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Welcome to another edition of New York tomorrow presented in cooperation with the American Jewish Committee this series offers a look into the future of our city in the fields of culture education politics and social life here and I was our moderator serving him Levine director of the Department of Education and urban planning of the American Jewish Committee Mr Levy our guest tonight is Mrs Gene Hotz a curator of the Schomburg collection of The New York Public Library How subject is we rewriting black history lessons Hutson there's been tremendous amount of excitement and interest in last few years and black history. Some people seem to believe that number of black leaders because of us excitement and trust in the black community are sort of rewriting history they have been sighing that the history that has been. Offered to the American people and to children in school is a pack of eyes. Are they extending the law you are isn't just making up for leave it was that people in the past. Well I must say we are rewriting black history in that you didn't even describe the Schomburg collection as the Schomburg collection of negro literature and history because we've been attacked for using this evil word Negro and asked to change even the title of the collection but we do still use it in the Schomburg collection in the sense in which Mr Schomberg did since he was a person of Spanish our engine he is the word negro as referring to black people so we still continue to use that but you're right I think that there is a demand for rewriting black culture but only in the sense that most of us would like to fill in the gaps of omission which have occurred. According to the studies I pursued under Professor Hansberry who was the uncle of my own small rain. Who taught that. History of black people in America was changed around the years eighteen thirty to eight hundred forty when the issue of slavery became one of moral issues so much so that it became necessary to demean black people in order to justify enslaving them so the Schaumburg Shammai collection which is an outstanding collection of negro writing on my new scripts and other things is in fact one of the repositories of the truth I would expect that your place is quite busy today people digging into all the past and trying to come up with some no insight into what black history was Roy like Is that true are you as you are you know my I'm on line at City College I teach a class called The Negro in the Western Hemisphere so in the spring of let's see was it sixty six I believe. The concept of black power hit the campus and I found myself one evening being attacked as. Then. And the content of my course was indeed very middle class and so I found myself defending the Schomburg collection as the reservoir of the weapons for the use of people who were advocating black power because Act What could they do in a setting something that they really didn't understand unless almost a thousand are you Bush won that chance because I'm a body over thirty even I'm thinking of white people over thirty and not being able to relate to why kids on the thirty go at least that's what I say is it possible that many of us have come up in a traditional why seeing as for your librarian. Is your particular scholarly approach to history in your. Approach to being a librarian. Something that is out of kilter with the white kids the things that I I don't think that I'm out of kilter but of I might not be able to recognize the generational gap because I've always said that being at being a Negro in America is an ambivalent thing anyway you find yourself being one of the poor black and then at the same time as you find yourself straddling for a certain equality with the advantage of white American civilization because certainly I am a labor enemy and very close to being poor black and disadvantaged and have been disadvantaged to a great degree even though not as much so as is being third of all one of the questions that people have now about Negro History is the kinds of material coming out in the school systems are we beginning to adequately develop the consummate aerials for example people in curriculum building using the Schaumburg library to. Dig a little deeper and click cliche kind of stuff coming out even some of I would imagine some of the Black Power leaders for political purposes develop a certain kind of cliche about history. Perhaps they too don't have the time to dig deeper Are we getting enough scholars in this field and I'm saying are these kids who are pushing for African studies black studies going to end up some of them being scholars in the field as well as political activists Well you asked a lot of questions in that particular one first of all you asked about the textbooks and I do not feel very sanguine about what's happening it seems to me that the publishers I'm rushing into print without doing much research John Hope Franklin has said recently that you could publish a blank page and a collection of blank pages and put the negro on the front of a book and sell it today the interest is really a bit on hysterical side on the other hand I do hope and do believe that many of the scholars will develop from this generation of students because the Schomburg library helps some of these textbook publishers argue with the business of putting out there how much they need to know her to be helped I think it was not really this is the thing you see the thing that black culture has become a friend yes you need to help yourself ah I recall many many times that I read about the Schomburg collection being in trouble. Inadequate funding. Put you in a position where you could not preserve valuable manuscripts I know this was being talked about quite a better year or two ago what's happened in the interim have you been getting some first of all I want to tell you that I helped compound my own misery I used to deploy the fact that the collection was not used I publicised it so you. Were being used then we didn't have the funds to preserve documents so many times they have been used in the original and worn out to an extent that deplorable has a library I'm getting more money though the library has begun to get more money and I think I hope that this is just the beginning because our needs are really very great now the library gets money from the general New York Public Library budget doesn't that yes it's also possible that private individuals might make a contribution Well that is but I would actually. That's why we're coming to that yes people are making counterexamples we'll have and I hope this means that the numbers will greatly increase what's the best way Mrs Hudson for an individual my contribution to the Schomburg library if I wanted to as well I always felt that the great need for the collection was to have an