In honor of Black History Month, this guide highlights an array of items on view in the Polonsky Exhibition of The New York Public Library’s Treasures that help shed light on experiences lived and stories told by Black writers, artists, activists, and more. Featuring only a selection of objects on display that span that Library’s collections, and presented loosely in order of how they would be encountered in the exhibition, many are part of the Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a world-leading cultural institution devoted to the research, preservation, and exhibition of materials focused on African American, African Diaspora, and African experiences. 

• Ida B. Wells' A Red Record
• Handwritten letter from Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture
• Portrait of John and Alice Coltrane by Chuck Stewart
• Frederick Douglass’s My Bondage and My Freedom

• “We Charge Genocide”: Paul Robeson presenting a petition to the United Nations charging the United States with genocide
• Maya Angelou’s handwritten draft of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
• Flyer for Marian Anderson at Carnegie Hall
• Arturo Schomburg’s “The Negro Digs Up His Past”
• Draft script of To Be Young, Gifted, and Black, adapted from the works of Lorraine Hansberry

• The Negro Motorist Green-Book
• James Baldwin’s handwritten “Open Letter to My Sister, Miss Angela Davis, in care of the Silent Majority”
• John Moore’s Liberty and Justice
• Elizabeth Catlett’s Political Prisoner
• Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral
• Page of Malcolm X’s unpublished autobiography chapter entitled “The Negro”

• Page from James Baldwin’s draft of “The Novel”
• Norman Lewis’s Street Music—Jenkins Band
• The Brownies’ Book, edited by W.E.B. Du Bois
• Maquette of Augusta Savage’s Lift Every Voice and Sing (The Harp)
• Romare Bearden’s Black Manhattan
• Tapestry maquette by Faith Ringgold

Reserve your timed tickets to see these objects and more in the Polonsky Exhibition, on view at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. Plus, learn more about all there is to discover at the Schomburg Center, including exhibitions, programs, how to access the collections, and more.

Portrait of John and Alice Coltrane by Chuck Stewart, © Chuck Stewart Photography, LLC
James Baldwin’s handwritten “Open Letter to My Sister, Miss Angela Davis, in care of the Silent Majority,” © The Estate of James Baldwin
John Moore’s Liberty and Justice, © John Moore
Page from James Baldwin’s draft of “The Novel,” © The Estate of James Baldwin
Norman Lewis’s Street Music—Jenkins Band, © Estate of Norman Lewis; Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY