July 7, 2021 • 40 mins
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture has come up in a lot of research for the show. Schomburg the man was an Afro-Puerto Rican activist and collector, who historian and journalist Joel Augustus Rogers nicknamed “the Sherlock Holmes of Negro History.”
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Over the
last eight years of working on this show, the Schaumberg
(00:21):
Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, New York
has come up in a lot of my work. Research
into the Tulsa massacre reference documents in the Schoenberg collections.
Research into Red Summer included one of the Center's online
exhibitions when I researched Shirley Chisholm that referenced an interview
(00:43):
in the Schaumberg Center's Oral History tape collection. A while back,
we interviewed John B. King Jr. About the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.
He took that document on a seven city tour that
started at the Shawnberg Center. So I've personally used the
Schaumberg Centers online resources, and then the center is also
(01:08):
just all over the footnotes and the papers that I
have read for this show. I just put the word
Schaumberg into the the folder where I have a ton
of stuff save and it was like blooh, I here's
thirty five documents that I'll have the word Schamberg in
them somewhere. So honestly, I'm really embarrassed that it has
taken me this long to wonder, Wait, who is Schaumberg,
(01:32):
and that happened thanks to stumbling across the name Arturo
Alfonso Schamberg in another context, and then wondering is that
the same person that the Schaumberg Center is named after?
It was the same person. He was an Afro Puerto
Rican activist and collector and Jamaican American historian and journalist.
Jewel Augustus Rogers nicknamed him the Sherlock Holmes of Negro history,
(01:57):
having researched his life and work out. I'm just really
annoyed that his name was not immediately familiar to me
the very first time I ever heard of the Schaumberg Center.
He is far less well known than a lot of
his contemporaries from the Harlem Renaissance are today. So we're
going to try to rectify that a little bit with
(02:18):
this episode. Arturo Alfonso Schomberg was born on January seventy
four and what's now the Santurce neighborhood of San Juan,
Puerto Rico. His mother was Maria Josefa, a free born
woman from Saint Croix who was a midwife and a laundress.
His father is often cited as Carlos Frederico Schomberg, who
(02:38):
was born in Puerto Rico and had German ancestry. Arturo's
parents were not married, and it doesn't seem that he
ever met or was legally acknowledged by his father are true.
Also had a younger sister named Dolores. At the time,
Puerto Rico was a Spanish colony, and although there were schools,
there was no free public at accation system accessible to
(03:02):
everyone yet, and most of the schools that did exist
charged tuition. It's possible that Schoenberg spent some time at
one of these schools, although the records that could have
confirmed that were destroyed when the United States invaded Puerto Rico.
In It seems that most of Schoenberg's education was more informal,
(03:23):
so things like clubs and study groups and self study
at libraries, but he described one of the experiences that
had a particular impact on him as happening in a
fifth grade classroom. They did not learn about any black
figures when studying history and he asked the teacher if
black people had a history, and she said no, so
(03:45):
he decided that one day he would prove her wrong.
At one point, Schoenberg's mother returned to Saint Croix, so
he spent some time there while growing up as well,
but a lot of his more formative experiences took place
in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rican journalist Jose julian A Coasta
was one of Schaumberg's mentors and had a huge influence
(04:07):
on him. A Costa had been part of the abolition
movement before the Spanish Assembly abolished slavery in Puerto Rico
in eighteen seventy three. That was just the year before
Schamberg was born. Another big influence was Salvador Brow. Like Schaumberg,
Brow was an autodid act, and in spite of being
self taught, he went on to be Puerto Rico's official historian.
(04:30):
Brow's work in history also included the contributions of black people,
when many other histories did not. Schaumberg eventually became an
apprentice at a print shop in San Juan, and at
the age of seventeen he moved to New York City.
There aren't really any details documented anywhere of what led
him to make this decision and especially to go apparently
(04:51):
by himself. He arrived there on April seventeenth, eighteen ninety one,
carrying some letters of introduction. These included one from Puerto
Rican nationalist Jose Gonzalez font who was his boss at
the print shop, and from tabac arrows or cigar workers
in Puerto Rico. He lived in New York for most
of the rest of his life after this, moving from
(05:13):
Manhattan to Harlem and then to Brooklyn. When Schaumberg arrived
in New York, the Puerto Rican immigrant community in the
United States was quite small, and the idea of a
Puerto Rican racial or ethnic identity had not really evolved yet.
That started happening more in the nineteen thirties after more
people started moving from the island to the continental US,
(05:34):
but the Cuban immigrant community was larger, particularly in Tampa, Florida,
and in New York City. People had moved from Cuba
to the United States at this point for a number
of reasons. One was the Ten Years War, which had
spanned from eighteen sixty eight to eighteen seventy eight. Like
Puerto Rico, Cuba was a Spanish colony, and the Ten
(05:55):
Years War was an uprising that's generally marked as the
beginning of the Cuban independence movement. People fled this violence
and instability where they were exiled because of their involvement.
Tariffs also made it a lot more profitable for companies
to import tobacco to the United States rather than importing
finished cigars from Cuba, So cigar makers built factories in
(06:19):
Florida and New York, and then they hired cigar makers
from Cuba to work at them. When Schaumberg arrived in
New York, the first community he found was among Cuban
tabaqueros in Manhattan. He described his own identity as Afro
born Keno, which was a Cuban term for black Puerto Ricans,
and many of the tabacados were politically very active, continuing
(06:41):
to advocate for Cuban independence and providing money and supplies
to support a potential armed uprising against Spanish colonial rule.
Many Cuban activists also extended their work to include Puerto Rico,
since Cuba and Puerto Rico were Spain's two remaining colonies
in the Caribbean. Some of the first connections Schaumberg made
(07:02):
in New York were with Afro Cuban activist Raphael Sarah
and with Puerto Rican Floor Berga, and both of them
were deeply involved in the independence movements for Spain's Caribbean colonies.
He also became a friend and collaborator with Cuban revolutionary
Jose Marti. Along with other activists, Schaumberg and Sarah co
(07:23):
founded Las dos Antillas or The Two Islands on April third,
eighteen ninety two. This organization contributed money, medicine, and weapons
to independence fighters on both islands. Schaumberg served as the
organizations secretary. He also traveled to New Orleans, which was
another locust of Cuban independence activity, in eighteen ninety two
(07:45):
and joined the Puerto Rican section of the Cuban Revolutionary Party.
In addition to his work and the independence movement, Schaumberg
also taught Spanish while taking night classes at a high
school and studying English. He joined a dominantly Spanish speaking
Masonic lodge called El sold At Cuba number thirty eight
in eighteen ninety two. This lodge was affiliated with the
(08:09):
Prince Hall Mason's which was established as a branch of
Freemasonry for Black Americans in seventeen eighty four. Schaumberg had
become a leader in this lodge by nineteen ten, and
then he also worked at a variety of different jobs,
including being an elevator operator, a bell hop, and a messenger.
On June thirtieth, eighteen ninety five, Schaumberg married Elizabeth Hatcher,
(08:32):
who was known as Bessie and she was a black
woman from Virginia. M They would go on to have
three children, Maximo Gomez, Arturo Alfonso Jr. And King's Lea
Guarion Neck. Elizabeth died in nineteen hundred, at which point
their children went to live with her family in Virginia.
