“The Negro Digs Up His Past,” published in Survey Graphic magazine

This essay by bibliophile, writer, and collector Arturo Alfonso Schomburg introduces his concept of “vindicating evidences” as records of achievement that not only enabled the “first true” writing of Black history, but also forged a recasting of American history. An early articulation of Schomburg’s collecting philosophy, this essay first appeared in Survey Graphic alongside works by other Harlem Renaissance luminaries, and again in Alain Locke’s groundbreaking volume, The New Negro: An Interpretation.



Ernestine Rose, a librarian at the 135th Street Branch of The New York Public Library, instigated the Library’s 1926 purchase of Arturo Schomburg’s collection of books, manuscripts, photographs, and art. This “seed library” has since grown to more than 11 million items that remain publicly available today in five research divisions in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.