endowment fund this is the only one of the ethnic collections it does not have you know the collection was bought from Mr Schomberg by the Carnegie Corporation and given to the public library but there was no provision to me for its maintenance aside from the fact that it was considered as just another one of the branch libraries so the little bit of money that we were able to get through the years has sustained it but as it developed it so would be a bad idea for a Christmas gift a comment to you in the indictment fund. You have a special talent fund set up no we have we have yes Dr Kenneth Clark is head of the committee known as the Schomburg collection and downed fund which is incorporated and the state of New York to collect monies from I went with somebody's son such a contribution Well that might easily send into the collection that one of the three West one hundred thirty third Street so that can be a comic a gift as well right indeed Mrs Hudson you know the Schomburg collection I don't know I guess you're pretty controversial person you're always on the nose with some new controversy this big business with. Mr holding out another pop music. Example on black history is one of how all that in turn tended to be the cultural history of Harlem right and we've been reading about the controversy between Mr Holding's approach to the cultural history of Harlem and your approach and some other black leaders in Harlem home sort of taking a hands off and don't think that the job is being got adequately or really wrapped you know Representative Why was the whole thing seems to be a rather good guy and not an ice pick signing guy who's turned into people because he turned out to Holman to. Things that the Schomburg collection might happen with well as a culture in one of the Harlem Cultural Council I. Joined in a resolution in removing the council from involvement with the show because it disappointed us we had been slow in the beginning as sponsoring agency for the show and we were disappointed to find that we could not influence the content of the show as we thought it should be I think it's going to be an excellent show but I think it could have been much better if some of the people who know the community and had lived and worked in it had had a chance to influence at all it isn't just the holding open to that's kind of influence but I have not found himself to see thinking I was what he's doing in every field I think well no I don't blame Mr Holden I don't think this I think that he is backing his own staff and I think that the staff being people from the Middle West in the Far West and not open to some suggestions from the natives who are. Overlooked a great many important so it's really not an attack by blacks on a white imposition or white point of view it's really a controversy and a dispute between certain people have a real feeling father and other negroes. Metropolitan seem officials who don't particularly agree on maybe the aesthetic styles that really wants Well first of all the community people including myself thought that was going to include we assume being at the Metropolitan was going to include an art show or art forms which are not being included that was the first big. Bit that I see disenchanted this it is largely a documentary based on photographs and sights and sounds and these photographers seem to be more concerned with electronic effects than on content but we thought that when we went down to the minute we have a chance to tell our whole story could it be that you're sort of old fashioned people who may know that you like to see exhibits in the conventional way and missed the whole thing as a swinging young guy who wants multimedia facts I think that this is what's going to communicate to people and he may feel that his target is perhaps both white and black America and he'd like to jazz up the Metropolitan and instead of some very classic stable paintings which might satisfy certain local black artists he wants the things moving and you know creating some excitement I think he's done this before yes I just think that part of my time sort of tired of being jazzed up we wanted to come in there and fool you want to call your own shots why why why not have examples like this in Holland. For Harlem whites I'm not saying that that's the only thing I'm not saying that was the whole thing is particularly correct but so often we have black leaders complaining badly you know quite wildly about what whites are doing to them and there's not a correct white answer that if you are so dissatisfied with the kind of deal you're getting when you're involved and I black white relationship want to do it yourself Well we will perhaps one day that's what the Harlem Cultural Council is Logan as the Reply to get a cultural center for Harlem that's the greatest problem you know we don't have still to is full of crap and this place what does the Holocaust. Camps Council do I mean what are your activities about I know you are cochairman I guess you'd like to give us some of those well main thing we done with those mobiles the days will be on the dance mall Beals and what have you and. This summer and lately we're. Expanding into some winter programs but the main thing has been to demonstrate the need for oil facilities such as the music do you have a site or do you have a site picked down right now isn't this something that might come out of a model cities program or a capital funding program maybe but Governor Rockefeller's a new program of urban we know might be tied into the Harlem Cultural Center has this been something that's been suggested Well somewhat but it has not really been developed I say in history is there a command either on Monday on a Saturday to be started about the expansion of the Schomburg collection which includes a good deal of museum facilities so this might be a beginning but you're seeking a cultural center than I would not need to be just a library or museum but also be a place for a performing arts I imagine is that correct Well that might be developed in a separate facility I seem so because there's no reason in my book why Atlanta Georgia you know can develop a giant cultural center for a certain number of people Harlem which has an equal number of people more with a great deal of cultural history equal to that of any other part of the country should have its own cultural center up I really wonder if if this is the kind of thing that's being held too tight. In the black community if this is not the kind of thing you really come to the entire community for in a sense because one doesn't have too much about the drive for the center and one would think that in some ways it may be as important like a charter. Well perhaps there is a need for Lincoln Center in Harlem but someone recently told me that it's at the moment hard to do things in New York then in Atlanta