An armed uprising started in Cuba in eighteen ninety five,
(08:53):
and in eighteen ninety seven, amid active fighting in Cuba,
Spain applied the rights of Spain their citizenship to both
Cuba and Puerto Rico, including giving men over the age
of twenty five the right to vote, and then on
November twenty five of that year, Spain also gave Puerto
Rico the right to self government, with the first elections
(09:14):
under that new system held in March of the ongoing
conflict between Cuba and Spain was also sparking tensions between
Spain and the United States. Spain's efforts to put down
the Cuban Uprising were widely covered and sometimes sensationalized in
the U S. Press. Demands for the US to intercede
in Cuba grew after the U s. S. Maine exploded
(09:36):
in Havannah Harbor on February. By April, Spain and the
US were at war, and this conflict is often called
the Spanish American War, but since the US was entering
an ongoing conflict between Spain and Cuba, it is also
called the Spanish Cuban American War. Yes, occasionally people also
(09:57):
include the Philippines and that since the Philippines was an
involved with all of this and had its own outside
the scope of this podcast stuff happening. So this war
formally ended with the Treaty of Paris on December tenth,
and under the terms of this treaty, Cuba became independent,
while Spain ceded Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to
(10:20):
the United States. That means that Puerto Rico's time as
an autonomous island had really been pretty short lived. Obviously,
This is the absolute thinnest of overviews of all of this,
But the end result was that the independence movement that
Schaumberg had been so involved with in the United States
mostly came to an end. Cuba had become independent, although
(10:44):
it was still occupied by US troops, and many, but
certainly not all, of the Puerto Rican community had started
to focus more on cooperation with the US rather than independence,
and divisions started to really grow within that part of
the movement. The last meeting of the Puerto Rican section
of the Cuban Revolutionary Party was held on August two,
(11:06):
and at that meeting, it's members voted to dissolve it.
Las dos Antias dissolved as well, and some of the
people involved with these and other organizations returned to the Caribbean.
Some like Jose Marti, had already returned and had been
killed in the uprising, but others remained in the US
and shifted their attention towards socialism, labor rights, or other
(11:27):
social and political issues. Schaumbergs shifted his attention some as well,
and we will get to that after a sponsor break.
After the end of the Spanish Cuban American War, Altero
Alfonso Schomberg turned more of his attention to looking for
(11:49):
works by black writers, artists, and historical figures from all
over the world and collecting and documenting that work. This
really wasn't new for him. He had studied and worked
with numerous collectors and bibliophiles, many of whom were mostly
self taught like he was, and they were all collecting
and documenting books and articles and artwork and other works
(12:12):
that were related to their own lives and communities. Schaumberg
had a really good memory, and he had a knack
for seeking out information, and he put that to use
trying to build a collection that would demonstrate the achievements
of black people all over the world. At this point,
this was not something that he could turn into a
paying job, though. In nineteen o one he got a
(12:35):
position as a clerk at a law office, and he
told people that he was studying for the bar, but
because of his lack of formal education, or at least
the lack of any documentation of one, he was denied
from taking it. On March seventeenth, nineteen o two, he
got married again, this time to Elizabeth Morrow Taylor, a
black woman from North Carolina. They went on to have
(12:57):
two children, Reginald Stanfield and Nathaniel Jose. In nineteen o five,
Schoenberg made a trip back to Puerto Rico and also
visited the Dominican Republic, and in nineteen o six he
was hired at Banker's Trust Company, and he would work
there for more than twenty years. He started out as
a messenger and worked his way up to being a
supervisor of the Caribbean and Latin American mail section, especially
(13:22):
at the start of his career there. This job really
didn't pay him very much, but it did give him
enough money to buy books and documents and artwork for
his collection. He also did some of his writing, because
he wrote a lot, which we're going to talk more
about in a bit. He did some of his writing
and his collecting on company time, sometimes really to the
annoyance of his own supervisors. He has some letters that
(13:45):
he's written to friends that kind of read like, man,
my boss will not get off my case because I
am trying to track down this book right now. By
the early nineteens, Schaumberg was becoming widely known in New
York for that growing collection and his research into black history.
In nineteen eleven, he co founded the Negro Society for
(14:07):
Historical Research with journalist and Pan africanist John Edward Bruce,
also known as Bruce Grit. Bruce served as president and
Schomberg served as secretary and treasurer. Like Schaumberg, Bruce was
an autodidact. He had been enslaved from birth in eighteen
fifty six and had largely educated himself after the U. S.
(14:27):
Civil War. According to its charter, the Negro Society for
Historical Research was established quote to show that the Negro
race has a history which anti dates that of the
proud Anglo Saxon race. Although David Fulton was formally tapped
to be the Society's librarian, Schomberg ultimately took on a
lot of that work. Over the course of the society's existence,
(14:51):
Schaumberg collected about three hundred volumes for its library, and
when the society eventually disbanded, Schaumberg folded those into his
own collection, which was housed in his home, but was
something that he made available for other people to use.
In July of nine thirteen, Schaumberg delivered a paper to
the teachers summer class at Cheney Institute in Pennsylvania that's
(15:13):
now Cheney University and is recognized as the oldest historically
black college or university in the United States. This address
was titled Racial Integrity, A Plea for the establishment of
a Chair of Negro History in our Schools and Colleges, etcetera.
It called for universities to have chairs of Black history
just like for any other subject, and to adopt standards
(15:36):
that included quote the practical history of the Negro race
from the dawn of civilization to the present time. He
went on in this address the walk through the contributions
of various Black writers and thinkers who were largely omitted
from history texts, before continuing quote, we need in the
coming dawn the man who will give us the background
(15:59):
for our future. Or it matters not whether he comes
from the cloisters of the university or from the rank
and file of the fields. We need the historian and
philosopher to give us, with trenchant pen the story of
our forefathers, and let our soul and body, with bosphorescent light,
brighten the chasm that separates us. Schaumberg saw all this
(16:21):
knowledge about black history as something that could uplift people
of African descent all over the world, and his other
work touched on that idea as well. Towards the end
of World War Two, he had some involvement in Marcus
Garvey's United Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, although
he was never formally a member. His work with Garvey
(16:42):
included assisting him with historical research and doing translations between
English and Spanish. In nineteen fourteen, John Wesley Cromwell and
John Edward Bruce recommended Schoenberg for membership and the American
Negro Academy. The American Negro Academy was a stablished in
eighteen nineties seven by John Wesley Cromwell, and its founding
(17:04):
members included W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Lawrence Dunbar.
Its purpose was to produce and promote academic scholarship by
and for Black people. Schaumberg became its president in nineteen twenties,
serving in that role until the Academy was disbanded in
nineteen Schaumberg's leadership of the American Negro Academy was criticized
(17:26):
by some of its members. The organization already seemed to
be starting to wane when he became its president, but
his light complexion and his Puerto Rican upbringing led some
people to question whether he was black enough to be there.
John Edward Bruce had recommended him for membership, but when
it came to his presidency, he described Schaumberg as a
(17:47):
quote half breed who did not quote think black. Schomberg
made a point to remind the rest of the Academy
that there were black people all over the world, not
just in the United States, and that men a, we're
facing similar racism and oppression to what they experienced in
the US. But that really just fed into perceptions that
(18:08):
his attentions and his loyalties were to the Hispanic world
and not the Black community, which really was almost the
opposite of the point that he was trying to make.
It didn't help that Schaumberg had probably over committed himself
by agreeing to become the Academy's president. He had become
the master of his Masonic lodge, which had been renamed
(18:29):
as Prince Hall Lodge in nineteen fourteen. This name change
reflected a demographic shift. The Spanish speaking membership of l
Solda Cuba had declined, and the lodge had boosted its
numbers by recruiting more English speaking black members. Schaumberg had
personally translated the lodgest Spanish language records and documents into
(18:50):
English so that they would still be accessible to its members.
He had also become Grand Secretary of the New York
State Grand Lodge of the Prince Hall Mason So between
this the academy his day job in his collecting, which
will remind you, he also made his home publicly available.
He had a whole lot on his plate. Oh yeah,
and also he had gotten married for the third time
(19:12):
in nineteen fourteen after the death of his second wife.
His third wife was Elizabeth Greene, and they went on
to have three children together, Fernando Alfonso, Dolores Maria, and
Carlos Plasto. And yes, each of the three women he
married was named Elizabeth. In nineteen eighteen, the Schaumbergs moved
to a house on what some people would call Kusciusco Street.
(19:33):
That street's name is apparently a matter of much debate. Yes,
I watched, I watched a whole video of New Yorker's
disagreeing on how to say the name of it. But
in any case, it is in Brooklyn, U and that
became part home and part private library. Just in terms
of people that we've talked about on the show before.
