Jean Blackwell Hutson (1914-1998): Culture Keeper Extraordinaire

Jean Blackwell Hutson (1914-1998), a native of Sommerfield, Florida, was the curator and chief of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture from 1948 until 1980. Hutson was a culture keeper extraordinaire in that she worked tirelessly to ensure the acquisition, preservation, and promotion of materials relating to African and African American history.

Ms. Hutson was born Jean Frances Blackwell on September 3, 1914 in Sommerfield, Florida. She was the daughter of Paul Blackwell, a farmer and commission merchant; and Sarah Myers Blackwell, a teacher. Ms. Hutson later moved to Baltimore, Maryland. She was the class valedictorian when she graduated in 1929 from Douglass High School, a high school for African Americans in Baltimore. After high school, Ms. Hutson briefly attended the University of Michigan before transferring to Barnard College where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1935. In 1936, she received her library science degree from Columbia University. In addition, Ms. Hutson was a member of Delta Sigma Theta.

She began her library career at the New York Public Library. She worked at the 135th Street Branch where she was mentored by library pioneer Ernestine Rose. Ms. Hutson also worked at the Harlem Branch, the Countee Cullen Branch, the Woodstock Branch, and the Washington Heights Branch. In 1939, Ms. Hutson married songwriter Andy Razaf (1895-1973). From 1939 until 1942, Ms. Hutson was a school librarian at the Paul Lawrence Dunbar Junior High School in Baltimore, Maryland. She returned to the New York Public Library in 1942. Her marriage to Andy Razaf ended in divorce in 1947.

In 1948, Ms. Hutson became chief of the Schomburg Research Center. While serving as chief of the Schomburg Research Center, Ms. Hutson married John Hutson in 1950 (the couple had one child, Jean Frances Hutson); was an adjunct professor in history at City College of New York (CUNY) from 1962 until 1971; and an assistant librarian from 1964 until 1965 at the University of Ghana where she managed the Africana collection. Also during Hutson's time at Schomburg, the center received money from the Ford Foundation, the Library Services and Construction Act (LSCA), and 3M enabling the creation of  an archival program, the hiring of additional personnel to perform preservation work, and the microfilming of the Schomburg Research Center's collection. In addition, Hutson helped secure federal funds to have a new building created for the Schomburg Center (the new facility opened in 1981); was a member of the African Studies Association and the Africana Librarians Council; and participated in the National Commission on Libraries Task Force on Library and Information Services to Cultural Minorities.

Ms. Hutson left the Schomburg Research Center in 1980 and worked as the Assistant Director, Collection Management and Development, Black Studies at the New York Public Library's main branch, retiring in 1984. She passed away in 1998 at the age of 83. The Jean Blackwell Hutson Library Residency Program, a diversity program that ran from 1992 until 2007, was created in her honor by the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Related post: Arthur Schomburg, 1874-1938: Noted Bibliophile, Collector, Curator, and Scholar

