Schomburg, Arthur

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Schomburg, Arthur

January 24, 1874
June 10, 1938

Bibliophile Arthur Alfonso Schomburg was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, to a German merchant and an unmarried black laundress who was a native of Saint Thomas, Virgin Islands. He received some formal education but was largely self-taught. He emigrated to the United States in 1891, moving to New York City. Schomburg worked in a law office, was active in the "Porto [sic] Rican Revolutionary Party," and began his lifelong quest to amass a collection of African-American books and other materials in order to demonstrate the existence and significance of black history. In 1906 he went to work at Bankers Trust Company, where he eventually became head of the mail room, staying with the company for twenty-three years.

With his broad knowledge and passion for African-American history, Schomburg became a leading spirit in the Harlem Renaissance and an inspiration to a generation of historians. He was an active Prince Hall Mason, he cofounded with John Edward Bruce in 1911 the Negro Society for Historical Research, and in 1922 he became president of the soon-to-be moribund American Negro Academy. Schomburg wrote numerous pamphlets and bibliographical studies. His best-known essay is "The Negro Digs Up His Past" in Alain Locke's The New Negro (1925), a call to the important task of careful scholarly research into African and African-American history.

Arthur A. Schomburg

"We need the historian and philosopher to give us with trenchant pen, the story of our forefathers, and let our soul and body, with phosphorescent light, brighten the chasm that separates us. We should cling to them just as blood is thicker than water."

racial integrity: a plea for the estab lishment of a chair of negro history in our schools, colleges, etc. published in 1913 in nancy cunard's work, negro.

In 1925 the New York Public Library established a special Negro Division at the 135th Street Branch. The next year the Carnegie Corporation purchased for $10,000 Schomburg's vast and unequalled collection of books, manuscripts, and art works and donated it to the library. Schomburg, who was a librarian at Fisk University from 1930 to 1932, became curator of his own collection with another Carnegie grant, which he received in 1932. His

collection forms the core of the present Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the largest collection of materials by and about people of African descent.

An Arthur Schomburg Award for Excellence in African Studies is awarded each year.

See also Harlem Renaissance; Locke, Alain Leroy