1964: When Future Schomburg Center Chief Librarian Jean Blackwell Hutson Curated the Africana Collection in Ghana
Photo: Photographs and Prints Division
This year marks the 60th anniversary of future Schomburg Center Chief Librarian Jean Blackwell Hutson’s yearlong leave of absence from her position as curator at the 135th Street Library in Harlem. At the invitation of Kwame Nkrumah, president of The Republic of Ghana, she accepted a position as an Assistant Librarian to curate the Africana collection at the University of Ghana’s Balme Library in Accra.
In Hutson’s archival collection at the Schomburg Center, explore her time in Ghana through her diary and photos. Nana Osei-Opare, assistant professor of History at the Center for African and African American Studies at Rice University and 2024 alumnus of the Center’s Scholars-in-Residence Program, offers political insight on the country seven years after it broke away from British colonial rule.
Ghana in the Late 1950s Through Mid 1960s
In 1957, Ghana gained its independence from Britain. It was the first sub-Saharan country to achieve this milestone. Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972), who was previously the country’s elected Prime Minister when the country was called the Gold Coast, served as its first President.
“Under Kwame Nkrumah’s Pan-African vision, he hoped to unite the entire African continent, which has many different races and peoples, into a single nation,” Nana Osei-Opare said. During his fellowship at the Center, Osei-Opare studied its collection materials on Ghana and Nkrumah. His research will be part of his upcoming book, Socialist De-Colony: Black and Soviet Entanglements in Ghana’s Cold War and Decolonization Projects.
Ghana would become part of a union of countries across the continent—or states similar to the United States. Nkrumah believed that European forces sought to create small weak African states that were not viable, Osei-Opare continued.
In this 1963 photo, Kwame Nkrumah (right) and his wife, Fathia (left), are presenting a gold watch to historian W.E.B. Du Bois (center) on his 95th birthday.
NYPL Digital Collections Image 1953747
“There was an urgency in Nkrumah and other like-minded figures to form a Pan-African union to counter Western powers’ attempts to undermine African sovereignty and Black independence,” Osei-Opare said.
The Monrovia bloc–consisting of Ethiopia, Nigeria, Liberia, Sudan, Togo, Somalia, and Tunisia—alongside internal actors within Ghana did not agree with Nkrumah’s long-term goal of a Pan African continent union of states.
Across the Atlantic Ocean, Black people in the United States were peacefully protesting against racial violence, segregation, and legal injustices.
“Ghana was seen as a symbol and beacon of Black liberation,” Osei-Opare said. “Nkrumah was very clever in actively calling and tugging at the heart of African Americans to come to Ghana and help build Black independence. He informed them that they had a home and place in Ghana.”
The country attracted some of the U.S.’s most high-profile activists. At Nkrumah’s invitation, W. E. B. Du Bois and his wife Shirley Graham Du Bois moved there in the final years of his life to write his Encyclopedia Africana project. It was incomplete when he died.
Actor, educator, director, and journalist Julian Mayfield became the unofficial leader of the African American community in Ghana and had direct access to Nkrumah. Scholar Alice Windom and union activist Vicki Garvin were also expatriates living in the republic. Poet Maya Angelou lived there, working as a journalist. Malcolm X visited the country in spring of 1964 and met with Nkrumah.
Hutson’s Year in Ghana in Her Own Words & Photos
Hutson and Nkrumah first met when he regularly visited the 135th Street Library, now the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, years before. He studied materials in the collections.
The publication of the Schomburg Dictionary Catalog of the Schomburg Collection of Negro Literature & History in 1962 brought Hutson international praise. It also caught Nkrumah’s eye. By then, he became Ghana’s president. He reached out to her to curate the Africana collection, according to the New York Amsterdam News.
Jean Blackwell Hutson's diaries offer an everyday look at her life during her yearlong stay in Ghana to curate the African collection at the University of Ghana in Accra.
Photo: Lisa Herndon
By 1964, Hutson had been a widow for nearly seven years following the death of her second husband, John Hutson. She and her only child, Jean, sailed that summer to first visit London, then Paris, and Calais.
Hutson “felt wistful but the excitement of stepping on African soil dispelled every other emotion,” stated her diary entry, as she and her daughter arrived in Casablanca on a warm, sunny September 7 day. It was Hutson’s 50th birthday. “After so many years of studying Africa I could hardly believe I had arrived.” The two visited Dakar, Senegal, and Monrovia, Liberia as they made their way to Ghana.
