Getting to Know the History of New York’s Schomburg Center

Arturo Alfonso Schomburg among Masons in April, 1922. Photo: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

“History must restore what slavery took away, for it is the social damage of slavery that the present generation must repair and offset. Pride of race is the antidote to prejudice…” — Arturo Schomburg

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture — originally named The Division of Negro Literature, History and Prints — opened in 1925 in Harlem, and thanks to…