Nicolás Kanellos
African American scholarship is replete with references and homages to Arthur A. Schomburg, né Arturo Alfonso Schomburg (1874–1938), the Afro–Puerto Rican who became the archivist and bibliographer for the Harlem Renaissance and who assembled the most extensive collection of African diaspora writings of his time. Quite often, Schomburg is treated as unique in having transitioned from his Spanish-language, Afro-Hispanic background in Puerto Rico to American Negro culture, to use the term in vogue during his lifetime. But Schomburg was hardly unique, considering the number of Afro–Puerto Ricans and Afro-Cubans who settled in African American neighborhoods, intermarried within those communities, and adopted the language and ways they encountered there,1 while never truly giving up their Hispanic-Caribbean identity. What is unique about Schomburg, however, is that as a lay historian and archivist/bibliographer he contributed so much to establishing a history and awareness of the African diaspora. This chapter purports not to review that well-traveled ground2 but to study instead a friend and antecedent of Schomburg, another Gramscian organic intellectual who sought to document his people’s story from the intersecting margins of both the Spanish and U.S. empires. Both intellectuals coincided in building their histories by recovering the lost biographies of Afro-Caribbeans and establishing an alternative archive. Schomburg and Sotero Figueroa had grown up in Puerto Rico as disadvantaged children of mixed racial heritage, often called mulatos or pardos because of skin color. Both were largely self-educated and learned crafts, especially typesetting, on the island; both migrated to the United States prior to the U.S. war with Spain; and both became associated with José Martí as they engaged in revolutionary activity to free Spain’s Caribbean colonies. And, finally, both became subjects of the United States following this growing empire’s victory over Spain.
Sotero Figueroa (1851–1923) somewhat antedates Schomburg both chronologically and in his dedication to research and the writing of history, including the history of Puerto Rico’s chapter of the African diaspora. Born to free parents of color in Ponce, Puerto Rico, Figueroa may have had some elementary education in San Juan from Rafael Cordero y Molina (1790–1868), a famed black teacher who instructed children of all backgrounds for free;3 as I indicate below, Figueroa wrote passionately about Cordero in his book of biographies, Ensayo biográfico de los que más han contribuído al progreso de Puerto Rico (1888). Not having the financial resources for higher, private education, Figueroa became apprenticed to a printer and learned the trade during the time when typographer-printers in Puerto Rico formed an intelligentsia among the working classes, akin to the leadership that the lectores in Cuban tobacco factories maintained. The vast majority of printers at that time were men of color. With access to the liberal writings he printed, Figueroa became an autodidact who studied historical documents, edited and published newspapers, and wrote and published poetry and plays. In 1873, he was a member of a literary society, Club Artístico y Literario Borinqueño, for which he became the secretary.4 Through his printing and because of his literary interests, he became an important link to the working classes for white liberals seeking autonomy from Spain.5 Figueroa was arrested twice for his participation in the Autonomist cause. In 1880, he founded his own print shop and began publishing newspapers, notably El Eco de Ponce and La Avispa; both enterprises eventually failed. He would continue to write for various periodicals and, in 1886, once again failed at publishing his own newspaper, El Imparcial, which lasted a little less than two years.6
Before making the transition to the United States and becoming involved in the independence movement led by José Martí, as did Schomburg, Figueroa began to delve into Puerto Rican history in general and to consider in his writings and publications the history of Africans and their condition on the island, although he did so often in a somewhat veiled and indirect manner, cloaking his aspirations for his people within general liberal causes. As Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof has shown, Figueroa and his printer-poet, later revolutionary comrade Francisco “Pachín” Marín,
sought to insert a radical politics of social equality into liberal projects, arguing that the abandonment of prejudice of rank and caste in favour of a system of reward based on merit should be at the centre of colonial reform. They sought to enshrine particular notions of social and racial equality as fundamental elements of a liberal Puerto Rican ‘regional’ identity, and of modern, civilized, society. . . . [They] argued that prejudices of caste and rank, which they attributed to conservatives and Spanish officials, were a form of obscurantism.7
In much of his periodical writing and in his compilation of historical biographies, Figueroa argued for progress and civilization, often weaving in the leitmotivs of eliminating the disadvantages of race and class and taking pains to include the names and biographies of Afro–Puerto Ricans he considered worthy of respect by the nation. In his fervor for researching and writing biographies, he antedates Schomburg’s similar obsession. Figueroa continued to recognize African-heritage heroes in his later periodical writing as part of the independence movement in New York City. Figueroa’s well-documented volume Ensayo biográfico, which he dedicated to some of the most radical leaders of the Autonomist movement, was written for a contest on biography, which the Afro–Puerto Rican autodidact won.
