Filed under: News, Race and Civil Rights
The retiring director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library, one of the premier research centers for African and African-American history and culture, recently assured an anxious crowd that the facility will remain in Harlem.
"We've seen things disappear," one speaker, Camille Yarbrough, said, according to the New York Times. "And that's why we're nervous."
Fears about plans to move the center, located at the corner of 135th Street and Malcom X Boulevard in Harlem, began when long-time director Howard Dodson's announced his retirement plans amidst fears that he was being pushed out.
"First, the Schomburg Center is not going to close," Dodson said at a recent community meeting to address the concerns. "Nor is it going to move from Harlem. And the collections of the Center are not moving anywhere, either. And no, I am not being forced to retire, nor am I being forced to do anything."
The New York Times writes:
Among those joining him onstage were Paul LeClerc, president of the New York Public Library; the actress Ruby Dee; and Ilyasah Shabazz, a daughter of Malcolm X and a descendant of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, the Puerto Rican-born black bibliophile whose collection was added to the 135th Street Branch's Division of Negro Literature, History and Prints in 1926.
Ms. Dee was among many people who recalled how inspiring and helpful they have found the Schomburg over the years. "There is something of my blood in this place," she said.
The meeting on Thursday was part of a new management approach the library is taking to solicit the views and opinions of supporters and patrons, Mr. LeClerc said in an earlier interview. "We appreciate how significant the Schomburg is to the Pan-African community and beyond," he said.
Mr. LeClerc, who is himself retiring next year, said the main challenges facing the Schomburg and all research libraries were getting material online and getting people through the doors to obtain access to documents that are critical and one of a kind. "We don't want our research libraries to become museums," he said.
It's sad to see Dodson, who has served the community well at the Schomburg since 1984, go. However, resources like the Schomburg are needed now more than ever.
As a graduate student writing my thesis about the Black Press and as a research assistant on 'The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords,' the PBS film by Stanley Nelson, I found out first hand how valuable the archives at the Schomburg are. They had a wealth of original documents and newspapers relating to the founding and growth of the Black Press that were available to the general public.
With the election of the first black president, some people think that America is post-racial. But as we've seen with the recent dust-ups over race regarding Shirley Sherrod and the New Black Panther Party, America is still not having an open and honest discussion about race. The resources of the Schomburg will be important as people look to explain where America has been and where we are going.
Dodson put it best in an essay he wrote for Aol Black Voices earlier this year about whether Black History Month was still necessary. Dodson wrote:
"Now that black history has been integrated into American history textbooks and classes, some people say, is there any longer a need to have Black History Month celebrations? Aren't such race-focused initiatives divisive? Don't they undermine our attempts to promote racial harmony and goodwill? Wouldn't it be better to just integrate black history into American history and stop making it a separate thing? Quiet as it is kept, racially, sexually and class biased American history still dominates American classrooms, the public media and the public consciousness 365 days a year," Dodson wrote.
"As new truths about the black experience are discovered new questions are raised about the authority and legitimacy of the official American history narrative. Stated simply, most of the new black truths cannot be integrated into the old American master narrative, without changing that American narrative fundamentally. In short, in light of the new facts and new truths about the black American (and Native American, Hispanic American and women's experiences) that have been unearthed over the last three decades, it is time to write a new history of America from the perspective of all of its people, not just the white elites who crafted the official narrative and the ordinary whites who embraced, defended and promoted it to enhance their self-esteem," he added.
That can't happen without the resources of places like the Schomburg.