4 Occasions Arturo Schomburg Inspired American & African Diasporic Culture

As a child growing up in Puerto Rico, a teacher told future Schomburg Center founder Arturo Schomburg (1874–1938) that Black people had no culture or history. Those words sparked a future of activism and collecting materials about Black and Latinx peoples.

Mr. Schomburg, who is of Black and Puerto Rican descent, emigrated to New York in 1891. Researchers note that he lived in Brooklyn, Harlem, and the San Juan Hill community that is now home to the Lincoln Center complex. He collected books, manuscripts, artworks, and more highlighting the achievements, brilliance, creativity, excellence, and ingenuity of Black people across the African Diaspora. He also became a noted scholar, journalist, and activist for the independence of Puerto Rico and Cuba from Spain. His efforts saved materials that might have been lost to history.

In 1926, Mr. Schomburg sold his collection of "2,932 volumes, 1,124 pamphlets, and many valuable prints and manuscripts" to The New York Public Library. The objects went on to become the foundational collection of the Schomburg Center, which today holds more than 11 million items.

As we celebrate Mr. Schomburg's birthday on Tuesday, January 24 with our annual lecture and discussion, here are four examples of how his life, collections, and writings still resonate in American and African Diasporic culture.

Afroborinqueño describes a person who is of Black and Puerto Rican heritages. Mr. Schomburg celebrated having both and frequently used the word to describe himself.

The word, which has picked up in popularity over the decades, is still used today and largely associated with Mr. Schomburg.

Journalist Gustavo E. Urrutia used the term in a 1936 column about Mr. Schomburg for El Diario De la Marina. Researchers can read the column from the newspaper on microfilm.

The Center’s Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division holds the Arthur Alfonso Schomburg Papers. A portion of the archive includes correspondence between Mr. Schomburg and Urrutia. Additionally, the Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division has the correspondence on microfilm.

“Similar to Arturo Schomburg, I have a commitment to archive and preserve hip hop in such a way that it will last forever,” said filmmaker and archivist Syreeta Gates in her 2020 documentary short, Young Schomburg. Her title paid homage to the Center’s founder, who was also a noted activist, journalist, curator, and bibliophile. 

The film discusses hip hop from the perspective of journalists such as Bonz Malone, Kierna Mayo, Joan Morgan, and Greg Tate, who covered the genre.

Gates screened Young Schomburg at the Center. In her 2020 talkback with Shola Lynch, the Center’s curator of the Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division, and Martha Diaz, associate curator and archivist at the Universal Hip Hop Museum, the filmmaker shared her journey of making her documentary, working to collect and preserve hip hop literature, and the importance of archiving.

In 2020, the US Postal Service recognized Mr. Schomburg and his peers—scholar Dr. Alain Locke, writer Nella Larsen (Quicksand, Passing), and poet Anne Spencer—with the Voices of the Harlem Renaissance stamp series.

"This issuance celebrates one of the great artistic and literary movements in American history, the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, which firmly established African Americans as a vital force in literature and the arts," stated the USPS’s website.

Mr. Schomburg, who helped make Harlem synonymous with Black culture, became the subject of a clue on the popular television game show Jeopardy in 2020.

"Arturo Schomburg's collection in a branch of the N. Y. Public Library in this Manhattan area contributed to a renaissance there," was the $800 clue in a Double Jeopardy! round.

The question was "What is Harlem?"

Related posts:

• Bookplates Created by Arturo Schomburg Reveal His History as Bibliophile and Curator
• Black Women Writers in Arturo Schomburg’s Collection
• A Digital Glimpse into Arturo Schomburg’s Collections

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Story updated on Feb. 1, 2023: Link to Annual Arturo Schomburg Lecture and Conversation with Dr. Deborah Willis added.