It is obvious from the outset that biography was for Figueroa a lens through which to explore Puerto Rican history. Throughout the text, Figueroa makes use of the historian’s tools, recovering and citing documents from the archive, citing newspaper stories and letters to the editor as well as testimonies and accounts of witnesses contemporary to the biographical subjects. Along the way he demonstrates his erudition, citing classical works, intellectual sources, and even the poetry of Luís de Camoens.8 He refers to the words of educated historians and writers, such as Alejandro Tapia y Rivera and Salvador Brau, and offers alternative interpretations that conflict with their conclusions. He also corrects inaccuracies published in periodicals. In all, he assumes the role of historian with remarkable confidence and, at times, remarkable audacity by criticizing Spanish historical and contemporary authority and rule while Puerto Rico was still a colony of Spain.
Figueroa begins his collection of biographies with sketches of missionaries and colonizers but dwells more extensively on the lives of personages of the nineteenth century. Despite his excellent documentation, Figueroa extends his biographies to include paragraphs on varied subjects as well as his own editorials on social life and conditions. The Ensayo biográfico can be read in a number of ways because of Figueroa’s criteria for selection and the leitmotivs that run through many of the thirty entries. Figueroa, ever aware of his unprivileged place in colonial society and his being deprived of a formal education, throughout the document traces what education was available on the island and for whom, and the lengths that many of his biographical subjects went to in making up for their lack of schooling. His interwoven history of education ties in neatly with his repeatedly developed liberal ideas about the march toward civilization and progress on the island, despite the disregard of Spain for the welfare of its colonial subjects (EB 61). Along the way, Figueroa also traces the history of slavery and its eventual abolition on the island; for him, slavery and its sociopolitical aftermath were the most serious barriers to enlightenment and civilization in Puerto Rican society—and the world. And the greatest heroes in Figueroa’s pantheon are those who pulled themselves up from poverty and disadvantage in that society and participated in bringing progress to Puerto Rican culture; many of these were of African heritage. They were, Figueroa insists, self-made and without assistance from the white hierarchy; this, too, is a theme that will be repeated and expanded upon by Schomburg.
Notably, the second biography is that of the mulatto rococo painter José Campeche (1752–1809), who also served as a beacon for Schomburg in his gallery of race heroes. Besides the obvious renown of the painter, Figueroa chose Campeche because his life’s story offered the latter-day artisan the opportunity to editorialize on the lack of opportunity and privilege for people like him. He states that the painter would have been able to cross the Atlantic, see the works of antiquity, and learn from the court painters of his time and thus increase his fame (EB 14) had he been born into a family privileged by the purity of Spanish blood and access to the financial resources to purchase an education. Figueroa states that his example teaches us, “lo que puede la fuerza creadora del genio, aún no auxiliada por la educación” (EB 15) (what the creative power of genius can do, even without the help of education).
Among the heroes who furthered education, Figueroa included Fray Benigno Carrión (1798–1871), Nicolás Aguayo y Aldea (1808–78), and Manuel Sicardó y Osuna. The entry on Sicardó y Osuna gave the author the opportunity to comment on the lack of opportunities on the Island: “. . . como tantos hijos de este país á quienes faltan alas de oro para volar á otras regiones donde saciar el ansia de saber, que es tanto más vehemente cuanto mayores son los obstáculos que se oponen a ello . . .” (EB 114) (. . . like so many sons of this country who do not have golden wings to fly to other regions to satisfy their hunger for learning, which is that much more stronger as greater are the obstacles that oppose it. . . .).
This theme of being deprived of access to education because of lack of the financial resources to travel where there are schools and universities will be repeated numerous times in the Ensayo biográfico. It is, however, the biographical entry dedicated to the self-taught teacher Cordero y Molina, known in some circles as the “Father of Public Education in Puerto Rico,” that is one of the longest entries. Figueroa details at length this Afro–Puerto Rican tobacco worker’s selfless contribution to teaching children of all backgrounds for free, perhaps even Figueroa himself at some point. He calls Cordero a “pobre hijo del pueblo, marcado con el sello de la degradación” (que así se decía en épocas de lamentable atraso del que tenía la piel negra) (EB 141) [poor child of the people, branded with the stamp of degradation (that is what black skin was called in epochs of lamentable backwardness)]. Cordero serves as a fundamental example for Figueroa’s lobbying for public education, but also as an example of another self-taught intellectual like himself: “que se levanta del nivel común, sobrepuja en consideración de sus paisanos, y por su propio y exclusivo esfuerzo [my italics] escribe su nombre en el templo inmortal de nuestros benefactores” (EB 141) (who rises up from the common folk, overcompensates in favor of his countrymen, and by his own and exclusive effort writes his name in the immortal temple of those who have benefited us). Figueroa speculates on the great tenacity it would have taken Cordero9 to overcome the barriers presented by the racist society of his day, when negros were not allowed to attend the one school that existed in San Juan.
