NYSUT celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month, Sept. 15 through Oct. 15, with a poster honoring Arturo Alfonso Schomburg (1874–1938) who spent his life preserving Black history. A historian, writer, curator and activist, Schomburg was the son of a Puerto Rican merchant of German descent and an Afro-Caribbean woman from the Danish West Indies (now known as the U.S. Virgin Islands).
As a youth growing up in Puerto Rico, Schomburg experienced racism and was appalled when a teacher in San Juan told him that Black culture lacked any prominent individuals or noteworthy history. He dedicated his life and work to refuting this claim. In 1911, he co-founded the Negro Society for Historical Research.
Schomburg was an important intellectual figure in the Harlem Renaissance, and he was dedicated to studying, collecting, and documenting evidence of Black achievement. His collection included artworks, manuscripts, slave narratives, original newspapers published by Frederick Douglass, poems by Phillis Wheatley, correspondence belonging to Toussaint Louverture, and other artifacts. He was also a prolific writer and published articles in several Black periodicals, including the Negro World, The Crisis, The Messenger, Opportunity and The Amsterdam News.
In 1926, his collection was acquired by the New York Public Library. One hundred years later, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, containing more than 11 million items, is a world-leading cultural institution devoted to the research, preservation, and exhibition of materials focused on African American, African Diasporic, and African experiences.
The poster is available for download in English-language and Spanish-language versions; limited quantities are free for NYSUT members and leaders at the statewide union’s online publications ordering catalog, nysut.org/publications.