Alyssa’s Big Apple Adventures Part One

Alyssa’s Big Apple Adventures Part One: “The Schomburg Center”

It was a long drive with lots of traffic from Brooklyn, where I was residing this week, to Harlem. Pictured above is the view from the roof of my temporary home in Brooklyn. Pictured below is the Brooklyn Bridge taken during one of my trips to Harlem. Harlem is where I went to visit the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a subset of the New York Public Library (NYPL). I made this trip numerous times throughout the stay because I felt as though I couldn’t spend enough time in the Schomburg Center, there was just so much to see. The exhibitions are full of pictures, videos, newspaper clippings, pins, trophies, letters, and all sorts of artifacts and archives that reflect upon the nation’s black culture. The New York Public Library truly has an extensive collection of items that are available to the public to view and study. The Schomburg Center was an important destination for my Rosenkrantz trip because I wanted to study political advocacy as it relates to African Americans in the 20^th century and how it could have integrated with healthcare advocacy at that time. I was hoping to find information related to advocates such as Curtis Hall or George D. Cannon, but instead, I ended up exploring a variety of advocates from all genres of African American history because I was intrigued by the different cultures displayed in the multiple exhibits of the Schomburg Center.

The first major exhibit I went to observe was titled the "Crusader: Martin Luther King Jr." The exhibit displaying MLK clearly defined his missions and directive as an activist, a citizen, a father, and a peacemaker.  Another favorite of mine was the "A Ballad for Harlem" exhibit which focused on locally originated artifacts. Both exhibits were expansive! There was so much material present in the large rooms it was hard to walk two steps without seeing something completely new. I was able to explore a plethora of information from Lawrence Reddick to Langston Hughes.


The rooms were very interestingly designed as well. It was truly an immersing experience because I felt as though every medium of the artifacts were displayed to reflect upon information by tapping into my different senses. For example, in the MLK exhibit, there were multiple televisions that were set up on reels that played home videos of him, his wife and kids, as well as videos of his speeches, and his meetings with other notable social advocates. This was displayed to reflect MLK’s life and work in an audio manner. At the same time, I was reading text from personal letters and looking at images taken by newspaper photographers of him. There were many newspaper clippings in each exhibit which was one of my favorite things to analyze. It was cool to break down the sections of an older newspaper and compare it to modern papers. There were also many letters which I loved to read too because I could feel the passion behind discussions of sociopolitical and economic disparities in personally written letters. There was even lots of art which helped complete the aesthetic of many exhibits. My favorite art installations were the Aaron Douglas murals.

Spending time in the Schomberg was very interesting and I gained a lot of insight into African American history through exploring all of the artifacts that they have to offer.

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