The library included Frederick Douglas's newspapers, assigned copy of Phyllis
(19:57):
Wheatley's poems along with numerous volumes of her work, Benjamin
Banneker's almanac's, Paul Cuffey's journals, letters by Toussaint Louis Virtue,
playbills and posters from Ira, Frederick Aldridge's stage performances, and
an eighteen News three edition of Ignatius Sancho's letters. I
really feel like if there is a figure from black
(20:19):
history we know about today, he had their work in
his collection. Sure seems like it. Yeah. So Schaumberg had
bought some of this work himself while traveling for his
work with the Freemasons or through book buyers located in
New York. Although he did make a few international trips
during his lifetime, it wasn't really something he could do
(20:40):
very often on his salary. So he also asked the
writers and activists he knew to keep an eye out
for particular fines when they were traveling internationally. This included
finding Spanish language work by and about black people in
Spain and in Spain's former colonial territory in the America's
As we mentioned early year, Schaumberg kept this private collection
(21:02):
not just for his own use, but as a resource
for others. His private library became both a research collection
and a gathering place during the Harlem Renaissance, and we're
going to get into that after we have a little
sponsor break. The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural and artistic
(21:25):
flourishing that was centered around Harlem, New York in the
nineteen twenties and thirties. It's also known as the New
Negro Movement or the New Negro Renaissance, and in the
words of biographer Eleanor de Verney Sinnett, Schaumberg was the
document or of the movement, gathering the work of the
movements poets and novelists and musicians and visual artists and
(21:47):
others and adding them into his collection. And although Schaumberg
himself was no longer living in Harlem, the library served
as a resource for the people who were creating all
of that work, people like Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Bennett
and Eric Walrend and Zora Neil Hurston, All consulted him
and his collection, and he did research work for writer
(22:10):
and poet Claude Mackay. Schaumberg also contributed an essay to
Alan Locke's anthology The New Negro and Interpretation, which is
considered one of the seminal texts of the Harlem Renaissance.
This essay was titled The Negro Digs Up His Past,
and it was first published in Survey Graphic magazine. This
is Schauenberg's most widely available and widely known piece of
(22:33):
writing today, and it became a foundational text for the
discipline of Black studies. It begins quote the American Negro
must remake his past in order to make his future,
before going on to say quote for him, a group
tradition must supply compensation for persecution and pride of race
(22:53):
the antidote for prejudice. History must restore what slavery took away,
for it is the soul damage of slavery that the
present generations must repair and offset. Schaumberg also outlined three
outstanding conclusions that had come from extensive study of black history. Quote. First,
that the Negro has been throughout the centuries of controversy
(23:16):
and active collaborator and often a pioneer in the struggle
for his own freedom and advancement. This is true to
a degree, which makes it the more surprising that it
has not been recognized earlier. Second that by virtue of
their being regarded as something exceptional, even by friends and
well wishers, negroes of attainment and genius have been unfairly
(23:39):
disassociated from the group and group credit lost. Accordingly, Third,
that the remote racial origins of the Negro, far from
being with the race in the world, have been given
to understand, offer a record of credible group achievement when
scientifically viewed, and more important still, that they are a
vital general interest because of their bearing upon the beginnings
(24:02):
and early development of human culture. The year after this
essay was published, Schomberg sold his collection to the New
York Public Library for ten thousand dollars. This was funded
by the Carnegie Corporation and brokered by the National Urban League.
At the time of this sale, Schamberg's collection was described
as a trans national archive of black culture, and it
(24:24):
contained books, poems, sheet music, photographs, newspapers, and other periodicals
written in multiple languages, especially English and Spanish. It totaled
roughly five thousand items, many of them quite rare. The
collection's first home was at the Fifth Street branch of
the New York Public Library in Harlem, and it was
(24:47):
known as the Arthur A. Schomberg Collection of Negro Literature
and Art. Schaumberg had started to go by the name
Arthur sometime after the end of his involvement with the
Puerto Rican Independence movement, and over time he'd gone for
m Arthur Schomberg to A. A. Schamberg, before circling back
around to our Turo Towards the end of his life.
Schaumberg continued to acquire more items and donate them to
(25:10):
the New York Public Library after the sale of the collection.
He also worked with James Weldon Johnson and a women's
group known as the James Weldon Johnson Library Guild to
build out a collection of children's books written for and
about black children. But Schaumberg acknowledged that in many cases
these books just did not exist yet, and he saw
(25:32):
the role of children's librarians as including working toward getting
books like that into prints. Chamberg used some of the
money from the sale of his collection to go to Europe,
and they're scoured European libraries, especially in Spain, to trace
the history of African people in Europe and the Caribbean.
This included visiting the Archivo de las Indias in Spain,
(25:55):
and he hoped to track down previously unknown black writers
and historical figure years in the Spanish speaking world. So
he poured through archives, making note of people described in
Spanish words that meant Moorish or black. He also made
a point to view the work of two black Spanish
painters in person, Wanda Pareja and Sebastian Gomez, both of
(26:17):
whom had been enslaved for most of their lives. On
his return to the United States, he wrote a series
of essays about his research experiences in Spain. On January
one of nineteen thirty, Schoenberg retired from the Bankers Trust Company.
He'd been experiencing headaches and nosebleeds, and that had contributed
to his decision to retire, but he didn't stop working.
(26:40):
Charles S. Johnson, president of Fisk University in Tennessee, asked
him to help build Fisk's collection of Black history and literature.
Fisk is a historically black private university in Nashville, Tennessee.
And Schaumberg was there for about a year from nineteen
thirty one to nineteen thirty two. Schauenberg's work at Fisk
(27:00):
was largely funded through the Carnegie Corporation and the Julius
Rosenwald Fund. In Fisk librarian Lewis Shuree noted that Schamberg
had added four thousand, five hundred twenty four of the
four thousand, six hundred thirty volumes to the Fisk collection.
This had involved purchases of individual volumes and already established collections. Yes,
(27:24):
almost the entire initial collection at the Fisk Library was
through Schomberg's research and work. There have also been some
questions about his work during this period, though One was
about what was expected of him as the curator of
this collection. It seems like he hoped to travel and
personally acquire more books for the collection, but the university
(27:47):
was more expecting him to be on site most of
the time. The other had to do with how he
was appraising books to potentially be added into this collection,
and this leader issue is a little complicated. Although Schaumberg
was not an appraiser, he had a lot of experience
in buying books. The biggest reason he had been able
(28:08):
to get that experience was that book dealers didn't see
books by black authors as valuable, so he was able
to afford to buy lots of rare works by black
writers on a pretty modest salary. When Schaumberg said that
a collection being sold as part of an estate wasn't
worthy of the Fisk Library, the collector's widow accused him
of misrepresenting the collection's value. Regardless, Schauenberg played a huge
(28:32):
and important role of establishing the collection at Fisk. Sometime
around nineteen thirty, Schaumberg also started working on a cookbook,
which a favorite topic of the show. He didn't ever
finish or published this work, though, possibly because what he
conceived in his mind was really an enormous undertaking. According
(28:54):
to his notes, it would not just be recipes. It
would be an international history of black cookinging with biographies
of notable people and Black folk traditions related to food,
along with things like love charms and quote signs and
superstitions and cookery. That is an enormous scope for a book,
(29:14):
and then that was hampered by a lack of primary sources.
A lot of the cookbooks that were written and known
about at that point had been written by white people,
and the very few cookbooks by black people that were
known of we're really rare and very hard to find
copies of. There's also that problem with cookbooks, which is
that they get used don't tend to last the way
(29:37):
a book in a library would um. In nine two,
Schaumberg traveled to Cuba, where he re established his connections
to Afro Cuban leaders and activists and rekindled his sense
of Latino identity. He also searched through archives for work
by Afro Cuban writers, and on his return he published
My Trip to Cuba in Quest for Negro Books. Also
(30:00):
in nineteen thirty two, Schamberg returned to the New York
Public Library, and this drew some more controversy. W. E. B.
