NYC's Schomburg Center celebrating 100 years of Black culture art, history
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture has its roots in the Harlem Renaissance, one of the richest cultural movements in the nation's history.
And as it launches into a yearlong celebration of its 100th anniversary, curators and historians are pushing programs focusing on the center's rich legacy and bright future.
'It is hard to overstate the significance of the Schomburg Center,' said Schomburg Center Director Joy Bivins. 'It has provided the evidence scholars and students have needed to understand Black history as global history.'
No time is better than Black History Month to underscore that cultural significance, especially when programs promoting diversity, equity and inclusion are under attack from the Trump Administration, supporters of the center said.
But the Schomburg has weathered storms before. The center came of age during the 1920s and 1930s amid the Jim Crow segregation laws of the American South and the Great Migration of African Americans to cities in the North.
The center hit its stride in the 1960s during the Civil Rights Movement, dramatically increasing membership of patrons curious about their history and place in the American landscape.
The center survived budget cuts of the 1970s, and threats of budget cuts every decade since, rallying year after year for additional funds and space.
Schomburg supporters said they are not about to let some executive order targeting diversity programs spoil their celebration, or mission.
'We stay true to our commitments and values,' Bivins said. 'And the cornerstone of our work is making it clear that libraries are for everyone. That is not going to change. Here, we fulfill one of the most crucial linchpins of democracy — access to knowledge.'
Indeed, a visit to the center is filled with many lessons and artifacts, from the papers of giants Maya Angelou and James Baldwin to the unpublished last chapter of Malcolm X's consequential autobiography.
Among the items on display at the Schomburg Center, at W. 135th St and Malcolm X Blvd., is a copy of actor Ossie Davis' 1965 eulogy of Malcolm X, 'Black Shining Prince,' rare oral histories of former slaves and a digital archive with links to past exhibits.
'The center and its amazing staff stand as a spectacular gem in The New York Public Library system, and we are excited to celebrate this world-class institution together,' said New York Public Library President Anthony W. Marx.
'The Schomburg Center is beloved by scholars, and is a source of inspiration and materials for everyone seeking knowledge about Black history and culture, as well as a living, breathing center of community life in New York City,' Marx said.
What we know as the Schomburg Center began at the New York Public Library's 135th St. branch. As Harlem grew, a growing population of Black residents sought books and cultural material that reflected their unique history.
Historians point to a trailblazing team of branch librarians including Ernestine Rose and Catherine Latimer — the New York Public Library's first Black librarian — sought to address the needs of a changing neighborhood.
Latimer and Rose launched a campaign to collect items that documented the Black experience, an undertaking that involved meetings with local activists including James Weldon Johnson, a writer and composer best known for the song 'Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing,' widely referred to as the Negro national anthem.
Among the influencers in those meetings was Arturo Schomburg, a Puerto Rican historian of African descent who, as a young child, often wondered about the lack of African history taught in his classrooms, an interest that formed the cornerstone of his lifework of research and preservation.
