The Schomburg Center Through the Years
In 2025, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its founding. Go back in time to learn about the past 100 years of the Schomburg Center, from its origins through the present day.
Who Is Arturo Schomburg?
Arturo Alfonso Schomburg was born in 1874 in Santurce, Puerto Rico, to Mary Joseph, a freeborn Black midwife from the island of St. Croix, and Carlos Federico Schomburg, a merchant and the son of a German immigrant. When he was a child, Schomburg was told by a schoolteacher that Black culture lacked major figures and noteworthy history. This would drive him to devote his life to collecting “vindicating evidences” of Black global culture. After arriving in New York City at age 17, he became a vocal supporter of Puerto Rican and Cuban independence.
Image: Arthur Schomburg ca. 1896. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division.
As the Harlem Renaissance movement took off, Schomburg became one of its major voices, publishing articles in numerous Black periodicals. These included his groundbreaking 1925 essay “The Negro Digs Up His Past,” which appeared in a special edition of the magazine Survey Graphic entitled "Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro." This landmark publication was issued just two months before the opening of a new division at The New York Public Library focusing on Black history and culture that would ultimately become the world-renowned research center that today bears Schomburg's name.
This is the story of Arturo A. Schomburg and the Library, but also of the many people who have worked to document and preserve African Diasporic history for all over the last century.
1900s
1905
The 135th Street Branch of The New York Public Library (NYPL) opens. This is the foundation of what will become the Schomburg Center. The three-story library building on West 135th Street has 10,000 books in its circulating collection at the time of opening.
1911
Arturo Schomburg and the writer and historian John Edward Bruce found the Negro Society for Historical Research. The pair work to acquire books, manuscripts, pamphlets, and more documenting African Diasporic history—amassing over 3,000 objects. They keep this collection in their homes and with friends, hoping in time to find a permanent location.
1920s
The Harlem Renaissance
Jim Crow segregation laws of the American South and the advent of World War I contributed to the Great Migration of African Americans to northern cities in the early 1920s. The hotbed of Black expression, scholarship, and creativity that subsequently emerged in Harlem and spanned the 1920s and 1930s became known as the Harlem Renaissance. It provided the intellectual ferment and the spark needed for Black writers, artists, musicians, photographers, poets, and scholars to build a community in which to express their talents and become globally recognized.
Image: Exterior view of the Lafayette Theater, Harlem, ca. 1920, with signage advertising the vaudeville revue Broadway Gossips. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division.
1920
Librarian Ernestine Rose begins her appointment as head librarian at the 135th Street Branch determined to integrate the branch and its collections to reflect the neighborhood’s changing demographics. The same year, she hires The New York Public Library’s first Black librarian, Catherine Latimer, who would go on to oversee and promote the branch and its collection—and to curate the works of great writers of the Harlem Renaissance whom she knew personally, such as Claude McKay and Langston Hughes.
1921
The appointment of Black women as staff of the 135th Street Branch makes waves, with the drive to hire Black librarians reported in The New York Age and The Afro-American, some of the most prominent African American newspapers at the time.
1924
Ernestine Rose writes a letter asking for Arturo Schomburg’s presence at a meeting to discuss “a department of Negro Literature and Art” at the Library.
The Beginnings of a Research Department
The enormous interest in materials by and about Black people began to take a heavy toll on the 135th Branch Library's resources. Books were deteriorating from overuse; many titles had gone out of print; and funds were inadequate to purchase available titles. Catherine Latimer and Ernestine Rose launched a campaign to collect items that documented the Black experience. They met with a committee that included activists and writers Arturo Schomburg, James Weldon Johnson, and Hubert H. Harrison, as well as Black realtor John Nail, as officers. The group recommended that the rarest books be set aside as a reference library.
Image: Reading room of the Schomburg Collection at the 135th Street Branch Library with Lawrence Reddick, curator, seated at right. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division.