Du Bois launched a campaign against it, since Schaumberg's appointment
as curator for the collection that was named for him
was effectively going to demote Katherine Allen Latimer, who was
the New York Public Librariy's first black librarian. Du Boys
(30:23):
and his supporters so that this was not about Schamberg
as a person, but that it undermined an ongoing effort
to get more black people on staff at New York
public libraries, and then that circles back around to the
idea that although du Boys used and respected Schaumberg's collection,
he did not really see Schaumberg as authentically black. We've
(30:46):
been focused mainly on Schaumberg's acquisition of written texts, but
he also thought that visual art was critically important to
black history and the black experience. He curated shows by
black artists and or He tried to raise money to
buy a bust of Othello, which he believed to be
modeled on Ira Frederick Aldridge. This was a challenge the
(31:09):
United States was just getting out of the Great Depression,
but ultimately attorney and civil rights activist Arthur spring Arm
donated enough money to bridge the gap in funds. The
statue was dedicated on January thirtieth, nineteen thirty six. This
led to an unfortunate dispute with Aldridge's daughter Amanda, though
(31:29):
she had written a biography of her father and had
asked Schoenberg to help get it published. And it really
seems like Schomberg was just overly optimistic about that project
and how quickly it might happen. Two years passed before
Amanda asked for the manuscript to be returned, and when
she did, she accused him of using it to suit
his own ends. This happened shortly before the end of
(31:52):
Schomberg's life. He died on June eighth, ninety eight. He
had become seriously ill after having an infected tooth extracted.
He was sixty four when he died. The Schaumberg collection
had faced difficulties with resources and funding even before Schaumberg's death,
and that continued afterward. By the nineteen sixties, some of
(32:14):
the materials and the collection were falling into disrepair, in
part because the library didn't have a climate controlled place
to store them. But today the Schoenberg Center is regarded
as one of the world's foremost research libraries focused specifically
on black culture. It's a library and a research and
cultural space in it was expanded to include exhibition galleries
(32:39):
and the Lynkston Hughes Auditorium in Tift. The library was
awarded the National Medal for Museum and Library Service, and
it was named a National Historic Landmark in ten. In
addition to historians and academics who use its collections for research,
it has also inspired poets, writers, playwrights, filmmaker and visual artists.
(33:01):
According to a paper by Howard Dodson, Denzel Washington used
the Center's film collection to study characters and prepare himself
for different roles. Yeah, and that paper says he would
basically disguise himself and go to the film collection. As
for Schomberg himself, he was included in biographical collections of
(33:24):
notable black figures from the nineteen teens through the nineteen thirties,
but after that point he mostly fell out of you
for decades. The first full length biography of him was
Arthur Alfonso Schomberg, Black Bibliophile and Collector, which came out
in nineteen eighty nine. Another book, Diasporic Blackness, The Life
and Times of Artiro Alfonso Schomberg, by Vanessa k Valdez,
(33:47):
came out in seventeen. He was also honored with a
postage stamp as part of the United States Postal Services
Voices of the Harlem Renaissance series, which just came out
in There has been a urge of academic work about
him very recently, though, in the journal Small Acts published
a special section that included multiple articles on Schaumberg the
(34:09):
spring summer one issue of the African American Review is
entirely dedicated to him, which Tracy fortunately discovered after she
chose the topic, but before she got into the research.
That doesn't always happen for us, No, there, it really doesn't.
There was a whole, a whole special issue that was
a hundred percent about a historical retrospective on the nineteen
(34:33):
eighteen flu that came out like right after we finished
that episode. Uh So, a lot of the academic work
on Schomberg has kind of wrestled with his identity, both
as he saw himself and as other people saw him,
and sort of how to interpret it all. We talked
about how he was seen as something of an outsider
(34:54):
at the American Negro Academy and how his Latino heritage
let at least some people to question his blackness. During
his lifetime, critics also told him to go home to
Puerto Rico, but kind of the converse of that is
also true. He also faced racism and colorism among Puerto
Rican and Cuban activist communities because of his African ancestry
(35:18):
and his embrace of that ancestry. His use of language
was also criticized from every side. Editors often reworked his
English language prose extensively. Alan Locke once wrote, quote, my
good loyal friend Schaumberg can gather facts, but he cannot write.
He was trained in Puerto Rico on florid Spanish, and
(35:40):
his English is impossible. And Spanish speakers criticized his Spanish,
even accusing him of forgetting in. But in some cases
it wasn't that he had forgotten anything. It was that
he had learned to speak Spanish in Puerto Rico with
very little formal education, and then moved among communities in
the US that we're speaking a more hybridized Spanglish, although
(36:00):
the term Spanglish, we should be clear, had not been
coined yet. The most recent scholarship on him has seemed
a lot less focused on trying to quantify our true
Alfonso Schaumberg and kind of an either or way or
interpreting him as a bridge between the Puerto Rican and
Black communities. Instead, there's a lot more recent writing that
(36:21):
notes all the ways that he was both black and
Puerto Rican, and that really fits right in with his
own quest to document the achievements of black people all
over the world and his remarks on how the history
of the Caribbean and Latin America as we know it
today would be impossible without black people. I'm so glad.
(36:41):
I just stumbled across his name in a random article
and it finally made me go, who is this person
who the library I have used so much is named after?
I'm glad too. Um, do you have Glad listener mail?
I do I do have listener mail? This is from Nicole. Uh.
I am hoping I said that right because it is
a slightly unusual spelling, and Nichole says, Hi, Holly and Tracy.
(37:04):
I just wrapped up the Operation paper Clip episodes and
had to email you about Fort Hunt Park, a national
park a few miles from Mount Vernon. It's your typical
park with horses, trails, softball fields, pavilions and Spanish American
slash World War One era, a large gun battlements and
a guard tower. There is also a lovely placard noting
(37:26):
Operation paper Clip and the other top secret work that
happened there during World War Two. It is certainly a
shock when you pull into the park and you see
the old batteries that have been reinforced for people to
explore the outside. The interiors are closed to the public.
It's also where we held our wedding reception. Our ceremony
was at the World War One Monument on the National Mall.
(37:48):
It has always been a favorite spot before I met
my now husband, and now we often take our daughter
there to explore and occasionally lose our keys. It is
a striking reminder that history is all around us and
woven in to our d n a and continues to
impact and shape us. I also wanted to mention that
you all read mail from my sister after the Bisbee deportation,
(38:08):
and I believe she is still ahead of me in
the race to keep up to date with your podcast.
She mentioned how our mother met Martin Luther King, and
I wanted to mention that our mom went on to
serve in the Air Force as an intelligence officer during Vietnam.
She now spends her time making well over five thousand
wounded warrior quilts, and I'm proud to say my sister
(38:29):
has the same skills and kind heart. I am not
allowed nearest sewing machine. I've attached a few photos from
Fort Hunt to get an idea of the scope of
the park. Please excuse the photos of the kissing dorks
they've made us for the awkward engagement photos, and it
was a hundred and five degrees and I was ten
weeks pregnant and forty years old. Thank you for continuing
(38:49):
to share the good, bad and ugly of our world.
Best Nicole, Thank you so much, Nicole for this email
and also for the pictures. I found them to be
charming charming, I agree, and I also I looked at
one of them and I was like, there's a little
twining vine hanging off one of those trees in the background.
Is that ked zoo um? I don't know if it
(39:11):
was katzo were not. It's hard to identify plant way
off in the distance from a from a picture. But anyway,
thank you so much for scinitis. I had honestly never
heard of this park before, but it does look like
a nice place to to wander and explore and you know,
think about all the various ways that history has uh
has continued to influence us all, So thank you so
much for this email. If you would like to write
(39:34):
to us about this or any other podcast, for a
history podcast at I heeart radio dot com and we're
all over social media at miss in History. That's where
you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, in Instagram, and you
can subscribe to our show on the I heart Radio
app and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Stuff you
(39:57):
Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. H
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Over the
last eight years of working on this show, the Schaumberg
(00:21):
Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, New York
has come up in a lot of my work. Research
into the Tulsa massacre reference documents in the Schoenberg collections.