Georgia a native New Yorker I know has been trying to persuade me to come down to Atlanta to work because he feels that we have such a diversity of talents in the Harlem community that sometimes we have played off against each other and do not accomplish anything constructive Well that's the crisis of New York you know we have a lot of talent and doesn't seem to be able to work now I mean I ask you one other thing about what goes on at the Schomburg collection I'm really I'm fascinated by your earlier statement that Mr Schomberg was a Puerto Rican That doesn't sound Puerto Rican but what was his background like how he was put every kind of African descent who said that in his boyhood he and the other little black boys asked the Spanish teacher in Puerto Rico where he was educated why they didn't study something about the history of black people and she had her profound ignorance there because black people had no history and he said that he spent his lifetime proving how wrong she was he went around the world collecting evidences as he would say again that black people have played on a role in every civilization in which they had existed he used to go tramp steamers to North Africa France Spain Latin America as well as England and France and pick up evidences of the role of black people so that by the time we arrived at the point in time of identifying with the free African peoples we had a library would salute this particular appreciation extremely well when a people got the idea it's a fantastic idea that any people have no history in our culture it's almost a contradiction of self as not well it's a strange thing to think of here talking in New York is to to the human relations but my daughter and I spent a year in Africa. And much to my great shock just a few years ago her social studies teacher said to me. Career in Africa was wasted. And he was the type of person to which I wanted to say here in Israel wouldn't have been but she was in such trouble with him already that I never experienced my own racist reaction to his well what was his reaction based on you know the assumption that people in Africa want to doing anything a lack of realization that Africans have and that something doesn't always happen in Africa something is always happening everywhere I guess people have certain kinds of ideas about the quality of what's happening I'm just curious about your own one year in Africa you were in Ghana I understand that you work. He worked as a librarian are lead to University of Ghana I was assembling the Africa collection I see and groom I had learned a lot and think when the other line but other leaders of Africa who were interested in self-government had learned a great deal about African history here and you know formally Jim Crow organization and it's interesting that we had this effect upon me when then chroma was here in America he could learn more about the history of Africa before the colonial period than he could possibly have learned us why then relish the American experience or the experience of being an exile sort of. Out of your own context your own cultural context forces you to take it rather interesting yourself it's happened with the Jews in a sense in exile the first feeling let's assimilate and then the next generation says Hawaii I would imagine that. To some degree this is beginning to happen in the black community you've got the kind of generation that's growing up who is asking not only desperately but wildly and powerfully Who Are We And what's our background and how do we project that background so that our kids will have a sense of manhood you know in the sense of identity I came here just from a meeting which was concerned with the creation of an African center and Harlem and the people. Lally asserting their African. Their complete African background because as Americans they feel rejected and I wondered as I was listening to them if they would feel as I did when I was in Africa in Africa I learned how America can yes but the very rarely feel that it's a question I know sometimes from my own experience one Jewish kids become very Zionist oriented take on all the trappings the clothing the dances and everything else yet they are centrally American kids playing Israeli are a lot of black guys playing Africa and don't really feel it. Isn't this a new thing a new fad not but you know I'm not judging it because I think it's a very fine kind of a development but on the other hand how real and authentic is it one American translate his experience as an African one a sense as you said his own contact with real African were thrown back on his own wrote So what do you think of this Pan African movement in American life as well I think it's very healthy and I don't know how deep some of this identification really goes I often wonder when I see the kids in the dish eking and their natural hair do things I was a real it's intelligent as any other costuming I had to change an experience of observing that when we went those who of us who were Afro Americans assumed African dress in West Africa to quickly frighten the Africans and made them feel that we had come to to steal their own identities and so I never shall though I wear African beans and cloth I never. I tried to accept completely their way of dress because I felt that I would not I could not really take away their identity yet there's a tremendous amount of wealth. Transmission of culture I've seen black kids doing African dancing likely and it's fascinating adding to the jazz experience in America and feeling the roots and the actual performance one gets a tremendous sense of well that even the costuming the kind of African costuming that I have noticed in performance as well as you know just as great. Tremendous creativity I see you have a headdress or maybe you'd call it something else I'm not up on women's fashions which is a fascinating beautiful thing at night maybe it isn't that for again but to me it looks like something I might have come out of an African experience an adaptation Yes but it's beautiful you know the sense that we're bringing African culture into the American stream making it more authentic I think in influencing a lot of styles I this is one of the things that America is capable of doing if it doesn't commercialize it very quickly I want to ask you something else about you African experience. You said it was difficult as an American you know or you felt your you felt your American roots immediately are can American Negroes are talk readily in terms of a genuine common experience with Africans or is there an estrangement there was a difficult Well it was extremely easy for me since I went there to help them with their own Africa that African background. Some people do feel constrained but it depends I think on the circumstances in which you are right against beginning to study American