Sky Eclat
JF-Expert Member
- Oct 17, 2012
- 58,636
- 220,349
151 years ago, Arthur Alfonso Schomburg was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, to a black mother and white father who abandoned the household. He arrived in New York 17 years later. He was called the “Sherlock Holmes of Negro History” because of his ability to locate extremely rare or “presumed lost” material written by people of African descent.
When Schomburg was a child, his peers frequently teased him about having no history. White classmates told him that Black people have never accomplished anything of note and never would. The young Schomburg asked his teacher where he might find books on black history and was told there was no such thing. As an extended rebuttal to this teacher, he dedicated his entire life to collecting everything he could and people of African descent wrote. Today, the SCHOMBURG CENTER FOR RESEARCH IN BLACK CULTURE, located at 135th Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem, has over 150,000 volumes of black history and nearly five million artifacts, photographs, magazines, and manuscripts from throughout the world and has become the Mecca for anyone needing to document or research black history.
When Schomburg was a child, his peers frequently teased him about having no history. White classmates told him that Black people have never accomplished anything of note and never would. The young Schomburg asked his teacher where he might find books on black history and was told there was no such thing. As an extended rebuttal to this teacher, he dedicated his entire life to collecting everything he could and people of African descent wrote. Today, the SCHOMBURG CENTER FOR RESEARCH IN BLACK CULTURE, located at 135th Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem, has over 150,000 volumes of black history and nearly five million artifacts, photographs, magazines, and manuscripts from throughout the world and has become the Mecca for anyone needing to document or research black history.