In the chapter on Cordero, Figueroa lambastes the institution of slavery and its deleterious effects on society, especially in terms of depriving that society of the genius and contributions that people of African heritage could have made to the nation had they just been offered the opportunity of an education. He affirms in many different ways that the color of one’s skin has nothing to do with intelligence and talent, and societies that discriminate in this way cannot be considered civilized. It is in this chapter as well that Figueroa brings up one of his greatest race heroes, the same one praised later by Schomburg: Toussaint L’Ouverture. Figueroa’s choice is especially daring given how most whites detested L’Ouverture, especially the whites in Figueroa’s homeland of southern Puerto Rico, where many refugees of the Haitian revolution settled. But he sees in L’Ouverture the proof that people of African blood have rights and can be great men. He ends his discussion with a call to philanthropists, even if they think their blood is superior, to educate black people: “¡Perfeccionad al negro, filántropos que os creeis de raza privilegiada!” (EB 142). He notes that even white Europe arose from a barbarian past and goes on to cite legal documents dating to as late as 1848 that allowed summary execution and maiming of slaves in Puerto Rico (EB 143–44). In effect, Figueroa was turning the tables, asking who was the barbarian, the so-called savage African or the civilized white (EB 145)?
Among the heroes who forwarded the abolitionist cause, Figueroa praises Ramón Power y Giral, Fray Benigno Carrión, the above-mentioned Nicolás Aguayo y Aldea, Luis Padial y Vizcarrondo, and various others, but he reserves his greatest praise and the longest entry in his book for Segundo Ruiz Belvis (1824–67). Belvis, explains Figueroa, tirelessly and through self-sacrifice worked to free the slaves in Puerto Rico, a deed that was finally accomplished in 1873, six years after Belvis drafted the key document for abolition that was made law six years after his death in exile. Figueroa quotes extensively from Belvis’s co-written document known simply as the “Informe” (Report) and took the opportunity to depict slavery in the longest editorial of his book. Slavery, he stated, just fifteen years after its abolition,10 was “la iniquidad de los siglos” (AB 131) (the iniquity of the centuries); he pictured the subjects of this iniquity as dehumanized “. . . máquinas de carne que se movían continuamente en el fondo de las plantaciones y establecimientos agrícolas, accelerando la fatigosa faena al sentir el chasquido del látigo sobre su extenuado cuerpo” (EB 131) (. . . machines made of flesh that continually worked their way through plantations and agricultural fields, the lash of the whip accelerating the pace of their fatigued and exhausted bodies). Contrasted with this horrible depiction, Figueroa followed with a poetic description of some 30,000 slaves receiving the news of their liberation: “¡Libres! ¡Con cuánta emoción no lanzarían los esclavos por primera vez esta palabra! Es decir, que ya amparados por la ley, eran hombres y no cosas. Ya podían andar los lazos de la familia, sin pensar en que sus hijos fueran arrancados del seno materno, y vendidos para otras poblaciones . . . . Ya podían ilustrar su razón, tener creencias, fundar familias sin temor á que las brutas caricias del capataz ó del amo violaran, con su dignidad, la honra de sus esposas, la inocencia de sus hijas” (EB 136–37) (Free! How great would they have expressed their emotion when they first heard that word! That is, finally supported by law, they were now people and not things. They now could maintain family ties, without the fear that their children would be torn from maternal breasts and sold to other regions. . . . Now they could manifest their reasoning, have beliefs, start families without the fear that the brutal embraces of the foreman or of the owner, with their dignity intact, would violate the honor of their wives, the innocence of their daughters).
Last in the Ensayo biográfico, Figueroa memorialized artisans like himself, such as Juan González y Chaves (1810–65) and Pascasio P. Sancerrit (1833–76), among others. González y Chaves advanced Puerto Rican culture by being among the first to publish books on the island and even a newspaper, Fomento (Development). Figueroa classed him a laborioso obrero (122) (hard-working laborer), thus emphasizing that the working classes could produce intellectuals, even if they are self-made, implying that civilization could be advanced in Puerto Rico only by offering such people opportunities and supporting them. On the other hand, Figueroa makes clear that Sancerrit was of African heritage and became a distinguished typographer, poet, and newspaper publisher despite his lack of formal education, that he accomplished so much all by himself (EB 172), “como un ejemplo admirable de lo que puede la voluntad auxiliada por la inteligencia” (173) (an admirable example of what will power aided by intelligence can accomplish). Figueroa also paid homage to Félix Padial y Vizacarrondo (1838–80) and José Pablo Morales (1828–82), who, although not of the artisan class, distinguished themselves as journalists. Padial took in Figueroa as an apprentice and initiated the young aspirant in not only literary pursuits, but also to work on Padial’s own newspaper, El Progreso; Padial also introduced Figueroa to political liberalism. Morales, insisted Figueroa, was self-taught, se formó solo (EB 229), and his success was due to his powerful intelligence and perseverance at a time when island culture was utterly backward and offered no training. Morales’s biography gave Figueroa the opportunity to editorialize that withholding educational opportunities and keeping Puerto Ricans backward and ignorant were purposeful strategies of Spain to keep the population docile and governable (EB 230).
