Dodson. "We will be even prouder when institution similar to our arise in Africa and the Americans."
He add: "We want Africans everywhere to feel they can come to the center for advice and help."
Reference; Robert H. Resnick is a free-lance writer in New York City.
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is located at 515 Malcolm X Boulevard.
New York, New York 10037
Telephone: 212-491-2200
TOPIC ISSUE NO.200
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