From These Roots 2

Librarians at the Division shepherded community members, young and old, through stacks rich with history and narratives that illuminated the lives of Harlem residents beyond the limits of slavery. Librarians and curators Arturo Schomburg, Lawrence Reddick, Regina Anderson, and Jean Blackwell Hutson were a few of the cultural and intellectual ambassadors that sought to instill a national and global perspective of Black life and the fight for social justice. Poet and playwright Sonia Sanchez, writer and intellectual James Baldwin, actors and activists Harry Belafonte and Canada Lee, filmmaker William Greaves, playwright Alice Childress, artists Aaron Douglas and Romare Bearden, and many others, informed their creative crafts as patrons of the library.