Research into Red Summer included one of the Center's online
exhibitions when I researched Shirley Chisholm that referenced an interview
(00:43):
in the Schaumberg Center's Oral History tape collection. A while back,
we interviewed John B. King Jr. About the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.
He took that document on a seven city tour that
started at the Shawnberg Center. So I've personally used the
Schaumberg Centers online resources, and then the center is also
(01:08):
just all over the footnotes and the papers that I
have read for this show. I just put the word
Schaumberg into the the folder where I have a ton
of stuff save and it was like blooh, I here's
thirty five documents that I'll have the word Schamberg in
them somewhere. So honestly, I'm really embarrassed that it has
taken me this long to wonder, Wait, who is Schaumberg,
(01:32):
and that happened thanks to stumbling across the name Arturo
Alfonso Schamberg in another context, and then wondering is that
the same person that the Schaumberg Center is named after?
It was the same person. He was an Afro Puerto
Rican activist and collector and Jamaican American historian and journalist.
Jewel Augustus Rogers nicknamed him the Sherlock Holmes of Negro history,
(01:57):
having researched his life and work out. I'm just really
annoyed that his name was not immediately familiar to me
the very first time I ever heard of the Schaumberg Center.
He is far less well known than a lot of
his contemporaries from the Harlem Renaissance are today. So we're
going to try to rectify that a little bit with
(02:18):
this episode. Arturo Alfonso Schomberg was born on January seventy
four and what's now the Santurce neighborhood of San Juan,
Puerto Rico. His mother was Maria Josefa, a free born
woman from Saint Croix who was a midwife and a laundress.
His father is often cited as Carlos Frederico Schomberg, who
(02:38):
was born in Puerto Rico and had German ancestry. Arturo's
parents were not married, and it doesn't seem that he
ever met or was legally acknowledged by his father are true.
Also had a younger sister named Dolores. At the time,
Puerto Rico was a Spanish colony, and although there were schools,
there was no free public at accation system accessible to
(03:02):
everyone yet, and most of the schools that did exist
charged tuition. It's possible that Schoenberg spent some time at
one of these schools, although the records that could have
confirmed that were destroyed when the United States invaded Puerto Rico.
In It seems that most of Schoenberg's education was more informal,
(03:23):
so things like clubs and study groups and self study
at libraries, but he described one of the experiences that
had a particular impact on him as happening in a
fifth grade classroom. They did not learn about any black
figures when studying history and he asked the teacher if
black people had a history, and she said no, so
(03:45):
he decided that one day he would prove her wrong.
At one point, Schoenberg's mother returned to Saint Croix, so
he spent some time there while growing up as well,
but a lot of his more formative experiences took place
in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rican journalist Jose julian A Coasta
was one of Schaumberg's mentors and had a huge influence
(04:07):
on him. A Costa had been part of the abolition
movement before the Spanish Assembly abolished slavery in Puerto Rico
in eighteen seventy three. That was just the year before
Schamberg was born. Another big influence was Salvador Brow. Like Schaumberg,
Brow was an autodid act, and in spite of being
self taught, he went on to be Puerto Rico's official historian.
(04:30):
Brow's work in history also included the contributions of black people,
when many other histories did not. Schaumberg eventually became an
apprentice at a print shop in San Juan, and at
the age of seventeen he moved to New York City.
There aren't really any details documented anywhere of what led
him to make this decision and especially to go apparently
(04:51):
by himself. He arrived there on April seventeenth, eighteen ninety one,
carrying some letters of introduction. These included one from Puerto
Rican nationalist Jose Gonzalez font who was his boss at
the print shop, and from tabac arrows or cigar workers
in Puerto Rico. He lived in New York for most
of the rest of his life after this, moving from
(05:13):
Manhattan to Harlem and then to Brooklyn. When Schaumberg arrived
in New York, the Puerto Rican immigrant community in the
United States was quite small, and the idea of a
Puerto Rican racial or ethnic identity had not really evolved yet.
That started happening more in the nineteen thirties after more
people started moving from the island to the continental US,
(05:34):
but the Cuban immigrant community was larger, particularly in Tampa, Florida,
and in New York City. People had moved from Cuba
to the United States at this point for a number
of reasons. One was the Ten Years War, which had
spanned from eighteen sixty eight to eighteen seventy eight. Like
Puerto Rico, Cuba was a Spanish colony, and the Ten
(05:55):
Years War was an uprising that's generally marked as the
beginning of the Cuban independence movement. People fled this violence
and instability where they were exiled because of their involvement.
Tariffs also made it a lot more profitable for companies
to import tobacco to the United States rather than importing
finished cigars from Cuba, So cigar makers built factories in
(06:19):
Florida and New York, and then they hired cigar makers
from Cuba to work at them. When Schaumberg arrived in
New York, the first community he found was among Cuban
tabaqueros in Manhattan. He described his own identity as Afro
born Keno, which was a Cuban term for black Puerto Ricans,
and many of the tabacados were politically very active, continuing
(06:41):
to advocate for Cuban independence and providing money and supplies
to support a potential armed uprising against Spanish colonial rule.
Many Cuban activists also extended their work to include Puerto Rico,
since Cuba and Puerto Rico were Spain's two remaining colonies
in the Caribbean. Some of the first connections Schaumberg made
(07:02):
in New York were with Afro Cuban activist Raphael Sarah
and with Puerto Rican Floor Berga, and both of them
were deeply involved in the independence movements for Spain's Caribbean colonies.
He also became a friend and collaborator with Cuban revolutionary
Jose Marti. Along with other activists, Schaumberg and Sarah co
(07:23):
founded Las dos Antillas or The Two Islands on April third,
eighteen ninety two. This organization contributed money, medicine, and weapons
to independence fighters on both islands. Schaumberg served as the
organizations secretary. He also traveled to New Orleans, which was
another locust of Cuban independence activity, in eighteen ninety two
(07:45):
and joined the Puerto Rican section of the Cuban Revolutionary Party.
In addition to his work and the independence movement, Schaumberg
also taught Spanish while taking night classes at a high
school and studying English. He joined a dominantly Spanish speaking
Masonic lodge called El sold At Cuba number thirty eight
in eighteen ninety two. This lodge was affiliated with the
(08:09):
Prince Hall Mason's which was established as a branch of
Freemasonry for Black Americans in seventeen eighty four. Schaumberg had
become a leader in this lodge by nineteen ten, and
then he also worked at a variety of different jobs,
including being an elevator operator, a bell hop, and a messenger.
On June thirtieth, eighteen ninety five, Schaumberg married Elizabeth Hatcher,
(08:32):
who was known as Bessie and she was a black
woman from Virginia. M They would go on to have
three children, Maximo Gomez, Arturo Alfonso Jr. And King's Lea
Guarion Neck. Elizabeth died in nineteen hundred, at which point
their children went to live with her family in Virginia.