1925
On May 8, 1925, the Division of Negro Literature, History, and Prints—the forerunner to today's Schomburg Center—opens as a special collection of the 135th Street Branch Library featuring books about and items related to the African Diaspora. Gifts and loans had come from the private libraries of noted Black collectors including John E. Bruce, Louise Latimer, Hubert Harrison, George Young, Dr. Charles D. Martin, and Arturo Schomburg.
In celebration, the staff of the 135th Street Branch mount an exhibit in NYPL's Central Branch (now known as the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building) using much of the material from Arturo Schomburg’s collection. The first of its kind, the exhibit runs for four months.
1926
On May 6, 1926, The New York Public Library acquires Arturo Schomburg's collection of books, pamphlets, art, artifacts, manuscripts, and visual materials with the help of a $10,000 grant (just over $140,000 in today’s dollars) from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The collection includes Ad Catholicum, believed to be the first book written by a Black man, and the Charles Cordier sculptures Vénus africaine and Saïd Abdullah, de la Tribu de Mayac, Royaume de Darfour. With the Harlem Renaissance in full swing, the research division quickly gains international recognition.
The Trailblazing Librarians Of The 135th Street Branch
Ernestine Rose and Catherine Latimer were not the only trailblazers in the library profession who started at the 135th Street Branch. Several librarians of color who worked at the branch went on to innovate at NYPL including Nella Larsen, author of Passing and the first Black woman to graduate from NYPL’s library school; Pura Belpré, NYPL's first Puerto Rican librarian; Sadie Delaney, an innovator in bibliotherapy; Augusta Baker, the first Black woman to receive a permanent position as a children’s librarian at NYPL; Regina Andrews, the first Black librarian appointed to lead an NYPL branch; and Dorothy Homer, the first Black librarian to head the 135th Street Branch.
Image: Librarian Augusta Baker showing a copy of Ellen Tarry's 'Janie Belle' to a young library patron, 1941. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division.
1930s
1932
The New York Public Library hires Arturo Schomburg as the curator of the Division of Negro Literature, History, and Prints at the 135th Street Branch. In years to come, visitors will jokingly nickname him the “Sherlock Holmes of Negro History" and a “walking encyclopedia.” He will remain in the position for the rest of his life.
Aaron Douglas
In 1934, acclaimed artist Aaron Douglas completed his most famous mural, Aspects of Negro Life, through the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), one of the New Deal programs, with the intention that it be prominently displayed at the library. Today the murals are the centerpiece of the Aaron Douglas room in the Jean Blackwell Hutson Reference and Research Division. This photo shows Aaron Douglas (left) and Arturo Schomburg in front of the iconic painting.
Image: Artist Aaron Douglas (left) and Arturo Schomburg in front of Douglas's painting "Aspects of Negro Life: Song of the Towers," 1934. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division.
1936
Arturo Schomburg unveils acquisitions including Pietro Calvi’s bust of Ira Aldridge (the first Black actor to play Othello in England) at a new exhibition. Letters from his personal archive document correspondence about raising funds for the purchase with legendary performers Paul Robeson and Bill Robinson (known as Bojangles). To this day, the bust is a centerpiece of the Schomburg Center’s manuscripts reading room.
1938
Arturo Schomburg dies at age 64. Remarks at his funeral note that the Schomburg Collection is a visible monument to his life’s work.
Lawrence Reddick Appointed Curator
Dr. Lawrence D. Reddick, a historian and lecturer, was appointed curator of the Schomburg Collection in 1939. Under his direction, the Library offered an expanded agenda of public programs and the collection continued to grow. In this photo, Reddick is seated between author Richard Wright and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., at Wright's residence.
Image: Lawrence Reddick seated between Richard Wright and Martin Luther King, Jr., at Wright's residence in Paris, France, 1959. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division.
