pressive Division of Negro Literature, History, and
Prints at the HARLEMBRANCH OF THENEWYORK
PUBLICLIBRARY.
Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Arthur
Schomburg was the child of an unmarried couple,
Mary Joseph, a laundress and midwife from St.
Thomas, and Carlos Schomburg, a German busi-
nessman. Details about Schomburg’s early life are
elusive, but biographer Elinor Des Verney Sinnette
notes that he spent much of his childhood with his
maternal family in St. Croix. He attended St.
Thomas College in the Danish West Indies and the
Instituto de Instrucción in San Juan before arriving
in the United States in 1917. In New York City,
Schomburg became an active member of the
Puerto Rican community and a leading voice in its
political movements. He was a member of the lib-
eration group Las Dos Antillas, an organization
dedicated to achieving Puerto Rican and Cuban
independence. In the late 1890s the death of José
Martí and subsequent reorganizations in the
American-based Caribbean political movements
prompted Schomburg to immerse himself in
African-American issues. He became a Mason
when he joined a lodge whose members were pri-
marily of Cuban and Puerto Rican descent. By
1926 he was an officer in the Prince Hall Lodge
and served as grand secretary and master.
Schomburg married Elizabeth Hatcher of Vir-
ginia in 1895, and the couple had three sons, Max-
imo; Arthur, Jr.; and Kingsley. Following his wife’s
death in 1900, Schomburg remarried. In 1902 he
wed Elizabeth Morrow Taylor, with whom he had
two sons, Reginald and Nathaniel. Widowed for a
second time, Schomburg married Elizabeth Green,
with whom he had three more children, Fernando,
Dolores, and Placido.
Schomburg was an astute and visionary man
who believed in the emancipatory and political
power of knowledge. With his lifelong friend,
JOHNEDWARDBRUCE, he founded the Negro So-
ciety for Historical Research in 1911. Schomburg
also was a member of the AMERICAN NEGRO
ACADEMY, the organization that Alexander Crum-
mell founded in 1897 and the nation’s first learned
African-American society.
Schomburg is perhaps best known and cele-
brated for his impressive collection of books, arti-
facts, and materials by and about peoples of
African descent. In 1925 his collection, which in-
cluded thousands of books, manuscripts, pam-
phlets, art, and other collectible items, formed the
foundation of the Division of Negro Literature,
History, and Prints housed at the Harlem Branch
of the NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY on 135th
Street. The collection, bought for the library by
the Carnegie Corporation for $10,000, was un-
precedented in scope and wholly invaluable to
scholars, artists, and students. The writer James
Baldwin often crept up into the library, which
catered primarily to adults, and could be found im-
mersed in the extensive literature collection that,
according to the 1937 Who’s Who in Colored Amer-
ica,was the “rarest private collection of Africana
and of Negro Americana in this country” [460].
Schomburg, who in 1922 became president of
the American Negro Academy, was an active
writer and editor. In 1916 he published A Biblio-
graphical Check List of American Negro Poetry,the
first comprehensive reference on African-Ameri-
can poets. Additional works included an edition of
The Collected Works of Phillis Wheatley(1915), A
Plea for Negro History(1918), and a persuasive
essay entitled “The Negro Digs Up His Past,”
which appeared first in the March 1925 Harlem
issue of SURVEY GRAPHIC that led to ALAIN
LOCKE’s pioneering anthology, THENEWNEGRO
(1925). Schomburg’s essays appeared in leading
periodicals of the time, including Negro Digest,
THEMESSENGER,and NEGROWORLD.
Schomburg received prestigious honors during
his lifetime. He was one of the first winners of the
HARMONFOUNDATIONAwards, prizes established
by magnate Elmer Harmon to recognize outstand-
ing African-American achievements.
A longtime employee at Bankers Trust Com-
pany, Schomburg retired from his post as head of
the mail department in 1930 to join the faculty
and staff at FISKUNIVERSITY. There, as curator of
the Negro Collection, he created a substantial spe-
cial collections archive and succeeded in generat-
ing much excitement at and beyond the university
with conferences and academic gatherings focused
on African-American history and literature. He
left Nashville for New York City in 1932 when he
received an offer to become the curator of the
Schomburg Collection at the 135th Street branch
of the New York Public Library.Schomburg, Arthur 471