An armed uprising started in Cuba in eighteen ninety five,
(08:53):
and in eighteen ninety seven, amid active fighting in Cuba,
Spain applied the rights of Spain their citizenship to both
Cuba and Puerto Rico, including giving men over the age
of twenty five the right to vote, and then on
November twenty five of that year, Spain also gave Puerto
Rico the right to self government, with the first elections
(09:14):
under that new system held in March of the ongoing
conflict between Cuba and Spain was also sparking tensions between
Spain and the United States. Spain's efforts to put down
the Cuban Uprising were widely covered and sometimes sensationalized in
the U S. Press. Demands for the US to intercede
in Cuba grew after the U s. S. Maine exploded
(09:36):
in Havannah Harbor on February. By April, Spain and the
US were at war, and this conflict is often called
the Spanish American War, but since the US was entering
an ongoing conflict between Spain and Cuba, it is also
called the Spanish Cuban American War. Yes, occasionally people also
(09:57):
include the Philippines and that since the Philippines was an
involved with all of this and had its own outside
the scope of this podcast stuff happening. So this war
formally ended with the Treaty of Paris on December tenth,
and under the terms of this treaty, Cuba became independent,
while Spain ceded Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to
(10:20):
the United States. That means that Puerto Rico's time as
an autonomous island had really been pretty short lived. Obviously,
This is the absolute thinnest of overviews of all of this,
But the end result was that the independence movement that
Schaumberg had been so involved with in the United States
mostly came to an end. Cuba had become independent, although
(10:44):
it was still occupied by US troops, and many, but
certainly not all, of the Puerto Rican community had started
to focus more on cooperation with the US rather than independence,
and divisions started to really grow within that part of
the movement. The last meeting of the Puerto Rican section
of the Cuban Revolutionary Party was held on August two,
(11:06):
and at that meeting, it's members voted to dissolve it.
Las dos Antias dissolved as well, and some of the
people involved with these and other organizations returned to the Caribbean.
Some like Jose Marti, had already returned and had been
killed in the uprising, but others remained in the US
and shifted their attention towards socialism, labor rights, or other
(11:27):
social and political issues. Schaumbergs shifted his attention some as well,
and we will get to that after a sponsor break.
After the end of the Spanish Cuban American War, Altero
Alfonso Schomberg turned more of his attention to looking for
(11:49):
works by black writers, artists, and historical figures from all
over the world and collecting and documenting that work. This
really wasn't new for him. He had studied and worked
with numerous collectors and bibliophiles, many of whom were mostly
self taught like he was, and they were all collecting
and documenting books and articles and artwork and other works
(12:12):
that were related to their own lives and communities. Schaumberg
had a really good memory, and he had a knack
for seeking out information, and he put that to use
trying to build a collection that would demonstrate the achievements
of black people all over the world. At this point,
this was not something that he could turn into a
paying job, though. In nineteen o one he got a
(12:35):
position as a clerk at a law office, and he
told people that he was studying for the bar, but
because of his lack of formal education, or at least
the lack of any documentation of one, he was denied
from taking it. On March seventeenth, nineteen o two, he
got married again, this time to Elizabeth Morrow Taylor, a
black woman from North Carolina. They went on to have
(12:57):
two children, Reginald Stanfield and Nathaniel Jose. In nineteen o five,
Schoenberg made a trip back to Puerto Rico and also
visited the Dominican Republic, and in nineteen o six he
was hired at Banker's Trust Company, and he would work
there for more than twenty years. He started out as
a messenger and worked his way up to being a
supervisor of the Caribbean and Latin American mail section, especially
(13:22):
at the start of his career there. This job really
didn't pay him very much, but it did give him
enough money to buy books and documents and artwork for
his collection. He also did some of his writing, because
he wrote a lot, which we're going to talk more
about in a bit. He did some of his writing
and his collecting on company time, sometimes really to the
annoyance of his own supervisors. He has some letters that
(13:45):
he's written to friends that kind of read like, man,
my boss will not get off my case because I
am trying to track down this book right now. By
the early nineteens, Schaumberg was becoming widely known in New
York for that growing collection and his research into black history.
In nineteen eleven, he co founded the Negro Society for
(14:07):
Historical Research with journalist and Pan africanist John Edward Bruce,
also known as Bruce Grit. Bruce served as president and
Schomberg served as secretary and treasurer. Like Schaumberg, Bruce was
an autodidact. He had been enslaved from birth in eighteen
fifty six and had largely educated himself after the U. S.
(14:27):
Civil War. According to its charter, the Negro Society for
Historical Research was established quote to show that the Negro
race has a history which anti dates that of the
proud Anglo Saxon race. Although David Fulton was formally tapped
to be the Society's librarian, Schomberg ultimately took on a
lot of that work. Over the course of the society's existence,
(14:51):
Schaumberg collected about three hundred volumes for its library, and
when the society eventually disbanded, Schaumberg folded those into his
own collection, which was housed in his home, but was
something that he made available for other people to use.
In July of nine thirteen, Schaumberg delivered a paper to
the teachers summer class at Cheney Institute in Pennsylvania that's
(15:13):
now Cheney University and is recognized as the oldest historically
black college or university in the United States. This address
was titled Racial Integrity, A Plea for the establishment of
a Chair of Negro History in our Schools and Colleges, etcetera.
It called for universities to have chairs of Black history
just like for any other subject, and to adopt standards
(15:36):
that included quote the practical history of the Negro race
from the dawn of civilization to the present time. He
went on in this address the walk through the contributions
of various Black writers and thinkers who were largely omitted
from history texts, before continuing quote, we need in the
coming dawn the man who will give us the background
(15:59):
for our future. Or it matters not whether he comes
from the cloisters of the university or from the rank
and file of the fields. We need the historian and
philosopher to give us, with trenchant pen the story of
our forefathers, and let our soul and body, with bosphorescent light,
brighten the chasm that separates us. Schaumberg saw all this
(16:21):
knowledge about black history as something that could uplift people
of African descent all over the world, and his other
work touched on that idea as well. Towards the end
of World War Two, he had some involvement in Marcus
Garvey's United Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, although
he was never formally a member. His work with Garvey
(16:42):
included assisting him with historical research and doing translations between
English and Spanish. In nineteen fourteen, John Wesley Cromwell and
John Edward Bruce recommended Schoenberg for membership and the American
Negro Academy. The American Negro Academy was a stablished in
eighteen nineties seven by John Wesley Cromwell, and its founding
(17:04):
members included W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Lawrence Dunbar.
Its purpose was to produce and promote academic scholarship by
and for Black people. Schaumberg became its president in nineteen twenties,
serving in that role until the Academy was disbanded in
nineteen Schaumberg's leadership of the American Negro Academy was criticized
(17:26):
by some of its members. The organization already seemed to
be starting to wane when he became its president, but
his light complexion and his Puerto Rican upbringing led some
people to question whether he was black enough to be there.
John Edward Bruce had recommended him for membership, but when
it came to his presidency, he described Schaumberg as a
(17:47):
quote half breed who did not quote think black. Schomberg
made a point to remind the rest of the Academy
that there were black people all over the world, not
just in the United States, and that men a, we're
facing similar racism and oppression to what they experienced in
the US. But that really just fed into perceptions that
(18:08):
his attentions and his loyalties were to the Hispanic world
and not the Black community, which really was almost the
opposite of the point that he was trying to make.
It didn't help that Schaumberg had probably over committed himself
by agreeing to become the Academy's president. He had become
the master of his Masonic lodge, which had been renamed
(18:29):
as Prince Hall Lodge in nineteen fourteen. This name change
reflected a demographic shift. The Spanish speaking membership of l
Solda Cuba had declined, and the lodge had boosted its
numbers by recruiting more English speaking black members. Schaumberg had
personally translated the lodgest Spanish language records and documents into
(18:50):
English so that they would still be accessible to its members.
He had also become Grand Secretary of the New York
State Grand Lodge of the Prince Hall Mason So between
this the academy his day job in his collecting, which
will remind you, he also made his home publicly available.
He had a whole lot on his plate. Oh yeah,
and also he had gotten married for the third time
(19:12):
in nineteen fourteen after the death of his second wife.
His third wife was Elizabeth Greene, and they went on
to have three children together, Fernando Alfonso, Dolores Maria, and
Carlos Plasto. And yes, each of the three women he
married was named Elizabeth. In nineteen eighteen, the Schaumbergs moved
to a house on what some people would call Kusciusco Street.
(19:33):
That street's name is apparently a matter of much debate. Yes,
I watched, I watched a whole video of New Yorker's
disagreeing on how to say the name of it. But
in any case, it is in Brooklyn, U and that
became part home and part private library. Just in terms
of people that we've talked about on the show before.
