Each episode highlights a letter from popular collections housed in the Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.

Today’s letter features correspondence between Arturo Alfonso Schomburg and Langston Hughes.  In the excerpt below, Schomburg speaks with Hughes regarding acquisitions for The Division of Negro Literature, History and Prints—the forerunner to today’s Schomburg Center—opened in 1925 as a special collection of the 135th Street Branch Library. 

Arturo Alfonso Schomburg (1874-1938) was an Afro-Puerto Rican bibliophile, curator, collector, scholar, activist and the namesake of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. 

Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was a poet, activist, playwright, novelist, and collector of Africana materials found through the African Diaspora.  

February 16th 1933

Please keep abreast of anything that should be in our collection of Negro material The Poushkin statue is a marvelous object of beauty, Downs when he was Moscou wrote me about it, but nothing materialize from it, you have brought it onward, I have put in under glass for the fellows who come this way may be able to admire the beauty of it. Is this the statue done in black marble, give us some news of the statue, make it talk in your own way. Is the person who owns the Ira Aldridge in the book with the plays of Shakespeare willing to have the people of the U.S.A of Negro descent enjoy this picture? Or if not, can a copy be had?

Go ahead Langston Hughes, let me put your name on the walls of the Library with “Weary Blues” in your handwriting that hangs here where every beholder can see your handwriting. Now I want to carry forward, by saying that Langston Hughes did not forget the Negro collection when In Russian, he has remembered us by deeds of love and human kindness. So good luck to your work and new poems, let us have one for our collection, where the black masses can read and follow your footsteps.

If there should be anything you want me to prosecute while you are on yonder fields, just let me know, or any commission that require tact silence, I am here at your services.

Ever and Ever
Arthur Schomburg

Arthur Alfonso Schomburg Papers, Box 8, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library

*Special Note: All text is represented as originally written by the correspondent.  

Today’s correspondence was recited by Steven G. Fullwood, the Associate Curator of the Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.