A sought-after curator, Schomburg joined the library and in 1925 established what would later be called the Division of Negro Literature and History. A year later, Schomburg's collection was purchased by the Carnegie Corporation for the New York Public Library, an assemblage that would become the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
'Schomburg remains a beacon to those who seek to create spaces that reclaim histories that have often been neglected, marginalized, or ignored,' Bivins. said. 'It has also seeded generations of critical scholarship and creativity that help us better understand Black experiences through its commitment to the stewardship of the objects, from text to film, that illustrate how people of African descent have shaped our collective past and continue to impact the present
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Post
an hour ago
- New York Post
Jasmine Crockett denounces Republicans as ‘racist' – after Al Sharpton heaps praise on ‘Jasmine Campbell' in brutal gaffe
Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) denounced Republicans as 'racist' at a film festival in Martha's Vineyard last week, where Rev. Al Sharpton referred to the 'diva' congresswoman as 'Jasmine Campbell.' Sharpton's brutal gaffe came as he reminisced about working on Shirley Chisholm's 1972 presidential campaign, four years after she became the first black woman elected to Congress, and he compared Crockett to the trailblazing congresswoman. 'I lived to see Shirley Chisholm morph into Barbara Jordan, morph into Maxine Waters, morph into Ayanna Pressley and Jasmine Campbell,' Sharpton said during the fireside chat at the Martha's Vineyard African American Film Festival. Advertisement 3 Sharpton did not correct himself after referring to Crockett as 'Jasmine Campbell.' Getty Images Crockett, who is reportedly so image obsessed she uses a headshot of herself as her iPhone lock screen, didn't appear to react to the gaffe – and the reverend continued on without missing a beat. 'So, I lived to see 4 or 5 generations of black women that will stand up when black men were too afraid to stand up, and when black men were running around talking about [how] they like Trump's swagger,' Sharpton added. 'Well, you got enough swagger now?' Advertisement Crockett followed up by presenting her argument for why 'most Black people are not Republicans.' 'I talk to black folk all the time as somebody that's a child of a preacher,' the Texas Democrat told the crowd. 'Listen, most Black people are not Republicans simply because we just is like, 'Y'all racist. I can't hang out with the KKK and them.'' 'That's really what it is,' she asserted. 'But when we think about who we are as black people, and we think about where we come from, most black people have very conservative values, right?' 'But the reality is that, like, we just can't side with, like, the neo-Nazis and them. We like, 'We not – we not dealing with y'all like that, right?'' Advertisement 3 Multiple Capitol Hill staffers that have worked with Crockett told The Post earlier this month that the congresswoman is a 'diva' and 'rude' to her aides. Getty Images 3 Trump has slammed Crockett as a 'very low IQ' congresswoman. AP Crockett, who has positioned herself as an unfiltered critic of President Trump, later argued that 47th president is trying 'to make us feel as if the inevitable is that he is going to be the dictator of the United States.' Advertisement Crockett urged the artsy crowd to 'find your role in this fight,' likening opposing Trump to the civil rights movement. 'I get it we are not a monolith as black people,' she argued, 'but you got to understand, when they come for one of us they are coming for all of us.'
San Francisco Chronicle
4 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
‘We're not going to back down': Leaders condemn Trump's attacks on Oakland
A group of Oakland elected officials and community leaders rallied Thursday to condemn recent remarks made by President Donald Trump portraying the city as poorly run and crime-ridden, and to pledge a steadfast response to any effort to deploy federal troops there. In a series of speeches at Oakland City Hall, Mayor Barbara Lee, City Council members and others said Trump's characterization of the city was a fear-mongering tactic to target U.S. cities with majority-Black populations or those led by Black mayors. On Monday, President Trump sent National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., a Black-led city, and named Oakland as one of several cities where he might do the same. In June, Trump deployed more than 4,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles in response to protests against immigration raids in Southern California. Critics said Trump's rhetoric evoked a historic pattern in which politicians have painted predominantly or historically Black cities as crime-plagued. Crime nationwide is down in the first half of the year, according to a report by the Council on Criminal Justice. 'We have other cities also that are bad. Very bad,' Trump said during a White House news conference Monday, singling out Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Baltimore and Oakland. Oakland leaders pointed to the city's notable drop in violent crime during the first half of the year, and the work they said officials were doing to revitalize the city. 'President Trump's characterization of Oakland is down-right wrong,' Lee said. 'We're not going to back down.' At Thursday's press conference, faith and community leaders joined city officials in denouncing Trump's attacks, saying Oakland's residents are resilient. 'We believe that Oakland is not on the decline, but on the rise,' said Pastor LJ Jennings of the Kingdom Builders Christian Fellowship in East Oakland. Council Member Carol Fife, who represents District Three, criticized Trump for being a convicted felon attempting to tarnish the city. Fife said the city has made progress on bringing down crime while acknowledging there was more work to do. 'If you care about law and order, you would know that the safest cities have the most resources, and those resources come in the tune of affordable housing,' Fife said. 'It comes from protecting our seniors, it comes from investing in education.' Danielle Motley-Lewis, president of the Oakland and Berkeley chapter of the Black Women Organized for Political Action group, encouraged people to share stories of the city's progress, unity and transformation.