1940s
American Negro Theatre
During the Harlem Renaissance, the basement of the 135th Street Library was utilized by Black theater groups. This space was called The Little Library Theatre. In 1940, playwright Abram Hill and actor Frederick O’Neal established the American Negro Theatre (ANT) company to stage performances at the branch. Inspired by the four principles of Black drama outlined by W. E. B. Du Bois—that it should be by, about, for, and near Black people—ANT served as a training ground for Black actors and playwrights including Harry Belafonte, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Sidney Poitier, and Alice Childress. It was also a springboard for Black playwrights including Hill, Theodore Brown, Owen Dodson, and Countee Cullen. This room, now officially renamed the American Negro Theatre, remains a permanent space within the Schomburg Center used for exhibitions, seminars, meetings, and more.
Image: The Little Library Theatre, precursor to The American Negro Theatre, ca. 1925. The New York Public Library.
1940
Two years after Arturo Schomburg’s death, the Division of Negro Literature, History, and Prints is renamed the Schomburg Collection of Negro Literature, History, and Prints in his honor.
Dr. Reddick starts the Annual Schomburg Honor Roll in Race Relations to acknowledge notable people who have furthered activism for civil rights or contributed to the landscape of Black culture, literature, and art. The Honor Roll includes 12 Black persons or institutions, as well as six white persons or institutions who have worked to improve race relations. Honorees are gathered from a nationwide poll.
Countee Cullen Branch
In 1941, the cornerstone is laid for a new building on 136th Street, which will become the branch now known as Countee Cullen Library. After outgrowing its original location, the 135th Street Branch circulating collection moves into this new building. When it opens to the public, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia declares, “We give you the key to the temple of knowledge. Come in and use it.” Paul Robeson performs at the grand opening in 1942.
Image: Interior view of the first floor of Countee Cullen Library, ca. 1941–1949. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division.
1942
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt donates the original manuscript of President Roosevelt’s “Atlantic Charter” radio address to the Schomburg Center for the exhibition The War and the Whole People, which focuses on civil service during World War II.
1944
Concerned by mainstream coverage of Black soldiers during World War II, Dr. Reddick initiates a campaign to collect first-hand accounts of the experiences of Black soldiers. He places an ad in newspapers served by the Associated Negro Press requesting that letters written by Black soldiers to their families be sent to the Schomburg Collection. In addition, he interviews Black servicemen and women and collects memorabilia and other World War II–related items.
1948
Dr. Dorothy Williams, a former cataloger for the Schomburg Collection, is appointed curator. She serves only six months before leaving for a position with UNESCO, but during that time conducts a survey resulting in recommendations that will serve as operating guidelines for the next two decades.
The Schomburg Center acquires the original manuscript of Claude McKay’s bestseller Home to Harlem.
Jean Blackwell Hutson
In December 1948, 34-year-old Jean Blackwell Hutson was asked to lead the Schomburg Center. She would go on to lead the institution for more than 30 years, growing the Schomburg Collection from 15,000 to 75,000 volumes, including the archive of her childhood friend Langston Hughes. A fierce advocate for librarians and the need to collect and preserve Black history, Hutson soon became a public figure. Today, the research and reference division at the Schomburg Center bears her name.
Image: Jean Blackwell Hutson portrait in dark dress. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division.
The Negro Motorist Green Book
Harlem postman Victor Green and his wife Alma Green published The Negro Motorist Green Book, an annual guide that helped Black people travel safely, and with dignity, during a time of Jim Crow and segregation. By advertising businesses that welcomed Black patrons, the books also served as a way to support these businesses. Published from 1936 to 1966, the books went international in 1949 by including Canada, Mexico, and Bermuda in their listings. The Schomburg Center holds the largest-known collection of the Green Books.
Image: The Negro Motorist Green-Book: 1949. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division.
1950s
1950
The Schomburg Collection celebrates its 25th anniversary with an exhibition in The New York Public Library's Central Building (now the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building) featuring highlights of the collection including an original edition of verse by Phyllis Wheatley, one of Benjamin Banneker's first almanacs, artifacts documenting Black contributions to the world of sports, and works by Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Harriet Tubman. There is a concert at the 135th Street Branch and Langston Hughes writes the poem "Prelude to Our Age" in commemoration.
