A black Puerto Rican or “Afroborinqueno” is credited with amassing the collections which formed the core of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a division of the NY Public Library.
His name was Arturo Alfonso Schomburg (1874-1938). His mother was a freeborn Black midwife of St. Croix and his father a mestizo merchant of German heritage. He was university educated and dedicated to a lifelong quest: to scientifically refute the mythology of racism in the Americas. A fiery debater, a fierce documentarian, he was a walking encyclopedia of the accomplishments of Afro-Latinos.
In fifth grade, a teacher told him that “black people have no history, no culture, no heroes, no great moments”. He was determined to prove that person wrong. He collected books, pictures, art, music newspapers and pamphlets documenting the accomplishments of blacks in the Americas.
In 1891 at the age of 17 he came to Harlem. He was there during the 'Harlem Renaissance', also more widely known as the New Negro Movement. That Movement included the new African-American cultural expressions across the urban areas in the NE and Midwest which were affected by the African American Great Migration of which Harlem was the greatest center. He was consulted by all the famous names of the era for his knowledge and collections. Schomberg was described as an autodidact, Freemason, writer, institution builder...but he was more. He cofound the Negro Society for Historical Research and the American Negro Academy. He meticulously documented the African presence throughout the Americas. He gave unique insights into the intersection of Blackness and Latinidad.
In 1926 the 135th St Branch of the NY Public Library bought his collection. And still he continued to add to it. In 1932 he became the curator. He once told a scholar, “What you call African history or Negro history are the missing pages of world history.”
A good children's book: Schomberg: The Man Who Built A Library (CB Weatherford)
Adults: check out Robert Knight's biography of Schomburg