Hutson's diary recounts her stay, offering a perspective of her everyday life. There are short entries discussing purchasing fabric to make curtains so her rented living space felt more like a home, buying a used car to travel around, attending Sunday church services, mentions of meetings with Mayfield and Shirley Graham Du Bois, and attending a lecture by James Farmer, leader of the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE), with friends. Her entries also include purchasing items for the University of Ghana.
Jean Blackwell Hutson's collection in the Photographs and Prints Division capture her time in Ghana with her daughter Jean. Years later, Hutson called this period her daughter's happiest time.
Photo: Photographs and Prints Division
The Africana collection includes materials from other countries about the continent. Some are in the native language of the country. Other items include diaries, maps, and pamphlets on subjects covering art, culture, economics, history, and more, according to the University of Ghana’s website.
There are also entries in Hutson’s diary discussing her daughter Jean, or “Jeannie” as she called her, adjusting to a new school. Passages document her daughter’s health struggles. On one occasion, Hutson feared her daughter contracted malaria. Young Jean was hospitalized and experiencing severe pain.
Hutson's photos show her attendance at an ambassador's reception and carefree moments of young Jean with a family friend in March 1965.
After Ghana, the Making of the Today’s Schomburg Center
Hutson described her time in Ghana as “a very wonderful year” in a 1978 conversation with Barbara Kline at Columbia University’s Oral History Research Office. The Blackwell Hutson collection holds the transcript.
Hutson looked back on her time as the happiest of her daughter’s life, though young Jean suffered from poor health throughout most of her life. Hutson saw firsthand that Nkrumah’s time in office would not be long.
“Every time he left the country, the Ghanaians made an attempt to overthrow him,” stated Hutson’s transcript.
Since Hutson came to the country at his invitation, the future of her and her daughter would be uncertain if he were ousted. “I wasn’t going to be able to survive that change easily,” she said.
Her observation proved to be correct.
Nkrumah was overthrown by a Western-backed military coup in 1966 while en-route to China. Nkrumah’s ideological positioning, political strife, and a faltering economy were some of the main reasons. Ghana saw its cocoa price, which was its main crop, drastically fall. Outside nations, who controlled cocoa’s price, blocked Nkrumah’s efforts to secure loans to bring economic stability, according to Osei-Opare.
Nkrumah lived the remainder of his life in exile in Guinea. He died of cancer in 1972 in Bucharest.
Hutson returned to the 135th Library in fall of 1965 and saw the community's continued interest in studying Black history and materials covering the African diaspora. The Civil Rights and Black Power movements saw more people strongly embrace African history and culture.
Jean Blackwell Hutson was the driving force behind what is today's Schomburg Center located at 515 Malcolm X Blvd. She advocated collection materials being housed in its own building, lobbied New York State legislators for funding, and cofounded the Schomburg Center Corporation to raise additional money.
Photos 1 and 3: Photographs and Prints Division; Middle picture: Anita King
She advocated for the 135th Library to become one of The New York Public Library’s research locations. She pushed for items to be housed in its own building and have additional staffing. Hutson lobbied New York State for funding. She also helped to establish the Schomburg Center Corporation to raise additional money.
Hutson was named the chief librarian when NYPL transferred the Schomburg Collection from the branch libraries to research libraries and was renamed the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in 1972. Hutson later became NYPL assistant director for collection management in 1980. She retired in 1984.
The Center named its research and reference division—now called the Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division—in her honor in 2007.
The Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division stewards Hutson’s papers which cover her career at NYPL, family, and more about her time in Ghana. The Photographs and Prints Division holds Hutson’s photographs, which documents her career, family life, and travels.
Additional Research Resources: Ebony, New York Amsterdam News, The New York Times, The Washington Post
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More Content from the Schomburg Center:
- Kwame Nkrumah Resource Guide
- 1924: A Year in the Life of Future Schomburg Center Founder Arturo Schomburg
- The Wisdom & Stories of Maya Angelou at the Schomburg Center
- African Materials in the Schomburg Collection of Negro Literature and History by Jean Blackwell Hutson
- African Studies Bulletin, Vol. 3, No. 2 (May, 1960), pp. 1-4, Published by: African Studies Association