1953
Nineteen-year-old Sonia Sanchez, upset after being rejected from a job, mistakenly takes the train uptown and finds the Schomburg Collection. She meets Jean Blackwell Hutson, who sets a table for her to read Up from Slavery, The Souls of Black Folk, and Their Eyes Were Watching God. Years later, after becoming a leading figure in the Black Arts Movement, Sanchez returns to the Schomburg Center as an ambassador and teacher.
James Baldwin publishes his debut novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain. One of the most acclaimed American writers of the 20th century, Baldwin was born at Harlem Hospital, across the street from the 135th Street Branch. The Library would have a profound influence on him. “I went [to the 135th Street library] at least three or four times a week, and I read everything there,” he would later say.
1954
The exhibition “Haile Selassie I” about the emperor of Ethiopia opens, coinciding with his highly anticipated first visit to America, which includes a stop in Harlem and the Abyssinian Baptist Church. The exhibition features articles covering the emperor’s role in the fight for freedom in Ethiopia, an Amharic program from his 1930 coronation, photography, and more.
1955
Shortly after his death, Dr. Alain LeRoy Locke, philosophical architect and "dean" of the Harlem Renaissance, is honored with an exhibition at the Schomburg Collection including papers documenting his applications for a Rhodes Scholarship, manuscripts for two lyric poems, correspondence with Booker T. Washington, and a portrait in oils by Betsy Graves Reyneau.
1958
The Schomburg Collection presents the exhibition The Negro in Early New York, covering the colonial period through the Civil War. Items include artifacts detailing the history of Manhattan’s New York African Free School dating from 1830 and early property deeds from Black homeowners.
1960s
1960
As the Civil Rights Movement sparks new conversations about discrimination and Black expression, the number of registrants at the Schomburg Collection starts to increase dramatically. This reflects a growth in interest in Black history and culture, not just about the Civil Rights struggle and civil disorders and their causes but also history, literature and art. The annual number of registrants doubles between 1960 and 1966; by 1972 it has quadrupled.
Jean Blackwell Hutson Brings the Collection Worldwide
In 1964, at the invitation of the president of the Republic of Ghana, Jean Blackwell Hutson accepted a position as an assistant librarian to curate the Africana collection at the University of Ghana’s Balme Library in Accra. The invitation came two years after Hutson oversaw the publication of the Dictionary Catalog of the Schomburg Collection of Negro Literature and History, which made the collection's holdings known to libraries in Europe, Africa, and the Americas. The dictionary is still available today.
Image: Jean Blackwell Hutson standing amid women and holding a book. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division.
1964
Scholar Wendell L. Wray serves as acting curator while Jean Blackwell Hutson is in Ghana.
1968
Jean Blackwell Hutson does a live Christmas Eve radio interview on WNYC with Irving M. Levine, Director of Urban Planning of the American Jewish Committee, to discuss her work, the future of the Schomburg Collection, the urgency of making Black studies accessible and accurate, and “filling the gaps of omissions that have occurred” in the telling of Black history.
The Fight for Funding
While accepting an award in 1966, Jean Blackwell Hutson publicly expressed concern about the declining condition of the collection. Overuse of resources, air pollution, overcrowded storage facilities, and other factors were hastening its deterioration. In 1967, Ebony magazine published a feature on "Schomburg's Ailing Condition." Hutson spent years advocating for state, federal, and private funding, as well as grants, to address the crisis. Thanks to her advocacy, administrative, space, and preservation needs were addressed in major ways during the 1970s.
Image: Community supporters at Schomburg Center groundbreaking ceremony, June 8, 1977. Anita King. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division.
1970s
1971
Hutson establishes the Schomburg Corporation to raise money for a new building.
