The Schomburg Library Is Turning 100 This Year—and Throwing An Epic Rager.

On May 8, 1925—a 100 years agone tomorrow—one of nan country’s largest collections of Black arts, literature, and history was calved retired of a Harlem brownstone.

Now called nan Schomburg Research Center successful grant of nan precocious curator, Arturo Schomburg, this branch of nan New York Public Library is location to a staggering archive. So it’s only fitting that nan room observe its centennial successful style.

The Schomburg is celebrating its ain day pinch a year-long celebration. Events will see a summertime festival, book giveaways, an in-library exhibition, an old-school artifact statement hosted by nary different than Slick Rick, a bid of family dinners prepared from recipes successful Arturo Schomburg’s individual cookbooks, and a constricted version room card. This will picture “Rivers,” nan cosmogram group into nan Center’s level that’s location to Langston Hughes’ ashes.

Though nan Schomburg is not nan nation’s first organization Black library—that title belongs to nan Western Library successful Louisville, Kentucky—it has been dedicated to archiving Black life since its inception. Sprouted arsenic a branch of nan 135th Street New York Public Library to “address nan needs of a changing community,” nan room drew world attraction successful 1926 erstwhile it absorbed nan postulation of “Black clever clever and bibliophile” Arturo Schomburg. His astir 3,000 volumes of Black humanities matter created nan baseline for today’s immense collection.

In 1972, nan Schomburg became a investigation library. And successful 1991, nan abstraction added an accumulation area and 2 monolithic performing creation spaces. All nan while, curators person grown its holdings and kept them unfastened to a investigation nationalist for nan past 100 years. Today nan Schomburg’s typical collections see worldly from from much than 100,000 Black newspapers and magazines.

The room is location to nan papers of James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Lorraine Hansberry, and Maya Angelou. The Black Arts Movement is heavy repped successful nan creation and artifacts division. And convey to nan oral history and video archiving project, card-carrying researchers tin bask complete 5,000 hours of recorded history—including accounts of nan formerly enslaved.

Tomorrow’s accumulation kick-off will see a bid of fireside chats pinch erstwhile and existent postulation board and Harlem Renaissance historians. If you’re a bibliophile retired of town, you tin travel on pinch 1 of nan center’s galore virtual exhibitions and offerings here.

And of course, watch this abstraction for news of erstwhile and really to propulsion down pinch Slick Rick.