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Bivins: It's not just about the past
or who we were in the past.
It's also thinking about how these collections,
how these materials can chart a course for the future, right?
So it's both looking back and moving forward.
Ford: One of the things that I really do love
about what Arturo Schomburg thought about
was he wanted to place this collection
at the 135th Street Library
specifically because he wanted the Black people
in the community to have access to their history
in a way that he did not have access to,
to learn more about themselves, right?
More about themselves, not even in the individual way,
but in that sort of African diasporic way.
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My name is Stephanie Johnson-Cunningham,
and you are watching "On Display" on All Arts.
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I'm here in the heart of Harlem
at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
It's really great to see how this space really provides
in-depth information and knowledge
around the African diaspora.
The Schomburg Center is a repository, a research library,
part of the New York Public Research Library System.
And what we do is collect, preserve,
interpret, exhibit materials
that are related to the cultures
and histories of people of African descent.
Our namesake, Arturo Alfonso Schomburg,
was an Afro Puerto Rican who came to the United States
in the early part of the 20th century
and became a collector -- an avid collector of all things
related to people of African descent around the diaspora.
A story that I've heard repeated many times
is that when Arturo was a young man --
a child, really -- he went to his teacher and he said,
"Why don't we talk about people from Africa?
Why don't we talk about Black people?"
And he was told that Black people had no history,
had no culture.
And therefore, even as a child,
that informed the work that he would do later in life.
And what he did when collecting these objects,
these books, and creating scholarship,
was really trying to show evidence that what that teacher
and really what the world at that time thought
was completely untrue.
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So, the Schomburg here in Harlem is a really important space
because it has such an incredible collection.
There's over 11 million works
that speaks to the African American
and African diaspora experience and history.
Johnson-Cunningham: I'm really interested to learn
more about this exhibition, "Traveling While Black."
Can you talk more about it? Ford: Yeah.
So, really, it was looking at the ways
in which Black people really traverse all of the boundaries
that Jim Crow laws and racial segregation
really placed on African Americans
throughout the country and said, you know,
let's look at the ways in which it was troublesome to travel
but also the ways in which folks found pleasure
and leisure along the way.
And I learned that the Schomburg
has the largest collection of Green Books.
Can you share, what exactly is a Green Book?
Victor Green -- he was a Postal Service worker,
and he saw the ways in which Black people
were sort of joining the motor culture of the Americas.
They owned cars, but there was all of these quiet indignities
that were happening to African Americans
as they were traversing the country.
And so some of them could just be embarrassment,
but sometimes they could really put you at peril.
And so what the Green Books did was tell you
how to travel safely on the road throughout the country.
This exhibition, "Traveling While Black
what else does it reveal about the Black experience?
have always advocated for their liberation, for their freedom,
freedom of movement, freedom of mobility, right?
So it wasn't just enough to be able to leave your block,
but it was you wanted to go from here
to the other side of the country.
You know, maybe you wanted to travel outside of the world,
or maybe you just wanted to exist
in the places where you were
and just be safe in your body, right?
is really about what it means to be safe in your body
no matter where you were.
When we talk about the archives, right?
People might think of James Baldwin and Maya Angelou.
I think of those names.
But it's the everyday people who also add to the tools
that we have towards our liberation, right?
And so Victor Green was just one person,
but there are many people who were part of helping him
to bring these Green Books to life.
Yeah.
And they weren't necessarily researchers or historians.
They just knew about their neighborhood.
Right. Right?
And where Black people could travel.
Right. Safely.
Safely.
You can never talk too much about these tools
because, like I said, they really are
tools of liberation, right?
And we may not think of them in that kind of way,
because it's not like your politics,
but it is a political act
to, one, decide to own your own car in this country,
decide that you want to go wherever you want to go,
and that you're going to get there safely
and you're going to bypass all of the micro-aggressions
that happen when you're out on the road, right?
Underneath Jim Crow and racial segregation, so...
And the macro-aggressions, as well.
And the macro-aggressions. Right.
The real racial violence that people were facing.
Does the legacy of the Green Book continue today?
I mean, I know it ended, like, in the '60s, but...
I mean, sadly, in some ways, it does, right?