1972
In May, the Schomburg Collection is designated as one of the research libraries of The New York Public Library and the building is renamed the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture—the name it still bears today.
1973
The Schomburg Center expands into an adjacent building on the west side of Lenox Avenue, significantly increasing its footprint. This new building is now the main entrance to the Center.
1974
NYPL signs a contract with the NCR Corporation for the transfer of the Schomburg Center’s "Clipping File," which includes old newspaper and magazine clippings, pamphlets, and booklets, to microfiche, a more modern method of document preservation and storage. The clipping files date back to the 1920s, when librarian Catherine Latimer began collecting items.
1975
The 50th anniversary of the Schomburg Center is celebrated with a reception at the Center—with guests including four of Schomburg's seven sons, his daughter, and four of his 13 grandchildren—as well as an exhibition at the Central Library (now known as the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building) and the commissioning of original artwork by Romare Bearden.
1978
The Rare Books, Manuscripts and Archives Section and the Audio-Visual Section (later renamed the Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division and Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division respectively) are established as research divisions at the Center.
1980s
1980
In the 1980s, the Schomburg Center’s Scholars-in-Residence Program was established, awarding fellowships to academics whose research and writing on Black history and culture would benefit from extended access to the Center’s resources.
1981
The original building on West 135th Street which held the Schomburg Collection is designated a landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.
1984
The New York Public Library names Howard Dodson as the new director of the Schomburg Center. Under his direction, the Center produces new programs and exhibitions, enhances access to materials through digital initiatives, doubles its collections to more than 10 million items, and builds a national membership base of more than 10,000 people.
1985
Mayor Ed Koch and New York Public Library officials used the celebration of the Schomburg Center’s 60th Anniversary to announce plans to renovate the building's original site. David N. Dinkins, then Manhattan Borough President, and Kingsley Schomburg, one of Arturo Schomburg's sons, made remarks at the event, and "Remaking the Past to Make the Future," a program named after a phrase taken from Schomburg's work, was performed by author James Baldwin, dancer and choreographer Carmen de Lavallade, Academy Award–winning actor Sidney Poitier, and others.
1988
The Schomburg Center collaborates with Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Oxford University Press to publish the 30-volume Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers series. The website companion launches in 1998 and the content, including the full text of the books in the series, has been migrated to a LibGuide.
1990s
The Cosmogram
In 1991, a new site-specific public art installation was unveiled as the centerpiece of the 1,150-square-foot terrazzo-floored lobby of the Schomburg Center's auditorium. The cosmogram, entitled Rivers, was designed by Houston Conwill with his frequent collaborators Estella Conwill Majozo and Joseph De Pace. The cosmogram pays homage to both Arturo Schomburg and the poet Langston Hughes, whose ashes lie beneath the center. The design features rivers radiating out from the center and inset verses from Hughes's poem, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers." The center of the cosmogram is etched with the poem's concluding line, "My soul has grown deep like the rivers."
Image: Cosmogram as seen from above. The New York Public Library.
1991
In February, the Schomburg Center observes what would have been the 89th birthday of the poet Langston Hughes and the beginning of Black History Month with the unveiling of Houston Conwill's Rivers at the Center. A photo snapped by New York Times photographer Chester Higgins immortalizes the moment writers Amiri Baraka and Maya Angelou dance on the cosmogram in celebration of Hughes.
1992
Two major new initiatives, both of which continue to be a major draw for the Center to this day, launch in 1992: the Schomburg Center's Women’s Jazz Festival and the annual Summer Institute for Teachers.
1993
Throughout October, actor Billy Dee Williams displays a selection of his paintings at the Schomburg Center. To this day, a painting by Williams still hangs in the entrance of the Art and Artifacts Division.
1997
The Schomburg Center presents the exhibition Bearing Witness, focusing on contemporary art from 25 self-taught Black artists. Meanwhile, selections from the collections appear in Rhapsodies in Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance, which tours the UK.