Thus, it seems, unlike in traditional biographies and accounts of great men of the past—no women, of course, unfortunately—Figueroa’s criteria for the most part did not include politicians and many men of wealth and renown but favored those who worked to free the slaves and advance education on the island. His particular selection of biographical subjects, as we have seen, was replete with artisans and men of African or Afro-European heritage, those who despite discrimination and lack of opportunity for them as free blacks or the children of manumission succeeded in intellectual or artistic endeavors on their own, that is, self-made.
Shortly after publishing his Ensayo biográfico, in 1889 Figueroa left the island with his own printing press and equipment for New York,11 where he joined up with the leaders of the independence movement, as did Schomburg in 1891. Both became aligned with the Cuban Revolutionary Party and associated with its leader, José Martí. Figueroa established a print shop, named América, where he published newspapers and books, among other types of documents. He was also the editor, from 1890 to 1892, of the renowned cultural magazine Revista Ilustrada de Nueva York. On the presses of Imprenta América, Figueroa issued the Revolutionary Party’s newspaper, Patria, which he edited when Martí was traveling. Among the qualities that drew Figueroa to José Martí and later to apotheosize him after Martí’s death on the battlefield in Cuba was precisely the patriarch’s well-known stance on doing away with all racial distinctions in the independent Cuba they were fighting to establish; just as important was Martí’s success in uniting the Afro-Cuban revolutionary forces with the traditionally white liberal ones and extending leadership to men of color, such as Figueroa and his printer-publisher colleague from Ponce, Francisco “Pachín” Marín, as well as Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, all three Afro–Puerto Rican autodidact artisans.
In his periodical writing from within the revolutionary movement, Figueroa continued his leitmotivs of Afro-Caribbean contributions and the self-education of those from disadvantaged backgrounds, especially those of African lineage. For instance, he included Toussaint L’Ouverture alongside Simón Bolívar, Miguel Hidalgo, and other famed liberators of the Americas in his article “Meeting de Proclamación,” in which he explains that “Toussaint, que surge de las lobregueces de la esclavitud y derrota las mejores huestes de la Francia napoleónica; su amor para los infelices subyugados, su magnaminidad para los vencidos . . .” (Toussaint, who arises from the darkness of slavery and demolishes the best of France’s Napoleonic armies; his love for the unhappy oppressed, his magnanimity for the vanquished . . .).12 In this same article, he compares the fallen Martí to Jesus Christ and repeats his recurrent gloss on Martí’s vision: “no reconoce categorías ni colores, sino hermanos en la patria y la libertad” (he does not recognize class distinctions or skin color, only brothers in the fatherland and liberty). But more strikingly he repeats numerous times in editorials that the revolution would bring about equality of people, irrespective of their skin color: “. . . será igualmente justa la revolución en que han caído, sin mirarse los colores, todos los cubanos . . . (donde no) se distinguiera un hombre de otro por el calor del corazón ó por el fuego de la frente” [the revolution in which they have fallen will be just if all Cubans pay no attention to color . . . (where) a man would only be distinct from another because of the warmth of his heart or the fire on his brow].13 It is noteworthy that Figueroa actually interprets the actions of Martí as similar to those of Christ regarding class distinctions: “. . . dar la vida por la redención de su pueblo, se lanza pobre y oscuro, solo é indefenso, a través de la Judea, a levantar en los corazones el imperio de la justicia, abolir la ley de casta, predicando el dogma iluminador de las conciencias y dignificador de la humanidad, que se encierra en estas tres sublimes palabras: Libertad, Igualdad, Fraternidad” (. . . to sacrifice one’s life for the redemption of his people, he emerges poor, dark,14 alone and defenseless across Judea to raise up in hearts the empire of justice, to abolish the law of castes, preaching the dogma enlightening the conscience and dignifying humanity, which can be summarized in three sublime words: Liberty, Fraternity, Equality).15 Figueroa continues the essay, warning that those who maintain social discrimination will not participate in the benefits of the victorious revolution: “. . . los que se excluyan de la revolución por arrogancia de señorío ó por reparos sociales . . . .” He continues in the same article to speak of the social justice and equality that must be enforced upon the success of the revolution, in which color and class discrimination must be abjured. In a front-page editorial on October 2, 1894, he emphasizes that one of the reasons for the independence movement was to abolish slavery, that “Los dominadores de la colonia . . . apenas si se detenían a pensar que el esclavo podía ser libre, y que el criollo debía administrar sus propios intereses” (The colonial dominators . . . hardly ever paused to think that the slave could be free and that the creole could take care of his own business), thus proffering the analogy that abolition was to slavery as independence was to the creoles.
