NEW YORK — Here at CBS2, we recognize that black history is American history.
This month, we honor and celebrate the contributions of African Americans throughout history.
Here in New York, the history of Black History Month runs deep, and efforts to recognize and uplift the people and events that impacted the past continue to strengthen and evolve in the present.
Any discussion of black history should begin at the Schomburg Center for Black Culture and Research on Malcolm X Boulevard in Harlem.
“It’s the repository of 11 million items documenting the histories and cultures of people of African descent, and we’ve been doing this for nearly 100 years,” said director Joy Bivins.
Bivins says it was Arturo Schomburg’s gift of more than 10,000 books, plus art and artifacts, that helped found the institution and fuse humanity and history to a people thought to have neither. That was in 1926, the same year that noted scholar Carter G. Woodson founded Black History Week. It was 50 years after President Gerald Ford proclaimed Black History Month.
“We celebrate Black history all year long. We are at the forefront and center of Black stories at all times,” Bivins said.
READ MORE: Black History is American History: A Conversation with the National Museum of African American History and Culture
The history of New York’s black history is recognized as soon as you walk into the Schomburg. A cosmogram pays tribute to the distinguished Harlem poet Langston Hughes: his words written by him and some of Hughes’s ashes buried beneath. Every corner is touched by history. A simple bench, donated by Toni Morrison, the “Beloved” author who lived here in the 1960s, commemorates the absence of markers for enslaved people. The work of esteemed New York photographer Howard Dodson is celebrated with stunning portraits of both street life and local luminaries. And in a new venture, rare daguerreotypes from the 1850s are being made available to the world with their digitization.
“That’s particularly important when we think about African-American history, where we often think these ties were broken by slavery. But in fact, we have physical evidence that people were loved,” said Dalia Scruggs, curator of photographs and prints. at the Schomburg.
“It advances the mission of Arturo Schomburg and his initial founding of the Schomburg Center to collect, preserve and share the history of the African Diaspora,” said digital curator Kimberly Henderson.
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At the Museum of the City of New York, the Big Apple and black history converge in an installation that acknowledges the breadth of local activism.
“We bring things from the 1800s to the present to make connections between the past and the present,” said Sarah Seidman, curator of social activism.
Seidman took CBS2 through the exhibit, which showcases New York’s history of activism with powerful artifacts, like a bill of sale for a slave, and the documents that freed them.
Centuries later, New York was a vital center for the fight for civil rights, with a historic fundraiser for the March on Washington.
“Just the fact that the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was planned in New York,” Seidman said.
Also on view are artifacts from historic marches protesting the murder of Eric Garner and the Black Live Matter movement.
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New York’s black history commemoration has raised its profile on the streets, if you know where to look. The TD Bank on Montague Street has a plaque commemorating the Brooklyn Dodgers office where they signed Jackie Robinson’s contract. There are designations for churches believed to be part of the Underground Railroad, such as Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights; a Tribeca coffee shop is said to be the site of the first black-owned bookstore in New York; The Hughes house is commemorated with a plaque, to name just a few.
History is also noted for what is no longer there. The statue of Teddy Roosevelt removed from the American Museum of Natural History due to its portrayal of blacks and Native Americans as racially inferior. The statue of Thomas Jefferson stood in City Hall until public outcry over his vast slave ownership forced its removal. It is now in the New York Historical Society.
“There are definitely opportunities that we’ve had as a museum to bring monuments that used to be in other places and help give them a new interpretation. So that hopefully with a change of context, we can really understand that history in a richer and more new,” said Dominique Jean-Louis, associate curator of historical exhibits at the New York Historical Society.
Jean-Louis highlighted the importance of Black History Month in New York with larger pieces as well as some extraordinary smaller ones.
“We got the Bible from the asylum for black orphans when a racist mob burned down the asylum. It took one of the evacuated children a second to save the Bible,” Jean-Louis said.
Also exclusive to Black History Month in New York is the production of “Color Between the Lines” at the Irondale Theater in Brooklyn.
“It’s a musical project, where we discuss the little-known history of the abolition movement in Brooklyn, highlighting those names and voices we don’t know,” said actor/songwriter Michael-David Gordon.
Gordon said the goal is to draw attention to local abolitionist efforts and embrace black history here as a daily dynamic.
“That moment connects to this day, where you’ll see protests, where you’ll see signs, ‘Don’t shoot,’ ‘I can’t breathe,’ ‘I’m a human being. Those messages and words have not changed in many ways,” Gordon said.
And there is much more. There are great stories to be discovered across the city, and we’ll have more on our CBS News New York broadcast channel.
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