1998
- Jean Blackwell Hutson dies in New York City at age 83. The New York Times writes that she helped make the Schomburg Center "the world's main public repository of materials on people of African descent," which, at the time her death, held “some 150,000 volumes, 3.5 million manuscripts, [and] the largest assemblage of photographs in the world documenting black life.”
- The Schomburg Center partners with 20 cultural organizations across the city on the exhibition New York Black 100, which celebrates the lives and achievements of 100 some of the most significant Black history-makers from New York City. Honorees include Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Arthur Ashe, Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Whoopi Goldberg.
Digital Schomburg
In 1998, The New York Public Library launched its Digital Collections website, featuring primary source material from the Library’s research centers. The first collection made accessible on the site were materials from the Schomburg Center: 56 texts and more than 500 images. As of 2025, more than a million items from the Library's collections have been digitized. In the following years, the Schomburg Center made leaps to digitize collections and create digital exhibitions and resources, including the #SchomburgSyllabus, a web archive collection.
Image: Digitized letter to Arturo Schomburg from W. E. B. Du Bois, 1936. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division.
2000s
2000
Schomburg director Howard Dodson co-edits the book The Black New Yorkers: The Schomburg Illustrated Chronology alongside Christopher Moore and Roberta Yancey, with a foreword by Maya Angelou. The book Souls Grown Deep: African American Vernacular Art of the South, edited by Paul Arnett and William Arnett, is also published, in association with the Schomburg Center.
2002
The Schomburg Center collaborates with National Geographic Books to publish Jubilee: The Emergence of African-American Culture, written by Schomburg director Howard Dodson, with essays by Amiri Baraka, Gail Buckley, John Hope Franklin, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Annette Gordon-Reed, and Gayraud S. Wilmore.
2003
The Arthur Ashe papers, which document the range of the great tennis player's political, athletic, business, and philanthropic activities, are donated to the Schomburg Center by his wife, Jean Moutoussamy-Ashe.
Junior Scholars Program
In the 2000s, the Schomburg Center launched the popular Junior Scholars Program. Each year, young people participate in this tuition-free Saturday program that promotes historical literacy through college-style lectures and presentations, group discussions and activities, and project-based learning throughout the academic year. Students generate individual research and collaborative multimedia arts projects from their intensive study of the Center’s archives and resources. Among notable teaching artists and instructors are the actor Chadwick Boseman, who served the program from 2002 to 2009.
Image: Junior Scholars visit the Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division and the Photographs and Prints Division. Photos by Lisa Herndon.
2004
The United Nations General Assembly proclaims 2004 as the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle against Slavery and Its Abolition, and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) selects Lest We Forget: The Triumph Over Slavery, a landmark exhibition and paired website by the Schomburg Center, as the traveling exhibition of its yearlong commemoration.
2005
- The exhibition Malcolm X: A Search for Truth opens at the Schomburg Center marking what would have been his 80th birthday and featuring materials from the Malcolm X archival collection.
- The Schomburg Center and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation launch the Schomburg-Mellon Humanities Summer Institute with the aim of encouraging students of color and others with an interest in African American and African Diasporan Studies to pursue graduate studies in the humanities.
2007
The Schomburg Center undergoes a $13 million major renovation with improvements including a refurbished main reading room, renovation and enlargement of the ground floor lobby, and a new scholars’ center.
2010s
Maya Angelou
Award-winning memoirist, poet, and activist Dr. Maya Angelou served as the Schomburg Center’s National Membership Chair for over 10 years. In 2010, the Center acquired her collection of personal papers, letters, and drafts. The collection includes a treasure trove of never-before-seen manuscripts and first drafts of her most notable works—including the memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Phenomenal Woman: Four Poems Celebrating Women, And Still I Rise, and the poem "On the Pulse of Morning," which she recited at President Bill Clinton's first inauguration in 1993—as well as personal and professional correspondence with writers James Baldwin, Marshall Davis, Mari Evans, Hoyt W. Fuller, Rosa Guy, Chester Himes, Dudley Randall, and Sarah E. Wright; human rights activist Malcolm X; photographer Gordon Parks; jazz singer Abbey Lincoln; her longtime editor Robert Loomis; and others.