NBC News
4 hours ago
- NBC News
How the White House's claims about D.C. homelessness compare to the data
About 70 homeless encampments in the nation's capital have been taken down in recent months, but those efforts intensified this week after President Donald Trump deployed members of the National Guard to address what he said was a city 'overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people.' On Thursday, a homeless encampment near the Kennedy Center — for which Trump serves as chairman — was dismantled by city workers who shoved people's belongings into garbage trucks. The president's move comes as crime and homelessness are both reported at or near decade lows in D.C. So how dire is the city's homeless situation? Here is a breakdown of some of the data. Homelessness in D.C. has been declining in the long run, but has fluctuated in recent years The latest city numbers show that as of 2025, about 5,000 people are in shelters or on the streets of D.C., a decrease of 9% from 2024. The city is an outlier: Most of the rest of the country has had increases in their homeless population in recent years. Compared to changes in the national homeless population, D.C. is unusual. As national numbers have increased, the District of Columbia's have fallen. The figures show a significant drop over the last decade in D.C.; in 2016, more than 8,000 people were unhoused, though there have been fluctuations over recent years, in part due to the Covid-19 pandemic. D.C.'s homeless count hit a low in 2022 as the government issued rapid rehousing vouchers. This emergency funding from the Biden administration provided housing for people, including in vacant hotels. 'The numbers came down in 2022 when there was actual housing taking place,' said Hilary Silver, a professor of sociology, international affairs and public policy at George Washington University. 'And then that money ran out.' The District's homeless population rose from 4,922 individuals in 2023 to 5,615 in 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's point-in-time count of homeless people. Most of Washington, D.C.'s homeless population is concentrated in busy, central areas where tourists and residents intersect, including downtown, Union Station, Georgetown and Foggy Bottom, Silver said. Nationwide, more than 770,000 people were homeless in 2024, according to the HUD data. Which populations are most affected by homelessness? For a city whose population is 41% Black, D.C.'s homeless population is disproportionately Black, at 82.5%. Compare that to the city's white population: 39.6%, with 6.6% homeless, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Sixty percent of all homeless people are men. When it comes to age, 7.9% of Washington, D.C.'s homelessness population are senior citizens — compared with 5.5% of the national population. Also, 18.6% of those who are homeless are under 18, according to an NBC News analysis of HUD data. Experts attribute homelessness in D.C. to a lack of affordable housing, a shortage of jobs that pay livable wages and the high cost of living. According to data, the cost of living in Washington is 40% higher than the national average and housing costs are more than double the national average. Challenges particular to D.C.'s Black homeless population include higher rates of disability, eviction and poverty, along with experiencing racial discrimination, Silver said. 'Part of it is the difficulties that African Americans always face in the housing market, but also in the labor market,' Silver said. 'They live in neighborhoods where the housing is not in very good condition.' People who become homeless are either evicted or forced out of their homes and then stay with friends and family. But 'after a while,' Silver added, 'they outlive their welcome.' How was D.C. addressing homelessness before Trump's order? Donald Whitehead Jr., the executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, attributes the drop in homelessness in the city this year to supportive housing and targeting homeless youth in the region. 'D.C. has an advantage over many communities with the resources that are available,' Whitehead said. 'D.C. had considerably more housing vouchers than other communities. There has been a lot of work around making sure people were protected within the system.' Some programs include D.C. Flex, which provides low-income working families with $8,400 per year for up to five years. There's also the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act that allows tenants the right to purchase their building if it is being sold. Given how effective these programs have been, both Silver and Whitehead said that the dismantling of the district's homeless encampments will not address the root causes of homelessness. 'I think it demonizes people,' Whitehead said. 'It minimizes their humanity. We know that when there is a lot of conversation about people experiencing homelessness in a negative way, we see the increase of violence against that population.' While encampment sweeps are nothing new to Washington, those efforts increased in March. Silver said the sweeps make it difficult for outreach teams to track and help homeless individuals. Instead of clearing such encampments, experts advocate for more funding from the federal government, higher wages and more affordable housing. This includes the 'Housing First' approach, a model that prioritizes permanent housing to homeless individuals so they can go after their goals and have a better quality of life. 'We promote Housing First in the district, because when people have a place — a stable place to stay — then it's easier for them to receive the services that are available,' she said.
