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Arthur A. Schomburg was born January 24, 1874 in San Puerto Rico to a German father and a West Indian mother. He spent most of his childhood in Puerto Rico. He attended St. Thomas College in the Virgin Islands and immigrated to the United States in 1891 where he began to work at a New York City Law office.
While in New York, he began to collect literary works and visual art by and about people of the African decent. In 1911, Arthur and John E. Bruce founded the Negro Society for Historical Research as a base from which to publish black articles. In 1922, Schomburg was elected President of the American Negro Academy. He not only collected works by others but produces essays himself which later on went to be published.
His collection of books, manuscripts and artifacts were invaluable resources and inspiration to both historian and Harlem Renaissance artists. Through his collections of art and literature by people of the African decent, Arthur sought to disprove the pseudo-scientific racism of the day.
The Carnegie Corporation purchased his collection in 1926 and donated it to the Negro Division of New York Public Library where Arthur became a curator until his death in 1938.
In 1940, two years after his death, the collection was renamed as Schomburg Collection of Negro Literature and History and has since been renamed Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Arthur's Library is the largest and most important collection of African-American art, literature and history in the world.
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