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Arturo Alfonso Schomburg
Historian, bibliophile & founder of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
Told as a schoolboy that Black people had no history, he spent a lifetime proving the opposite — and built the world's greatest archive of the African diaspora.
The rise
Born in Puerto Rico to a Black midwife from the Virgin Islands and a German-born merchant, Schomburg emigrated to New York in 1891. He immersed himself in bibliophile circles and began collecting books, manuscripts, artwork and ephemera documenting the African diaspora. By 1926, his collection of over 5,000 books, 3,000 manuscripts and thousands of artworks was purchased by the New York Public Library, forming the nucleus of what became the Schomburg Center in Harlem.