02/08/2025
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In recognition of Black History Month, Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. continues to recognize a few of its member's “Achievement in Every Field of Human Endeavor”
Arturo Alfonso Schomburg was born on January 24, 1874 in the Spanish colony of Santurce, San Juan, Puerto Rico to a Black West Indian mother and a German immigrant father. In 1891, Schomburg migrated to New York where he became involved with the nationalist intellectuals of the Cuban and Puerto Rican communities, and later Black internationalism.
After experiencing racial discrimination, he began calling himself "Afroborinqueño" which means "Afro-Puerto Rican". He became a member of the "Revolutionary Committee of Puerto Rico" and took an active role advocating Puerto Rico's and Cuba's independence.
He was a historian, scholar, and activist who was a central figure in collecting and preserving the artifacts, and the experiences and culture of the Black Diaspora during the Harlem Renaissance.
While Schomburg was in grade school, one of his teachers claimed that Blacks had no history, heroes or accomplishments. Inspired to prove the teacher wrong, Schomburg determined that he would find and document the accomplishments of Africans on their own continent and in the diaspora.
In 1924, while in Europe, he searched for and acquired valuable information on Negro history. In Seville, Spain he dug into the original, loosely collected records of the Indies and was able to shed new light on Negro history.
Over the years, he collected a vast amount of literature, art, slave narratives, and other materials of African history, which was purchased in 1926 by the New York Public Library. So impressed with Schomburg's collection that the Carnegie Corporation purchased it from him for $10,000 to form the cornerstone of the Library's Division of Negro History named in his honor at its 135th Street Branch in Harlem. The proceeds from the sale were used to fund his travel to Spain, France, Germany and England, to seek out other pieces of Black history to further add to the collection.
In 1929 Schomburg retired from the Bankers Trust Company and took a position at Fisk University as curator of his vast collection of papers, which now bears his name. The collected works consist of more than 5000 volumes and thousands of pamphlets, old manuscripts, prints and bound sections of newspaper and magazine clippings, is the largest and finest of its kind in existence. He ranks as the foremost historian and collector of books on Blacks.
In 1892 he became a Mason, joining the Spanish-speaking "El Sol de Cuba Lodge 38", were he was Elected Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge in 1918. He was granted an honorary membership of the Men's Business Club in Yonkers, New York. He also held the position of treasurer for the Loyal Sons of Africa in New York and was elevated being the Past Master of Prince Hall Lodge Number 38, Free and Accepted Masons (F.A.M.) and Rising Sun Chapter Number 4, R.A.M.
In 1925, Schomburg was initiated into the Omicron Chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi at Columbia University. In 2003, the New York Alumni Foundation (of New York (NY) Alumni Chapter of ΚΑΨ) created the Schomburg-Watson Memorial Museum. This museum is housed in the historic NY Alumni Kappa House and named in honor of Arthur Schomburg and Robert Watson. The purpose of this museum is to encourage a fuller understanding of history and the unique role Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. has played in that history.
Schomburg died in 1938. In 1940, the New York Public Library renamed its division of Black history, literature, and prints after him. Schomburg's work has served as an inspiration to Puerto Ricans, Latinos and Afro-Americans alike. The raised awareness of the great contribution that Afro-Latin Americans and Afro-Americans have made to society, as result of Schomburg's work, sowed the base for future generations to establish the Civil rights movement.
Kevin Scott
Grand Historian