Like, on one hand, you know,
Victor Green said he wanted these to go away,
and they did for a period of time, right?
We had laws that came about
that sort of abolished segregation and so forth.
But you have, like, companies like Travel Noire, right?
These websites that once again are helping Black people
understand how to traverse the globe.
Let's just go ahead and give a little homage to all of these
incredible Black women on motorcycles, right?
So, Gertrude Jeanette was one of the first,
if not the first woman to have
a New York City taxi license, right?
But in addition to that, she also may be
one of the first women to receive a motorcycle license.
Part of the motorcycle-club culture
was also a lot of returning veterans from the war.
And so they were fighting for a democracy or a safer world,
you know, in these other countries --
at least, that's what their government told them --
but then coming back to indignity here
in the United States, right?
And so these motorcycle clubs
were also places where people were finding community
but also expressing, you know, some of their politics, as well.
Can you talk more about the exhibition
"Subversion and the Art of Slavery Abolition"?
That's right.
It really centers the work of formerly enslaved
and enslaved people around their own abolition, right?
And so places at the center of it,
the way that enslaved people were also doing that
and whether or not that was insurrections,
you know, whether or not that was rebellions,
both on plantations or on the boats,
but also in the subversive ways that they were doing it,
whether or not it was a slow-down of work
or a coded language that they used to use.
I think that's really incredible because usually
when you hear narratives around abolitionists,
it's usually those who are not enslaved --
you know, free Black people from the north helping
or white abolitionists helping,
but never really the enslaved.
Why take this directional approach to this exhibition?
Because of what you just said, right?
We don't hear enough about it, right?
And even if we do hear about it,
we miss the story of how the enslaved people, right,
operated inside of those apparatuses,
sometimes that they were also using
the systems in place, right?
So the buying and purchasing of people.
Really great to be here to celebrate the incredible work
that they've done for almost 100 years.
The Schomburg is celebrating its 95th year,
so they have almost reached their centennial.
Bivins: It's a big deal.
Absolutely.
To make it to 100.
It's a big deal to think
that we're moving into a second century.
And so we will have big plans to celebrate
but also big plans as we think about
what the future of the Schomburg will be.
So something to keep your eye on.
It's like a prize to keep your eye on.
But if you're not thinking about what's beyond that,
then, you know, we're not doing our work.
Absolutely, and I think it's an incredibly big deal
because Black institution-building
is really important and not a lot of Black institutions
reach 100 years plus.
And it just speaks to the importance of the Schomburg
and the work that you all have been doing here.
Do you have any hopes for the future of the Schomburg?
I do have hopes for the future of the Schomburg,
and most of those lie in,
how can we make things as accessible as possible?
How can we remove barriers for people
to engage our collections?
Because they're not just things for the elite.
They're not just archives for the skilled researcher.
They should be things that open doors
across different populations.
And so the digital is
one of those spaces that we're going to do.
We're going to do that,
increasing our digital-exhibition footprint.
The Schomburg has an opportunity to provide access
to their world-renowned content through their website
so people can learn about the Schomburg.
They can utilize the syllabus for themselves
and liberate their own education, their own knowledge.
Collier: The #SchomburgSyllabus is essentially
a celebration of self-education in Black diasporic history.
It contains 27 themes, 135 items
that serve as kind of an introduction
to the resources we have here at the Schomburg.
And we are really proud of it
because it's collectively curated
and really speaks to Black scholarship
and Black librarianship.
And so the themes were developed out of that.
We have Black feminism.
We have fashion, environmental racism.
I hope that the Schomburg Syllabus
just inspires people
to just take control of their own lives,
and their own research,
things that they are interested in,
and feel empowered to know that anything
that you may be interested in, that there are resources
and that you can continue to learn about that
and explore it in any way that you may see fit.
So, celebrating its 100th year is really important
because this space provides agency
and also creativity through the Black lens,
which is really incredible that this space exists within,
you know, New York City.
Also because, coming up, I visited the Schomburg
and also other places in Harlem --
the Apollo Theater, the Studio Museum,
Harlem Children's Zone.
Those are all a part of my own upbringing
and my own education and knowledge.
And so I think this space and its legacy
continues to give back to the community
in a way that Arturo Schomburg would have wanted it to be.
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