Transcript: The New Negro

DAVID HARTMAN: What was so significant about this man Arturo Schomburg that they named all of this after him?

PROFESSOR KATE RUSHIN: Arturo Schombug was an historian, writer and a collector of materials on African American culture and history. And by 1926, he had amassed one of the largest collections of African American materials in the world. He had ten thousand pieces in his collection which were purchased by the Carnegie Corporation on behalf of the New York public library.

DAVID HARTMAN: And where did they house all of this?

BARRY LEWIS: The original collection was housed in the old 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library which is actually connected to the building where we are now.

DAVID HARTMAN: What happened in his life that he devoted himself to this?

PROFESSOR KATE RUSHIN: Well as the story goes, a teacher announced, he’s a young person in Puerto Rico, that African Americans and people of African dissent had made no significant contributions to the culture and history of the world. So in his passion to prove that it was not true, he began collecting materials on the history and culture of people of African decent and then began to focus on the history and culture of African Americans.

DAVID HARTMAN: This mosaic we’re standing on- what is it?

BARRY LEWIS: This mosaic is a memorial to Langston Hughes and Arturo Schomburg. The idea for the mural was taken from the first poem that Langston Hughes published, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”.

DAVID HARTMAN: Who were the writers and poets of that period?

PROFESSOR KATE RUSHIN: We’ve already mentioned Langston Hughes as one of the primary movers. Alain Locke the author of an essay “The New Negro”, was certainly instrumental in inspiring people, especially young people to leave behind the old subservient attitude and to take a new pride and to move out into areas of education and art and the political world. Other important people in the period were- Countee Cullen who’s considered a primary poet of the period also Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston who actually at one point collaborated with Langston Hughes.