Beyond these recurrent themes, Figueroa assumes the confident stance of a true historian in many of the speeches and periodical articles he penned and published in New York. For instance, in his series of seven articles entitled “La verdad de la historia” (The Truth of the History), which ran in Patria from March 19 to July 2, 1892, he traces the history of the independence movement in Puerto Rico, from its origins to the Grito de Lares (Shout at Lares) insurrection in 1896, correcting various published versions about the shout while foregrounding the role of Afro–Puerto Rican patriot Ramón Emeterio Betances, who receives from Figueroa reverence similar to that he showed for José Martí. Another example is his published speech on the anniversary of Martí’s death, “Primer Aniversario” (February 29, 1896), in which he announces the names of the meritorious fallen in the pages of history. In the speech, he summarizes the independence movement and war, taking pains to enumerate the heroic fallen. And this, once again, gives him the opportunity to specifically name Afro-Caribbean heroes in his pantheon: Victoriano Garzón (1847–95), Francisco Adolfo Crombet Tejera (1851–95), Alfonso Goulet (?–1895), and the famed carpenter who became a general, José Guillermo Moncada (1841–95). What is interesting is that they all died in battle the same year as Martí, and in Figueroa’s shorthand they merit the same respect as their white comrades.
Noteworthy in the same speech, he returns to the need for education of the poor, now seen as an outcome of the revolution: Revolutionary man will educate “la clase obrera para que marche concientemente a la conquista de sus derechos” (the working class so that it can consciously march forward to conquer its rights); and, maintaining the humility of the working classes, he emphasizes again: “el hombre modesto, que se prodiga sin ostentación” (modest man who will give of himself without ostentation).
Soon after Martí’s death, Figueroa was marginalized by the white liberals16 in the movement in New York, which led him to leave Patria. Hoffnung-Garskof attests that “After Martí left for Cuba in 1895, the leadership of the party increasingly excluded men like Serra and Figueroa from decision-making and from editorial input in Patria.”17 Figueroa then proceeded to establish his own newspaper, La Doctrina de Martí, which he published from 1896 to 1898 with the help of other Afro–Puerto Ricans, including Francisco “Pachín” Marín and Rafael Serra. La Doctrina de Martí sought to continue what Figueroa interpreted as Martí’s “socially and racially progressive view of the revolutionary cause,”18 thus challenging the conservatism of Patria. Among his diverse writings in his newspaper, Figueroa began a series of seven articles, from September 16, 1896, to March 2, 1897, defining what for him was the discipline of history and the role of historian, while he attacked and deconstructed Cuban newspaper publisher Enrique Trujillo’s recently issued book, Apuntes históricos (Historical Notes).
After the war with Spain was concluded and the United States obtained its Caribbean colonies, Figueroa in 1899 migrated to Cuba, intending once again to transport his printing press and set up shop to print and publish for the new nation; his plans were frustrated, however, when the same conservatives who pushed him out of Patria, notably Tomás Estrada Palma, intercepted the importation of his Imprenta América.19 In Havana, he nevertheless continued to participate in political life and write Afro-Caribbeans into history through articles in such newspapers as La Discusión and others. In 1900, he became a founding member of a political group, Asociación de Emigrados Revolucionarios Cubanos, and by 1900 he would become a founding member of the revived Partido Revolucionario Cubano, which aspired to maintain the values of the independence movement; Figueroa became the editor of the party’s newspaper, Independencia.20 In 1902, when Cuba became an independent republic—although under U.S. interventionist clauses in its constitution—he was named director of the republic’s official organ, La gaceta oficial. In 1904, Figueroa wrote a column for the El Mundo newspaper entitled “Nuestros héroes,” in which along with well-known creole revolutionary figures he made a point of including biographies of Afro-Cuban heroes, such as Antonio Maceo, José Maceo, Néstor Aranguren, and Vidal Ducasse. Figueroa’s mission as journalist and historian, as well as protector of the Afro-Caribbean legacy, was continually frustrated to the point of his living his later years in penury. The conservative forces led by U.S.-supported President Tomás Estrada Palma prevailed in suppressing Afro-Cuban movements for equal rights, and a disillusioned Figueroa retired from public life while having to sue for his pension as a veteran of the war for independence.21
In a trajectory to the United States comparable to Figueroa’s, Alfonso Arturo Schomburg relocated in 1891 to New York, where he became actively involved in the Cuban and Puerto Rican independence movements. Like Figueroa, he soon became a member of revolutionary clubs, such as Club Borinquen and Las Dos Antillas, and became associated with José Martí and with Figueroa, in whose home club members occasionally met.22 Schomburg was born to an unwed launderette or midwife of free African heritage and a father of German or mestizo heritage who seems to have abandoned his wife and son.23 Although Schomburg himself made references to having had some education of one sort or another while growing up in Puerto Rico, there is really no evidence that he received any type of formal education,24 especially because there were practically no free public schools on the island during the nineteenth century and his impoverished mother certainly could not afford private tutelage.25 This lack of formalized study and degrees or certificates bothered Schomburg throughout his life and was an obstacle to his pursuing education and a law degree in the United States.26 It also was evident to his university-educated American Negro brethren, such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Carter Woodson, as they willingly received his documentary research but slighted his insight and understanding, even his accented speech and poor writing style that needed extensive editing.27 And when he was a candidate to be hired to curate the collection he had sold to the New York Public Library, it was Du Bois and his followers who opposed him because of his lack of formal preparation. Despite his references to some type of schooling, Schomburg proudly referred to himself as self-made.28 It would strain credulity to think that a bibliophile such as Schomburg did not read Figueroa’s Ensayo bibliográfico or that the two comrades did not exchange ideas, especially those about the struggle for racial equality and Afro-Caribbean history. Both activists were essential in articulating the struggle for racial equality as part of the movement for independence from Spain.
