The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture's digital collections include manuscripts, maps, photographs, recorded conversations, digital exhibitions, and more.

Over 1,000 collections reside in NYPL's Digital Collections and over 300 recorded programs are located on the Center’s Livestream channel.

Can't decide which collections or talks to explore first?

Dr. Michelle D. Commander, associate director and curator of the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery at the Schomburg Center, shares her picks. Dr. Commander edited the critically acclaimed anthology, Unsung: Unheralded Narratives of American Slavery & Abolition and is the author of Avidly Reads: Passages and Afro-Atlantic Flight: Speculative Returns and the Black Fantastic.

SIDNEY LAPIDUS SLAVERY AND ABOLITION COLLECTION

Overview: With the establishment of the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery in 2014, the Schomburg Center became home to a collection of 400 rare items of printed material and was established as one of the world’s premier repositories of slavery material.

Why: “The Sidney Lapidus Slavery and Abolition Collection offers insightful and frankly heartrending evidence of the business of slavery—the greed that drove speculation in human beings as well as the passage of legislation to regulate aspects of the institution,” Dr. Commader said. “What becomes clear as one reads materials in this collection is that the abolitionist struggle began in earnest with enslaved people rebelling on and running away from plantations across the Atlantic World. Indeed, enslaved people’s quest for liberation was supported by a dynamic and diverse cohort of anti-slavery activists who used a number of tactics to end the barbaric institution.”

2019 LAPIDUS CENTER CONFERENCE
ENDURING SLAVERY: RESISTENCE, PUBLIC MEMORY & TRANSATLANTIC ARCHIVES

Overview: "Enduring Slavery: Resistance, Public Memory, and Transatlantic Archives," a conference which ran from October 10-12, 2019, brought together scholars, visual artists, and writers to discuss the history of transatlantic slavery and its afterlives.
Part 1: Friday, October 11, Morning session
Part 2: Friday, October 11, Afternoon session
Part 3: Saturday, October 12, Morning session
Part 4: Saturday, October 12, Afternoon session

Why: “The 2019 Lapidus Center Conference was held just after the 400th anniversary of the late-August 1619 arrival of the first known African men and women arrived in the English colony on the White Lion ship at Hampton, Virginia’s Point Comfort as part of the ongoing transatlantic slave trade,” Dr. Commander said.

“Stolen by English privateers from a Spanish slave ship, these '20. and odd Negroes' were later sold in exchange for food and supplies. From 1501-1867, approximately 12.5 million Africans were captured, sold, traded, and transported to toil as unpaid and brutally-treated laborers throughout the Atlantic World. The presenters at this dynamic conference reflected on a range of questions that may be of interest to viewers: What did enslaved people endure? How did they respond to the inhumane conditions of their bondage? How did they get free? What can we learn from their persistent struggles for survival? How do we get free? What is the state of Black life in the aftermath of slavery? What traces remain?”

SUBVERSION & THE ART OF SLAVERY ABOLITION

Overview: With (U.S.) American abolition in mind, the online exhibition Subversion and the Art of Slavery Abolition highlights the dynamic ways that activists engaged with the arts to agitate for enslaved people’s liberty in the 18th and 19th centuries. Art includes the tactics and strategies involved in abolitionism as well as the imaginative means used by creative practitioners to create products to appeal to the morality of American citizens. Highlights include anti-slavery speeches, poetry, and music; narratives of slavery; and children’s literature.

Why: “Subversion makes a case for focusing on enslaved people as agents and architects of their own lives and ultimate liberation in the 19th century,” Dr. Commander said. “The exhibition acknowledges the significance of white and Black allies to the abolitionist cause and offers inspiration for our own times. Subversion can help broaden how everyday Americans viewers from across the world understand other recent events such as battles over Confederate monuments, the ways that universities have begun to remove names of slaveholders from their residence halls and academic departments, and the brutal histories that inform last month’s horrific coup attempt at the capitol in Washington, DC. As this show demonstrates, movements for social justice take time, creativity, and persistence.”
 

ILLUMINATING FORGOTTEN HISTORIES: NEW YORK CITY’S EARLY BLACK COMMUNITIES
 

Overview: This Lapidus Center event from February 2020 shared aspects of New York City’s early Black neighborhoods, including Seneca Village, a community that has now been formally memorialized in Central Park and Greenwich Village’s Little Africa. Dr. Commander moderated  a dicussion with panelists Dr. Leslie M. Harris, professor of History at Northwestern University, John Reddick, architectural historian and community scholar at Columbia University, and Jamila Brathwaite, trustee of the African American Historical Society of Rockland County.

Why: “We often traverse streets in America with no clue about their historical significance,” Dr. Commander said. “This program offers a historical look into some of New York’s significant, early Black communities that were ultimately razed for purported public use. The panelists put together many of the once lost historical pieces, and underscore the race and class dimensions that informed and continue to inform battles over space and place in New York and throughout the United States.”

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