"History of the James Weldon Johnson Collection"

In the early decades of the 20th century, The New York Public Library’s 135th Street Branch (later developed into the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture) became an important educational hub for Harlem’s growing Black community. Neighborhood children and teachers regularly visited the Library to seek out books and programs related to Black history, by Black authors, and featuring Black children, which could be difficult to find in other collections because of racism in education, book publishing, and librarianship. In 1938, the branch used funds that had been donated by the James Weldon Johnson Literary Guild to begin a collection of books for children about Black people’s experiences. The criteria that librarians articulated for compiling this collection illustrate the racial landscape of children’s books at the time. The collection’s curators stated that they sought to avoid books that included racist epithets and caricatures and looked for work that “would show the Negro in other aspects of his life than the old stereotypes.” When James Weldon Johnson, an author, scholar, and activist, died in 1938, the Library obtained permission from his widow to name the collection in his honor. 

Teach with this item from Unit 2 of the curriculum guide, Reading Dangerously: Censorship and the Freedom to Read in 20th Century America.
 

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