During this early period in New York, Schomburg sent articles and letters in Spanish to periodicals in support of the revolution. He also had occasion to visit independence chapters in New Orleans and travel in the South, where he observed the condition of African Americans.29 Unlike Figueroa, however, Schomburg stayed in the United States after the war, when Puerto Rico became a colony of the United States. He and his fellow Afro-Caribbeans also set up a bilingual freemasonry lodge, El Sol de Cuba, which in 1911 changed its name to the Prince Hall Lodge and accommodated a growing African American membership; Hoffnung-Garskof calls attention to the lodge’s reinforcement of Schomburg’s constant preoccupation: “The brothers in the Prince Hall lodges glorified the image of the ‘self-made man,’ a message that appealed to Schomburg, the humble artisan, whose humiliation before the New York State Board of Regents was replayed multiple times at the hands of elite black intellectuals.”30 Despite racism among white Masons, Schomburg eventually became general secretary of the Grand Lodge of the State of New York, becoming in this sense self-made; it was an intellectual distinction that he was unable to duplicate in his work life as a humble bank mailroom clerk and messenger. After the United States took possession of Cuba and Puerto Rico, among the last colonies of Spain, Schomburg directed his intellectual energies toward studying the worldwide African diaspora and constituting its documentary history. It was also in 1911 that Schomburg and four others founded what eventually would be known as the Negro Society for Historical Research, and, in 1914, he was elected a member of the American Negro Academy, whose membership was made up mostly of formally educated African Americans.31 Schomburg was now in full gear in his historical research and providing the documentary basis for Pan-Africanism, or what we might today call black nationalism.
It is in Schomburg’s twentieth-century cultural work that his decolonizing archival work and writings strive to revise the white man’s history to create a space for African heritage and even at times to document African and Afro-Hispanic antecedence in developing “civilization.” As he wrote in “The Negro Digs Up His Past,” “History must restore what slavery took away, for it is the social damage of slavery that the present generation must repair and offset.”32 And where Martí may have tipped his hat to creating a multiracial society33 in Latin America, Schomburg on the other hand placed the African presence in the center of Latin American history34—in this he departed somewhat from Figueroa, who unflaggingly praised Martí’s ideas on racial integration. And like Figueroa in preserving the heroic role of Toussaint L’Ouverture, Schomburg went a step further and proposed that one of the greatest gifts to the Americas was black Haiti’s blazing the path to independence from Europe.35 Thus recurring throughout his collecting and his essays and speeches, Schomburg took pains to recover from the past African “firsts” in order to correct the historical record.
For Schomburg, biography became a mainstay in his research and writing methodology. Much like Figueroa’s, many of Schomburg’s articles rescue the contributions of African heritage figures to the development of the Americas. He filled the pages he wrote with biographies of philosophers, poets, politicians, artists, educators—all types of accomplished individuals of African heritage who blazed paths in Europe and the Americas. Writing in “The Economic Contribution by the Negro to America” about Africans forcefully brought to the New World, Schomburg stated, “They were not the untutored savages we are expected to believe from modern histories.”36 Thus, like Figueroa as well, Schomburg here and in most of his works was motivated to challenge and correct official history. The latter is obvious in his closing remarks in this essay: “Suffice it to say that the position which the Negro and his mixed progeny of European or Indian blood had won in South America, they have also earned, if even they have not as yet received, due recognition therefore in North America.”
