ShipLibrary Blog

Black History Month: Library Trailblazers (Part 2)

Here are a few more Black librarians that were highlighted during the library department's presentation to the campus during SU Social Equity Office's "Let Every Department Shine" virtual program.

Arna Wendell Bontemps 

• Poet, novelist, librarian and a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Noted for his poetry and writing, published over forty works from poems, to plays, to adult and children’s fiction.​
• Ahead of his time in providing children with diversity in their literature​: “I began to consider the alternative of trying to reach young readers not yet hardened or grown insensitive to man’s inhumanity to man, as it is called.”
• Head Librarian at Fisk University until 1973​

Tracie D. Hall

• First female African-American Executive Director ​
• Member of the first ALA Spectrum Scholars cohort​
• Broad experience in public & academic libraries and in social justice philanthropy​
• Leading ALA focus on antiracism work, and fighting anti-Blackness, inside the culture of librarianship and in our communities

Arthur Schomburg

• Born Arturo Alphonso Schomburg in San Juan, Puerto Rico, to a mother of African descent from the Virgin Islands and a father who was born in Germany​
• In Puerto Rico he developed a passion for gathering materials demonstrating the vitality of black history and culture as well as the sources for writing anti-colonialist history ​
• In 1926, the Carnegie foundation purchased his collection for $10,000 and gave it to the 135th St. branch of the New York Public Library in Harlem​

For more information on these librarians, please visit the following links:

• Arna Wendell Bontemps​
• Tracie D Hall
• Arturo Schomburg