Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, was a historian, writer, bibliophile, collector, and activist. He also wrote many books. Schomburg was a Puerto Rican of African and German descent. He moved to the United States in 1891, where he researched and raised awareness of the contributions that Afro-Latin Americans and African Americans have made to society. He was an important intellectual figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Over the years, he collected literature, art, slave narratives, and other materials of African history, which were purchased to become the basis of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, named in his honor, at the New York Public Library (NYPL) branch in Harlem.
The Society of American Archivists is the oldest and largest archivist association in North America, serving the educational and informational needs of more than 5,000 individual archivist and institutional members. Established in 1936, the organization serves upwards of 6,200 individual and member institutions.
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is a research library of the New York Public Library (NYPL) and an archive repository for information on people of African descent worldwide. Located at 515 Malcolm X Boulevard between West 135th and 136th Streets in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, it has, almost from its inception, been an integral part of the Harlem community. It is named for Afro-Puerto Rican scholar Arturo Alfonso Schomburg.
Robert Sidney Martin is an American librarian, archivist, administrator, and educator. He is Professor Emeritus, School of Library and Information Studies, Texas Woman’s University, where he was the Lillian M. Bradshaw Endowed Chair until his retirement in 2008.
Jean Blackwell Hutson was an American librarian, archivist, writer, curator, educator, and later chief of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The Schomburg Center dedicated their Research and Reference Division in honor of Hutson.
Clement Alexander Price was an American historian. As the Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor of History at Rutgers University-Newark, Price brought his study of the past to bear on contemporary social issues in his adopted hometown of Newark, New Jersey, and across the nation. He was the founding director of the Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience at Rutgers; the vice chair of President Barack Obama's Advisory Council on Historic Preservation; the chair of Obama's transition team for the National Endowment for the Humanities; a member of the Scholarly Advisory Committee of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture; and a trustee of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He is the namesake of the jazz club Clement's Place.
Brenda S. Banks was an American archivist known for her work in preserving the history of Georgia as board chair for the Georgia Archives Institute. Her work with the Georgia Archives and her innovations in education and training programs made her a leading figure in American intellectual life.
Harold Thomas Pinkett was an African-American archivist and historian. In 1942, he became the first African-American archivist employed at the National Archives of the United States. He was also the first African-American to become a fellow of the Society of American Archivists and to be editor of the journal The American Archivist. He was an expert in agricultural archives, and served as president of the Agricultural History Society.
The Negro Society for Historical Research (NSHR) was an organization founded by John Edward Bruce and Arthur Alfonso Schomburg in 1911.
Wilda D. Logan is an American archivist who is most well-known as her work of almost 40 years in the archival profession including 33 years of federal service with the Records Management Training Program of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). She is a member of the Society of American Archivists (SAA), Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (MARAC), National Association of Government Archives and Records Administrators (NAGARA), and is a Certified Archivist with the Academy of Certified Archivists (ACA), where she served as a Regent from 1991–1994.
Kathleen D. Roe is an American archivist. She has recently retired from her position as Director of Archives and Records Management Operations at the New York State Archives. She managed the archives records management program and provided services to “63 state agencies and 4,300 local governments as well as the archival programs operating State Archives archival facility holding over 100,000 cubic feet of state government records.” She also overlooked several statewide programs that “provide training and advisory services to over 3,000 historical records programs.” She was the president of the Council of State Archivists and later chaired the Government Relations Committee and the Survey Management Team. Roe was the 70th president of the Society of American Archivists (SAA) from 2014–2015. She is currently traveling and speaking on archival processing and the importance of archives.
Karen L. Jefferson is an American archivist who serves as the Head of Archives and Special Collections at the Atlanta University Center. She has been a member of the Society of American Archivists for almost 40 years, serving on the Council from 1997-2000 and receiving the Fellows Award in 2004.
Ervin L. Jordan, Jr. is an Associate Professor and Research Archivist at the University of Virginia, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library. He has published several books and articles, as well as given lectures and taught workshops, on the American Civil War and African American history. He has appeared on television several times as a consulting historian in matters of African American history and genealogy, as well lectured at conferences, universities and events, some which were televised on C-CPAN. He has written several books and been awarded for his research in the Civil War and African American history and is one of the leading figures in developing black American history.
Deborra Richardson is a past Curator Emerita at the Archives of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History (NMAH). Her research specialties were African American Music Collections and Archival Administration. She grew up in Long Island, New York, and currently lives in Brentwood, Maryland.
Clifford L. Muse, Jr. is an African American historian and archivist. He is currently Howard University's archivist and associate director at the Moorland–Spingarn Research Center. He is most well known for his involvement in the diversity issues of the archive profession as well as his research and writings on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Frederick Douglass.
Danna C. Bell is an archivist and librarian at the Library of Congress. Bell served as president of the Society of American Archivists from 2013 to 2014 and serves on the Advisory Committee on the Records of Congress. Bell has been invited to many national and international events and conferences on archives and special collections, including the ARL/SAA Mosaic Program Leadership Forum in 2016. She is active in the archives profession and writes and speaks on the importance of archival work.
Jackie M. Dooley is an American archivist who has served with the Library of Congress, UC San Diego, the Getty, OCLC Research, and as council member, vice president, and president of the Society of American Archivists. She has published several notable works that have been extraordinarily useful in the archival profession in the United States and in the United Kingdom. She has been most influential in her work to utilize the internet and blogs in her archival work, reaching hundreds of thousands of people working in archives or simply interested in the field. She has helped promote several institutions online including the Society of American Archivists and the Library of Congress.
Taronda Elise Spencer was an American archivist. She worked in archives for over 20 years, most notably as the College Archivist and Historian at Spelman College until her death in 2013. She "was dedicated to, preserving the history of African American education in the United States and mentoring a new generation of archivists."
Florence Edwards Borders was an American archivist, historian, and librarian. She specialized in the preservation of African American historical artifacts, especially those related to Afro-Louisianans.
Tamar Evangelestia-Dougherty is an American librarian and administrator. An archives and special collections expert, Evangelestia-Dougherty was the executive director of the Chicago-based Black Metropolis Research Consortium from 2011 to 2013 and the director of collections and services at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture from 2013 to 2015. She became the first director of the combined Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, the world's largest museum library system, December 6, 2021.