The library included Frederick Douglas's newspapers, assigned copy of Phyllis
(19:57):
Wheatley's poems along with numerous volumes of her work, Benjamin
Banneker's almanac's, Paul Cuffey's journals, letters by Toussaint Louis Virtue,
playbills and posters from Ira, Frederick Aldridge's stage performances, and
an eighteen News three edition of Ignatius Sancho's letters. I
really feel like if there is a figure from black
(20:19):
history we know about today, he had their work in
his collection. Sure seems like it. Yeah. So Schaumberg had
bought some of this work himself while traveling for his
work with the Freemasons or through book buyers located in
New York. Although he did make a few international trips
during his lifetime, it wasn't really something he could do
(20:40):
very often on his salary. So he also asked the
writers and activists he knew to keep an eye out
for particular fines when they were traveling internationally. This included
finding Spanish language work by and about black people in
Spain and in Spain's former colonial territory in the America's
As we mentioned early year, Schaumberg kept this private collection
(21:02):
not just for his own use, but as a resource
for others. His private library became both a research collection
and a gathering place during the Harlem Renaissance, and we're
going to get into that after we have a little
sponsor break. The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural and artistic
(21:25):
flourishing that was centered around Harlem, New York in the
nineteen twenties and thirties. It's also known as the New
Negro Movement or the New Negro Renaissance, and in the
words of biographer Eleanor de Verney Sinnett, Schaumberg was the
document or of the movement, gathering the work of the
movements poets and novelists and musicians and visual artists and
(21:47):
others and adding them into his collection. And although Schaumberg
himself was no longer living in Harlem, the library served
as a resource for the people who were creating all
of that work, people like Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Bennett
and Eric Walrend and Zora Neil Hurston, All consulted him
and his collection, and he did research work for writer
(22:10):
and poet Claude Mackay. Schaumberg also contributed an essay to
Alan Locke's anthology The New Negro and Interpretation, which is
considered one of the seminal texts of the Harlem Renaissance.
This essay was titled The Negro Digs Up His Past,
and it was first published in Survey Graphic magazine. This
is Schauenberg's most widely available and widely known piece of
(22:33):
writing today, and it became a foundational text for the
discipline of Black studies. It begins quote the American Negro
must remake his past in order to make his future,
before going on to say quote for him, a group
tradition must supply compensation for persecution and pride of race
(22:53):
the antidote for prejudice. History must restore what slavery took away,
for it is the soul damage of slavery that the
present generations must repair and offset. Schaumberg also outlined three
outstanding conclusions that had come from extensive study of black history. Quote. First,
that the Negro has been throughout the centuries of controversy
(23:16):
and active collaborator and often a pioneer in the struggle
for his own freedom and advancement. This is true to
a degree, which makes it the more surprising that it
has not been recognized earlier. Second that by virtue of
their being regarded as something exceptional, even by friends and
well wishers, negroes of attainment and genius have been unfairly
(23:39):
disassociated from the group and group credit lost. Accordingly, Third,
that the remote racial origins of the Negro, far from
being with the race in the world, have been given
to understand, offer a record of credible group achievement when
scientifically viewed, and more important still, that they are a
vital general interest because of their bearing upon the beginnings
(24:02):
and early development of human culture. The year after this
essay was published, Schomberg sold his collection to the New
York Public Library for ten thousand dollars. This was funded
by the Carnegie Corporation and brokered by the National Urban League.
At the time of this sale, Schamberg's collection was described
as a trans national archive of black culture, and it
(24:24):
contained books, poems, sheet music, photographs, newspapers, and other periodicals
written in multiple languages, especially English and Spanish. It totaled
roughly five thousand items, many of them quite rare. The
collection's first home was at the Fifth Street branch of
the New York Public Library in Harlem, and it was
(24:47):
known as the Arthur A. Schomberg Collection of Negro Literature
and Art. Schaumberg had started to go by the name
Arthur sometime after the end of his involvement with the
Puerto Rican Independence movement, and over time he'd gone for
m Arthur Schomberg to A. A. Schamberg, before circling back
around to our Turo Towards the end of his life.
Schaumberg continued to acquire more items and donate them to
(25:10):
the New York Public Library after the sale of the collection.
He also worked with James Weldon Johnson and a women's
group known as the James Weldon Johnson Library Guild to
build out a collection of children's books written for and
about black children. But Schaumberg acknowledged that in many cases
these books just did not exist yet, and he saw
(25:32):
the role of children's librarians as including working toward getting
books like that into prints. Chamberg used some of the
money from the sale of his collection to go to Europe,
and they're scoured European libraries, especially in Spain, to trace
the history of African people in Europe and the Caribbean.
This included visiting the Archivo de las Indias in Spain,
(25:55):
and he hoped to track down previously unknown black writers
and historical figure years in the Spanish speaking world. So
he poured through archives, making note of people described in
Spanish words that meant Moorish or black. He also made
a point to view the work of two black Spanish
painters in person, Wanda Pareja and Sebastian Gomez, both of
(26:17):
whom had been enslaved for most of their lives. On
his return to the United States, he wrote a series
of essays about his research experiences in Spain. On January
one of nineteen thirty, Schoenberg retired from the Bankers Trust Company.
He'd been experiencing headaches and nosebleeds, and that had contributed
to his decision to retire, but he didn't stop working.
(26:40):
Charles S. Johnson, president of Fisk University in Tennessee, asked
him to help build Fisk's collection of Black history and literature.
Fisk is a historically black private university in Nashville, Tennessee.
And Schaumberg was there for about a year from nineteen
thirty one to nineteen thirty two. Schauenberg's work at Fisk
(27:00):
was largely funded through the Carnegie Corporation and the Julius
Rosenwald Fund. In Fisk librarian Lewis Shuree noted that Schamberg
had added four thousand, five hundred twenty four of the
four thousand, six hundred thirty volumes to the Fisk collection.
This had involved purchases of individual volumes and already established collections. Yes,
(27:24):
almost the entire initial collection at the Fisk Library was
through Schomberg's research and work. There have also been some
questions about his work during this period, though One was
about what was expected of him as the curator of
this collection. It seems like he hoped to travel and
personally acquire more books for the collection, but the university
(27:47):
was more expecting him to be on site most of
the time. The other had to do with how he
was appraising books to potentially be added into this collection,
and this leader issue is a little complicated. Although Schaumberg
was not an appraiser, he had a lot of experience
in buying books. The biggest reason he had been able
(28:08):
to get that experience was that book dealers didn't see
books by black authors as valuable, so he was able
to afford to buy lots of rare works by black
writers on a pretty modest salary. When Schaumberg said that
a collection being sold as part of an estate wasn't
worthy of the Fisk Library, the collector's widow accused him
of misrepresenting the collection's value. Regardless, Schauenberg played a huge
(28:32):
and important role of establishing the collection at Fisk. Sometime
around nineteen thirty, Schaumberg also started working on a cookbook,
which a favorite topic of the show. He didn't ever
finish or published this work, though, possibly because what he
conceived in his mind was really an enormous undertaking. According
(28:54):
to his notes, it would not just be recipes. It
would be an international history of black cookinging with biographies
of notable people and Black folk traditions related to food,
along with things like love charms and quote signs and
superstitions and cookery. That is an enormous scope for a book,
(29:14):
and then that was hampered by a lack of primary sources.
A lot of the cookbooks that were written and known
about at that point had been written by white people,
and the very few cookbooks by black people that were
known of we're really rare and very hard to find
copies of. There's also that problem with cookbooks, which is
that they get used don't tend to last the way
(29:37):
a book in a library would um. In nine two,
Schaumberg traveled to Cuba, where he re established his connections
to Afro Cuban leaders and activists and rekindled his sense
of Latino identity. He also searched through archives for work
by Afro Cuban writers, and on his return he published
My Trip to Cuba in Quest for Negro Books. Also
(30:00):
in nineteen thirty two, Schamberg returned to the New York
Public Library, and this drew some more controversy. W. E. B.