black history and vice versa I mean is there the same thing happening in Africa you know in terms of a reversal that's happening in America yes because they too had been brainwashed they didn't mean it when I was in Guyana the university students would ask me Is it true they're black people in America because you know until. The Watts riots. There was a terrific area around American news releases broadcasts no mention whatsoever of black people and then suddenly this Watts thing burst that sound barrier and they have begun to get news of the black man so black Africans only recently becoming relatively sophisticated about black America well as I said before under the colonial system you studied only what was supposed to be the mother country's history and so you didn't study anything about black culture so they didn't know what had become and they may have known something about the slave trade but they didn't know what had become of those people coming to the new world Mrs Hudson this whole concept of cultural colonialism that's being developed by blacks which I think is an accurate depiction of a condition of this country and other places do you see libraries like the Schoenberg collection which is a rather small library. Being put into a position where the riches and wealth that you have be duplicated soul that exhibits go out across the country there are many black communities that do not have the kinds of cultural facilities that New York as long as they are not New York is wealthy comparatively does the Schomburg collection have aspirations to well up in hashes not been using her wealth winds that we've lost a lot of materials that should have been kept in this city to Washington where the money is and the Smithsonian Institute is now starting a business and traveling exhibit without help I'm sorry depending on the resources we have but there is where the money is and that's where the action is so I would imagine there's a lot of we are microfilming our documents as money becomes available and they are to sail around the country so that people are beginning to have insights into that wealth has been using the Schomburg collections have been an interesting anecdotes about the use of the material are you getting prominent people coming in and doing research and so on. Tell us some of the secrets of a librarian. The most surprising. Person that I learned something someone who had been looking quite obscure turned out to be the daughter of one of our wealthiest politicians and has presented us with our first. First duck we have a jumbo collection never had any place on Wall Street before so that was the greatest surprise to us at somebody who's been coming and looking just like any other modest little lady turned out to give us a Christmas gift of stocking So you're encouraging comment oh average daddy's. But I think the nice one of the nicest things I know about the champagne collection is based on this the Schomburg power to lift the sights of immigrants such as Dr Kenneth Clark who tells a story about his he was an immigrant from Panama and he was small and he couldn't play it rough on the street and so he spent his childhood in the library most Schomberg would show him evidence is that they'd been great black heroes of the past was lifted his side to him realize Mr Schomberg was no limit to what he could do was enough not some kind of quark of yes yes yes so many young men of that generation so many of us who kids grew up in the slums of the pandered almost entirely on the public library as a sanctuary I recall the public library for me was the only pretty place I could go when told it was the first place for example for a Jewish boy that I was introduced to Christmas trees I don't trust you know this was my transition until the general culture. It was a place with a wood paneling and a fireplace if you grew up in Iceland comparable to what I think about most part kids grow up and this could have been I place of rescue and I had great fantasies Well Jane I want to tell you the story James Baldwin tells how he made a connection with the outside world feeling unloved and rejected in his home environment. It was at home among the writings of great people like Dusty S.K. and there in that. We don't really talk about the librarian enough you know you're a librarian and I'm indebted to the kindly interest that librarians who were really took rather unsophisticated kids who didn't have a literary history all their folks one are capable of really pointing out the books that should read and write only books around the house. Sensing our interest in something something about us that rather excited them they drove us into way I think the kind of intellectual network that allowed some of us this brought up I'm wondering if that kind of librarian still around or has it been mechanized and routinized sort of the human eyes that what's happening with librarians Well I think most of us have not lost that human touch we may be a bit old fashioned now in that we face the age of automation with some trepidation because we don't want to lose that human touch. Is the Schomburg collection automating at this point I know have we are not yet but it's quite evident that we're just around the corner from the start of so very folksy maybe maybe this is the quality of the library we want to retain our library as a folksy place as opposed to. You want to maximize the place to call it monster near future to decide are you getting gifts Mrs Hudson I know materials are people I must think of. Your work as archaeology going into the ground work almost the woodworks of America for the kind of material that has not been forthcoming by the conventional scholars are people going to find new stuff like history people are beginning to find new stuff in the fact that our needs have been publicized and we may have the means of taking care of some of their needs has encouraged others to give us that it's to cherish and I hope that some of our listeners will take advantage of the fact that we have a whole network in the New York City public library system ethnic libraries and something that we're getting very much interested in the history of the peoples that make up a city and pay history the people that make about NATION many people have identity problems of their own. Moving Jews and blacks and so on might find it useful to go back in the life I discover who they are thank you our guest the New York tomorrow has been Mrs Jane Hansen curator of the Schaumburg collection of The New York Public Library this is Irving I'm of the director of urban planning of the American Jewish Committee Good night you have been listening to another edition of New York tomorrow presented in cooperation with the American Jewish Committee post for the series is Irving in Levine join us again next week at this time for another of these broadcasts.