‘A counter-narrative of history’: Schomburg Center’s 100 years of celebrating Black culture

A Puerto Rico-born New Yorker’s relentless collecting on the African diaspora is still the core of a Harlem institution

Growing up in Puerto Rico in the late 19th century, Arturo Alfonso Schomburg was told by his teacher that Black people had no significant history or accomplishments. He spent his life disproving the narrative by collecting art, books and artefacts that showed the opposite. At 17 years old, Schomburg settled in New York, where he used his collections to write articles about Black history for periodicals such as Negro World. In time, he became known as a pre-eminent historian and intellectual of the Harlem Renaissance.

“Schomburg always sought to collect the global Black experience,” said Barrye Brown, curator of manuscripts, archives and rare books at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. “When you look at what he was collecting, you see his vision of what the African diaspora is like … it is all around the world, it’s multilingual; there’s so many different experiences represented.”
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