Arturo (Arthur) Alfonso Schomburg

Arturo (Arthur) Alfonso Schomburg
A black Puerto Rican scholar and an intellectual figure in the Harlem Renaissance

"America must face its past in order to see its future" – Arturo Alfonso Schomburg

 Who was Arturo Alfonso Schomburg?

Known as the Father of Black History, Arturo Alfonso Schomburg was a curator, writer, historian, Pan-Africanist and activist in the U.S. civil rights movement.

 Life of Schomburg:

Arturo Alfonso Schomburg was born on January 24, 1874 in Puerto Rico. His primary education was in San Juan where he studied penmanship, church history, arithmetic, Spanish grammar, agriculture and commerce. He later studied Negro literature in the Danish-ruled Virgin Islands.

During grade school, one of his teachers stated that "Black people have no history, no heroes, no great moments." This false claim led to Schomburg's thirst for knowledge and his life-long quest to record the achievements of African Latinos. "I depart now on a mission of love to recapture my lost heritage," he wrote. Schomburg participated in the school history club. By age 23, he had collected letters, prints, playbills, paintings, literature, art, manuscripts, etchings, memorabilia and slave narratives of the people of African descent.

Subsequent to his 1891 immigration to New York, where he encountered racial discrimination, he became a self-described "Afroborinqueño" (Afro-Puerto Rican). He soon become a member of the "Revolutionary Committee of Puerto Rico" and actively participated in the fight for the independence of Cuba and Puerto Rica.

Works of Schomburg:

In 1896, he began teaching Spanish. After working as a messenger, clerk and supervisor, he wrote his first known article, "Is Hayti Decadent?", which was published in 1904 in The Unique Advertiser. He next wrote "Placido, a Cuban Martyr," a short pamphlet about the poet and freedom fighter Gabriel de la Concepción Valdéz in 1909.

In 1911, Schomburg and John Edward Bruce co-founded the Negro Society for Historical Research to create a foundation of intellectual efforts. He later became the President of the American Negro Academy, which advocated black history and literature. He also became involved in the Harlem Renaissance to combat racial prejudice by providing proof of the extraordinary contributions of the people of African descent. This renaissance spread to other African-American communities throughout the country.

Schomburg co-edited the 1912 edition of Daniel Alexander Payne Murray's Encyclopedia of the Colored Race. He wrote the essay "The Negro Digs Up His Past," which was published in the Survey Graphic of Harlem in March, 1925.

In 1926, the New York library published Schomburg’s extensive collection of rare books, artifacts and historical data. This library was later renamed the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. In 1931, he served as a curator of the Negro Collection at the library of Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee.

Schomburg married twice and had five sons. He fell ill and died following dental surgery in New York on June 8, 1938.

In Schomburg’s own words:

"The American Negro must rebuild his past in order to make his future. Though it is orthodox to think of America as the one country where it is unnecessary to have a past, what is a luxury for the nation as a whole becomes a prime social necessity for the Negro. For him, a group tradition must supply compensation for persecution, and pride of race the antidote for prejudice. History must restore what slavery took away, for it is the social damage of slavery that the present generation must repair and offset.”