Du Bois launched a campaign against it, since Schaumberg's appointment
as curator for the collection that was named for him
was effectively going to demote Katherine Allen Latimer, who was
the New York Public Librariy's first black librarian. Du Boys
(30:23):
and his supporters so that this was not about Schamberg
as a person, but that it undermined an ongoing effort
to get more black people on staff at New York
public libraries, and then that circles back around to the
idea that although du Boys used and respected Schaumberg's collection,
he did not really see Schaumberg as authentically black. We've
(30:46):
been focused mainly on Schaumberg's acquisition of written texts, but
he also thought that visual art was critically important to
black history and the black experience. He curated shows by
black artists and or He tried to raise money to
buy a bust of Othello, which he believed to be
modeled on Ira Frederick Aldridge. This was a challenge the
(31:09):
United States was just getting out of the Great Depression,
but ultimately attorney and civil rights activist Arthur spring Arm
donated enough money to bridge the gap in funds. The
statue was dedicated on January thirtieth, nineteen thirty six. This
led to an unfortunate dispute with Aldridge's daughter Amanda, though
(31:29):
she had written a biography of her father and had
asked Schoenberg to help get it published. And it really
seems like Schomberg was just overly optimistic about that project
and how quickly it might happen. Two years passed before
Amanda asked for the manuscript to be returned, and when
she did, she accused him of using it to suit
his own ends. This happened shortly before the end of
(31:52):
Schomberg's life. He died on June eighth, ninety eight. He
had become seriously ill after having an infected tooth extracted.
He was sixty four when he died. The Schaumberg collection
had faced difficulties with resources and funding even before Schaumberg's death,
and that continued afterward. By the nineteen sixties, some of
(32:14):
the materials and the collection were falling into disrepair, in
part because the library didn't have a climate controlled place
to store them. But today the Schoenberg Center is regarded
as one of the world's foremost research libraries focused specifically
on black culture. It's a library and a research and
cultural space in it was expanded to include exhibition galleries
(32:39):
and the Lynkston Hughes Auditorium in Tift. The library was
awarded the National Medal for Museum and Library Service, and
it was named a National Historic Landmark in ten. In
addition to historians and academics who use its collections for research,
it has also inspired poets, writers, playwrights, filmmaker and visual artists.
(33:01):
According to a paper by Howard Dodson, Denzel Washington used
the Center's film collection to study characters and prepare himself
for different roles. Yeah, and that paper says he would
basically disguise himself and go to the film collection. As
for Schomberg himself, he was included in biographical collections of
(33:24):
notable black figures from the nineteen teens through the nineteen thirties,
but after that point he mostly fell out of you
for decades. The first full length biography of him was
Arthur Alfonso Schomberg, Black Bibliophile and Collector, which came out
in nineteen eighty nine. Another book, Diasporic Blackness, The Life
and Times of Artiro Alfonso Schomberg, by Vanessa k Valdez,
(33:47):
came out in seventeen. He was also honored with a
postage stamp as part of the United States Postal Services
Voices of the Harlem Renaissance series, which just came out
in There has been a urge of academic work about
him very recently, though, in the journal Small Acts published
a special section that included multiple articles on Schaumberg the
(34:09):
spring summer one issue of the African American Review is
entirely dedicated to him, which Tracy fortunately discovered after she
chose the topic, but before she got into the research.
That doesn't always happen for us, No, there, it really doesn't.
There was a whole, a whole special issue that was
a hundred percent about a historical retrospective on the nineteen
(34:33):
eighteen flu that came out like right after we finished
that episode. Uh So, a lot of the academic work
on Schomberg has kind of wrestled with his identity, both
as he saw himself and as other people saw him,
and sort of how to interpret it all. We talked
about how he was seen as something of an outsider
(34:54):
at the American Negro Academy and how his Latino heritage
let at least some people to question his blackness. During
his lifetime, critics also told him to go home to
Puerto Rico, but kind of the converse of that is
also true. He also faced racism and colorism among Puerto
Rican and Cuban activist communities because of his African ancestry
(35:18):
and his embrace of that ancestry. His use of language
was also criticized from every side. Editors often reworked his
English language prose extensively. Alan Locke once wrote, quote, my
good loyal friend Schaumberg can gather facts, but he cannot write.
He was trained in Puerto Rico on florid Spanish, and
(35:40):
his English is impossible. And Spanish speakers criticized his Spanish,
even accusing him of forgetting in. But in some cases
it wasn't that he had forgotten anything. It was that
he had learned to speak Spanish in Puerto Rico with
very little formal education, and then moved among communities in
the US that we're speaking a more hybridized Spanglish, although
(36:00):
the term Spanglish, we should be clear, had not been
coined yet. The most recent scholarship on him has seemed
a lot less focused on trying to quantify our true
Alfonso Schaumberg and kind of an either or way or
interpreting him as a bridge between the Puerto Rican and
Black communities. Instead, there's a lot more recent writing that
(36:21):
notes all the ways that he was both black and
Puerto Rican, and that really fits right in with his
own quest to document the achievements of black people all
over the world and his remarks on how the history
of the Caribbean and Latin America as we know it
today would be impossible without black people. I'm so glad.
(36:41):
I just stumbled across his name in a random article
and it finally made me go, who is this person
who the library I have used so much is named after?
I'm glad too. Um, do you have Glad listener mail?
I do I do have listener mail? This is from Nicole. Uh.
I am hoping I said that right because it is
a slightly unusual spelling, and Nichole says, Hi, Holly and Tracy.
(37:04):
I just wrapped up the Operation paper Clip episodes and
had to email you about Fort Hunt Park, a national
park a few miles from Mount Vernon. It's your typical
park with horses, trails, softball fields, pavilions and Spanish American
slash World War One era, a large gun battlements and
a guard tower. There is also a lovely placard noting
(37:26):
Operation paper Clip and the other top secret work that
happened there during World War Two. It is certainly a
shock when you pull into the park and you see
the old batteries that have been reinforced for people to
explore the outside. The interiors are closed to the public.
It's also where we held our wedding reception. Our ceremony
was at the World War One Monument on the National Mall.
(37:48):
It has always been a favorite spot before I met
my now husband, and now we often take our daughter
there to explore and occasionally lose our keys. It is
a striking reminder that history is all around us and
woven in to our d n a and continues to
impact and shape us. I also wanted to mention that
you all read mail from my sister after the Bisbee deportation,
(38:08):
and I believe she is still ahead of me in
the race to keep up to date with your podcast.
She mentioned how our mother met Martin Luther King, and
I wanted to mention that our mom went on to
serve in the Air Force as an intelligence officer during Vietnam.
She now spends her time making well over five thousand
wounded warrior quilts, and I'm proud to say my sister
(38:29):
has the same skills and kind heart. I am not
allowed nearest sewing machine. I've attached a few photos from
Fort Hunt to get an idea of the scope of
the park. Please excuse the photos of the kissing dorks
they've made us for the awkward engagement photos, and it
was a hundred and five degrees and I was ten
weeks pregnant and forty years old. Thank you for continuing
(38:49):
to share the good, bad and ugly of our world.
Best Nicole, Thank you so much, Nicole for this email
and also for the pictures. I found them to be
charming charming, I agree, and I also I looked at
one of them and I was like, there's a little
twining vine hanging off one of those trees in the background.
Is that ked zoo um? I don't know if it
(39:11):
was katzo were not. It's hard to identify plant way
off in the distance from a from a picture. But anyway,
thank you so much for scinitis. I had honestly never
heard of this park before, but it does look like
a nice place to to wander and explore and you know,
think about all the various ways that history has uh
has continued to influence us all, So thank you so
much for this email. If you would like to write
(39:34):
to us about this or any other podcast, for a
history podcast at I heeart radio dot com and we're
all over social media at miss in History. That's where
you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, in Instagram, and you
can subscribe to our show on the I heart Radio
app and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Stuff you
(39:57):
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Tracy Wilson
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