Schomburg relied on biography as a means to rewrite Western history by bringing to light historical figures of African heritage and, thus, challenge ideas of African inferiority and combat stereotypes that were widely held even among the educated classes. Among the historical figures Schomburg rescues are the colonial Mexican poet Juan Cortez; “the first Negro librarian,” Manuel Socorro Rodríguez; the Cuban poet Plácido; and numerous others.37 He coincided with Figueroa in drafting essays on such heroes of the independence movement as Antonio Maceo and José Martí, but the notable recovery was his biographical exaltation of the same Puerto Rican painter whom Figueroa had researched before him: José Campeche. Thabiti Asukile asserts that in his lifetime and even today, Schomburg’s contributions as a writer and scholar were not and are not valued, largely because he did not have the sanctioned training or use the accepted scholarly methodology.38
Aside from the biographical methodology employed by the autodidact Schomburg, his writings reveal a similar leitmotiv to Figueroa’s: the value of self-education for Afro-Caribbeans, and others, who despite tremendous barriers have made impressive contributions to civilization.39 And his famous declaration on the need for “Negro” history reveals that concern for knowledge produced by non-academic as well as academic sources: “We need in the coming dawn the man who will give us the background of our future; it matters not whether he comes from the cloister of the university or the rank and file of the fields.”40 Schomburg, more than Figueroa, most certainly faced this quandary of producing scholarship without the academic credentials that his rivals, such as Du Bois and Alain Locke, had and held over him. And he defensively asserted the value of being self-taught and experienced rather than just formally educated, as affirmed in his 1913 Masonic speech: “The university graduate is wont to overestimate his ability, fresh from the machinery that endows him with a parchment and crowns him with knowledge, he steps out into the world to meet the practical men with years of experience and mother wit.”41 Jossiana Arroyo has also noted the role that Masonic thought played in reaffirming Schomburg’s confidence in being self-made: “During his life, Schomburg would intertwine his definition of the Masonic workshop with his own story as a self-made man, which included his interaction with other Masons who were also free-born slaves who became leaders and mentors of other African Americans (such as John Bruce), and his work as a bibliographer and historian of the African diaspora.”42 While Hoffnung-Garskof acknowledges that the Prince Hall Masons offered Schomburg continuity with the African-heritage societies that he and other self-taught Afro-Hispanic intellectuals joined, he does not, nor does Arroyo, highlight how this self-making was a common theme among the accomplished but unschooled African-heritage organic intellectuals in the Caribbean, and no one has identified Sotero Figueroa as his antecedent and probable discussant on this and other issues, such as history and biography.
The renowned collector/historian Schomburg was carrying out a decolonizing project that had its roots in the Puerto Rican and Cuban independence movements, and some of his expressed approaches and concepts were preceded by his elder and associate Sotero Figueroa. Before Schomburg, Figueroa had inserted Afro-Caribbeans into history as part of his decolonizing mission and had used biography as a means of expanding and correcting official history. The archive Figueroa created in his book, his articles, and speeches was just as much a counter-archive as Schomburg’s. Cognizant of the educational deprivation of slaves and their descendants, Figueroa also anticipated Schomburg in emphasizing the meritorious role that self-education, drive, and native intelligence played and should play in the making of the independent, freed man who would construct his people’s identity with pride in the racial past that he was/should be committed to bring forth from the shadows.
1 See Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, “The World of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg,” In The Afro-Latin@ Reader (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press), 70–91.
2 Within the last ten years a scholarly debate has developed regarding Schomburg’s contribution to African American studies and culture as well as to the sources and influences, whether they were Puerto Rican, Afro-Caribbean, Masonic, or even matrilineal. See, among other articles, Agustín Laó-Montes’ “Afro-Latinidades and the Diasporic Imaginary,” Iberoamericana 5:17 (Marzo 2005): 117–30.
3 Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, “To Abolish the Law of Castes: Merit, Manhood and the Problem of Colour in the Puerto Rican Liberal Movement, 1873–92,” Social History 36:3 (2011): 323.
4 Josefina Toledo, Sotero Figueroa, Editor de Patria (Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1985), 23.
5 Hoffnung-Garskof, “Law of Castes,” 323.
6 Toledo, Sotero Figueroa, 30.
7 Hoffnung-Garskof, “Law of Castes,” 314.
8 Sotero Figueroa, Ensayo biográfico de los que más han contribuído al progreso de Puerto Rico (San Juan: Editorial Coquí, 1973), 139; hereafter cited parenthetically as EB.
9 It is interesting to note that, among the numerous paintings of aristocrats and landed gentry affected by José Campeche, there is a painting of a very dark Cordero, teaching students of various hues of skin color.
10 The “former” slaves were actually required to work three years more and could not participate in the political process for five years. The reaction among plantation owners was to round up the abolitionists, including Belvis and the mulatto lawyer-abolitionist Ramón Emeterio Betances, and send them into exile in Spain.