Image: Angelou at the Schomburg Center in 2010. Photo by Terrence Jennings. The New York Public Library.
2010
The New York Public Library names Khalil Gibran Muhammad as director of the Schomburg Center. During his tenure, Muhammad seeks to expand the Center’s outreach and funding, focusing particularly on programming to attract younger audiences.
2012
The Schomburg Center holds its first annual Black Comic Book Festival.
2014
The Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery is established at the Schomburg Center thanks to a $2.5 million gift from Ruth and Sid Lapidus that is matched by The New York Public Library. The Center's mission is to generate and disseminate scholarly knowledge on the slave trade, slavery, and antislavery pertaining to the Atlantic World. The gift also includes the donation of 400 rare books and printed materials that document slavery.
2015
In its 90th anniversary year, the Schomburg Center wins the National Medal for Museum and Library Service, celebrates its anniversary with special programming and two new exhibitions, The 75th Anniversary of the American Negro Theatre and Digging Up the Past: A History of the Schomburg Center, and launches the digital Emmett Till Project in remembrance of the 60th anniversary of Till's murder.
A Major Renovation
By the 2010s, the Schomburg Center had been largely transformed into the modern, world-class research center that it is today. A major renovation of the building included a complete revamp of the landmark building and the Manuscript Reading Room, a new exterior signage system, a two-story annex with a newly expanded gift shop, improvements to the Langston Hughes Auditorium, and other upgrades (all in 2017). As part of a $22.3 million renovation, the Art and Artifacts Division reopened and moved its collection back home in the spring of 2019 after two and a half years of offsite storage. In 2016, the Center was designated as a National Historic Landmark.
Image: Library staff and community members at the groundbreaking for the Schomburg Center renovation, 2017. The New York Public Library.
2016
- The New York Public Library names Kevin Young as director of the Schomburg Center. During his tenure, Young oversees the acquisition of important archives including those of James Baldwin, Sonny Rollins, and Fab 5 Freddy—and also starts the Schomburg Center’s annual literary festival.
- The Schomburg Center is selected as one of the sites for “A Bench by the Road,” a project initiated by the Toni Morrison Society. Morrison visits the Center, where one of the benches is installed onsite.
- Selections from the Schomburg Center are shown in the exhibition The Color Line: African-American Artists and Segregation at Musée du Quai Branly–Jacques Chirac in Paris.
Black Power Movement at 50
The Schomburg Center marked the 50th anniversary of the Black Power Movement in 2016 with a campaign spearheaded by Dr. Sylviane A. Diouf, the inaugural Lapidus Center Director. The campaign included the exhibition Black Power!, a partnership with Google to launch the websites Black Power! The Movement, The Legacy and Ready for the Revolution: Education, Arts, and Aesthetics of the Black Power Movement, and the publication of the companion book Black Power 50.
Images, left to right: Naturally ‘68 event flyer, 1968, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division. Nadinola Beauty Ad, 1970, Ebony, Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division. People’s Community News, No. 11 (1970), Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division.
2017
The Schomburg Center makes two major acquisitions: the archive of writer and activist James Baldwin, including original manuscripts of some of his most popular works, personal letters, correspondence, and photos; and the archive of groundbreaking musician Sonny Rollins, including personal papers, diaries, notes, and drawings illuminating Rollins’s private thoughts and creative process.