11 There is no documented evidence that Figueroa was persecuted or sent into exile because of his criticism of Spanish rule in Puerto Rico, but one can imagine that it would have been uncomfortable for him to remain on the island as his biography became circulated and commented upon. It is known that he went into hiding in 1887, when Spanish authorities pursued political dissidents without quarter, so much so that it became known as “the terrible year” that resulted in many patriots’ going into exile; it is thought that while hiding in 1887, Figueroa was able to write his Ensayo biográfico (Toledo: Sotero Figueroa, 34).
12 Patria, July 20, 1895, 1–2.
13 Patria, March 14, 1892, 7.
14 This ambiguous use of oscuro or dark may mean that Jesus emerged from obscurity or, even more interesting, that Jesus was dark-complected.
15 See “Discursos en la confirmación de la proclamación del Partido Revolucionario Cubano” http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/latino-literature/pdfs/2_Annexations/Figueroa_Discursos.pdf.
16 For details, see Toledo, Sotero Figueroa, 69–70.
17 Hoffnung-Garskof, “The World of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg,” 81.
18 Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, “The Migrations of Arturo Schomburg: On Being Antillano, Negro, and Puerto Rican in New York 1891–1938.” Journal of American Ethnic History. 21:1 (Fall 2001): 17.
19 Toledo, Sotero Figueroa, 91.
20 Ibid., 98–99.
21 Ibid., 110–11.
22 Flor Piñero de Rivera, ed., Arturo Schomburg: Un puertorriqueño descubre el legado histórico del negro, sus escritos anotados y apéndices (San Juan: Centro de Estudios de Puerto Rico y el Caribe, 1989), 178–79.
23 Elinor Des Verney Sinnette, Arthur Alfonso Schomburg: Black Bibliophile and Collector: A Biography (Detroit: New York Public Library and Wayne State University Press, 1989), 8.
24 Flor Piñero de Rivera constructs a complete educational history through college in the Virgin Islands, based on a 1977 report, “‘The Spirit that Moves Us’: A Profile of Arthur A. Schomburg.” Schomburg Center Journal 1:2 (1977), 19. But many of Schomburg’s biographical references have been contradictory and given little credence by scholars.
25 Sinnette, Schomburg, 9.
26 Ibid., 35.
27 Ibid., 41, 52, 55.
28 His friend Bernardo Vega in his memoir attests to Schomburg’s self-education, although he possibly attended some primary education classes and learned somewhat from the equally self-educated tobacco workers, who were among the most enlightened of the working classes. See Memoirs of Bernardo Vega: A Contribution to the History of the Puerto Rican Community in New York, ed. César Andreu Iglesias (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984), 195.
29 Sinnette, Schomburg, 22.
30 Hoffnung-Garscof, “Migrations,” 34.
31 Sinnette, Schomburg, 38.
32 Schomburg, “The Negro Digs Up His Past” in The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, ed. Ilan Stavans (New York: Norton, 2011), 372.
33 Hoffnung-Garskof clarifies that “Martí’s idea of a Cuba with no Blacks or Whites could also hide persistent racism and racial inequality behind a mask of race blindness.” See “The World of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg” in The Afro-Latin@ Reader, ed. Miriam Jiménez-Román and Juan Flores (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2010), 79.
34 Kevin Meehan, “Martí, Schomburg y la cuestión racial en las Américas.” Afro-Hispanic Review 25:2 (Fall 2006): 78.
35 Schomburg, “The Economic Contribution by the Negro to America.” Papers of the American Negro Academy. Nos. 18–19, p. 6. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35352/35352–0.txt.
36 Schomburg, “Economic Contribution,” 18.
37 Meehan’s is an in-depth study comparing Schomburg’s and Martí’s ideas on race in the Americas in which he concludes that Martí’s pronouncements of African heritage were largely impressionistic, if not paternalistic, while Schomburg was intent on transforming the image of Afro-Latins from passive to powerful and, in the process, de-colonizing them intellectually. See p. 78, for instance.
38 Thabiti Asukile, “Arthur Alfonso Schomburg (1874–1938): Embracing the Black Motherhood Experience in Love of Black People.” Afro-Americans in New York Life and History 30:2 (July 2006): 79.
39 Asukile sees this as a mainstay contribution of African descent people to the Americas: “a long tradition of non-academic intellectuals who were committed to the life of the mind” (70).
40 Schomburg, “Racial Integrity,” in The Afro-Latin@ Reader, 69.
41 Quoted in Hoffnung-Garskof, “Migrations,” 34.
42 Jossianna Arroyo, “Technologies: Transculturations of Race, Gender & Ethnicity in Arturo A. Schomburg’s Masonic Writings.” Centro Journal. 12:1 (Spring 2005): 12.