2018
With the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Schomburg Center launches the ongoing “Home to Harlem” initiative to highlight materials and collections relating to major figures including James Baldwin, Sonny Rollins, Ann Petry, Ruby Dee, and Ossie Davis, as well as the annotated manuscripts of The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
2019
The Schomburg Center acquires the archive of hip-hop pioneer and pop culture icon Fred “Fab 5 Freddy” Brathwaite. Highlights include rare and otherwise lost VHS recordings, original scripts and screenplays from early hip-hop cinema collected and developed by Fab 5 including New Jack City, Juice, and Wild Style, and photographs of Fab 5 Freddy's work in the hip-hop community.
2020s
2020
- The Schomburg Center acquires the papers of actor, musician, and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte. The collection includes Belafonte’s music, including his first recording, massive scrapbooks of press coverage from the 1940s, papers documenting his activism with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and more.
- To mark its 95th anniversary, the Schomburg Center publishes the Black Liberation Reading List, a selection of 95 books by Black authors including James Baldwin, Saidiya Hartman, Jesmyn Ward, Deborah Willis, and Colson Whitehead.
- The United States Postal Service releases a special edition postage stamp depicting Arturo Schomburg as part of its Voices of the Harlem Renaissance stamp release.
2021
- The New York Public Library names Joy Bivins as director of the Schomburg Center, a position she holds to this day. The first female chief since Jean Blackwell Huston, Bivins is leading the Center as it expands its digital reach and projects, digitizes landmark collections, welcomes hundreds of new people to public programs and festivals, and marks new milestones in the Center’s civic engagement.
- The Schomburg Center launches the #SchomburgSyllabus, a Black Studies catalog for educators.
- The Schomburg Center collaborates with Penguin Classics to publish Unsung: Unheralded Narratives of American Slavery & Abolition, edited by Dr. Michelle Commander.
2022
- Governor Kathy Hochul commits $8 million for improvements to the Schomburg Center.
- The Schomburg Center holds the inaugural meeting for the New York State Commission on African American History.
Celebrating 50 Years of Hip-Hop
In 2023, to mark the 50th anniversary of the birth of hip-hop, The New York Public Library releases a special edition library card inspired by artwork from an original cassette recording of Wild Style found in the Schomburg Center’s Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division. The cast of the movie and hip-hop fashion icon Dapper Dan are the first patrons to receive a card at a reception in front of press at the Schomburg Center.
Image: Aaron “Sharp” Goodstone, Fab 5 Freddy, Charlie Ahearn, and Martha Cooper display their Wild Style library cards at the Schomburg Center.
2023
- The Schomburg Center's Photographs and Prints Division digitizes its oldest photos, 17 daguerreotype portraits, mostly of Black people, dating from the 1840s and 1850s.
- Selections from the Schomburg Center’s Art and Artifacts Division are featured by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in their exhibition The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism, including one of the Aaron Douglas murals from the Jean Blackwell Hutson Reading Room.
Remaking the World of Arturo Schomburg
Starting in 2024, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Arturo Schomburg's birth, and in partnership with Fisk University, volunteer researchers have gathered at the Schomburg Center to read newly digitized letters written by Schomburg and transcribe them with the aim of making this important collection of Black history more accessible to the public. This was the first time these documents were made available in full color rather than relying on the harder-to-read microfilm. The digitization of the Arthur A. Schomburg papers archival collection is now complete and available via NYPL’s Digital Collections.
Image: Volunteers transcribing Arturo Schomburg's letters at the Schomburg Center. Photo by Jonathan Blanc, The New York Public Library.
2024
The Schomburg Center celebrates 100 years of James Baldwin with dual exhibitions in Harlem and at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, as well as walking tours, a teen creative contest, book giveaways, programs, and more.
100 Years of the Schomburg Center
This year, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its founding! A national landmark and storied research center located in the heart of Harlem, the Schomburg Center is dedicated to the preservation, conservation, and exhibition of Black history and culture, stewarding a collection of 11 million objects.
Stay tuned for our official kickoff in the spring, and join us all year long for a wide array of special events, exhibitions, and more as we celebrate this milestone and continue the legacy of Arturo Schomburg.