Sources: A Directory of Negro Graduates of Accredited Library School, 1900-1936. Washington: Columbia Civic Library Association, 1937. 7. Print. ; Kaiser, Ernest. "Library Holdings on African Americans." Handbook of Black Librarianship. Ed. E.J. Josey and Marva L. DeLoach. 2nd ed. Lanham: Scarecrow, 2000. 254, 261. Print. ; "Jean Blackwell Hutson, Ex-Chief of Schomburg Center Dies." Jet 93.13 (1998): 17. Print. ; Whitaker, Charles. "Schomburg Center Celebrates 75th Anniversary." Ebony 56.1 (2000): 144-146, 148, 150. Print. ; "Schomburg Center: Harlem's Gold Mine of Black Research Material." Ebony 37.11 (1982): 62-63, 66. Print. ; "Black History Prophets and Custodians: Handful of Men and Women Created Foundations of Saga of Persistence and Creativity." Ebony 50.4 (1995): 90. Print. ; Shockley, Ann Allen. "Librarians, Archivists, and Writers: A Personal Perspective." Ed. E.J. Josey. The Black Librarian in America Revisited. Metuchen: Scarecrow, 1994. 321. Print. ; Cooper, Glendora Johnson. "African American Historical Continuity: Jean Blackwell Hutson and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture." Reclaiming the American Library Past: Writing the Women In. Ed. Suzanne Hildenbrand. Norwood: Ablex, 1996. 27-51. Print. ; Sinnette, Elinor D. V. Arthur Alfonso Schomburg, Black Bibliophile & Collector: A Biography. New York: New York Public Library, 1989. 218. Print. ; Sink, Bob. "Ernestine Rose (1880-1961)." NYPL Librarians. N.p., 19 Mar. 2011. Web. 15 Feb. 2015. ; Biddle, Stanton. "'A Partnership in Progress': The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture." Crisis 85.10 (Dec. 1978): 330-337. Print. ; Easterbrook, David L. "Jean Blackwell Hutson, 1914-1998." ASA News (Apr./June 1999): 5. Print. ; Sink, Bob. "Jean Frances Blackwell Hutson (1914-1998)." NYPL Librarians. N.p., 4 Sept. 2011. Web. 15 Feb. 2015. ; "Legacies Live On Despite '98 Celebrity Deaths." The Kokomo Tribune (Kokomo, Ind.) 22 Dec. 1998: C5. Print. ; "Goodbye: World Loses Entertainers in '98." The Kerrville Times (Kerrville, Tex.) 27 Dec. 1998: 3. Print. ; "Year: Entertainers Lost This Year Include Eddie Rabbitt and Flip Wilson." The Index-Journal (Greenwood, S.C.) 27 Dec. 1998: 2C. Print. ; Wolf, Gillian. "Hutson, Jean Blackwell 1914-." Contemporary Black Biography. Encyclopedia.com, 1998. Web. 15 Feb. 2015. ; Smith, Dinitia. "Jean Hutson, Schomburg Chief, Dies at 83." The New York Times. The New York Times, 7 Feb. 1998. Web. 15 Feb. 2015. ; National Commission on Libraries and Information Science. Task Force on Library and Information Services to Cultural Minorities: Report. Washington, D.C.: National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, 1983. 105. PDF File. ; Wedin, Carolyn. "Hutson, Jean Blackwell." Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-First Century. Vol. 1. Ed. Paul Finkelman. New York, N.Y.: Oxford UP, 2009. 480-481. Print.

Marcus Bruce Christian (1900-1976), Louisiana Librarian

Marcus Bruce Christian (1900-1976) was assistant librarian at Dillard University from 1944-1950. Mr. Christian, a native of Mechanicsville, Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, was the son of Emanuel Banks Christian and Ruth Harris Christian. As a child, Mr. Christian attended school at the Houma Academy.

In addition to his work as a librarian, Mr. Christian was also a poet and author. In 1936, Christian joined the Federal Writers Project. This program was part of the Work Progress Administration (also known as WPA; later as the Works Project Administration) and was charged with providing jobs for authors, historians, and educators. Christian was assigned to the Louisiana Writers Project (LWP), the Louisiana section of the Federal Writers Project. He spent six years with the LWP, working on the history African Americans in Louisiana. His work on the project was done at Dillard University in New Orleans, Louisiana.

In 1943, Christian received a fellowship from the Rosenwald Fund* to study African American history. In 1944, he began his library career at Dillard University. Christian also published pieces in The Crisis, Phylon, Opportunity, New York Herald Tribune, Pittsburgh Courier, and in the Louisiana Weekly (he served as editor). He was a contemporary of Arna Wendell Bontemps and Langston Hughes.

Christian's works included:

From the Deep South (1937)
  
In Memoriam, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Thirty-Second President of the United States of America, Who Died Thursday, April Twelfth, Nineteen Forty-Five (1945)

Common People's Manifesto of World War II (1948)

High Ground: A Collection of Poems Published in Commemoration of the United States Supreme Court's Decision of May 17, 1954, and Its Final Decree of May 31, 1955, Abolishing Racial Segregation in the Nation's Public Schools (1958)

Negro Soldiers in the Battle of New Orleans (1965)

Negro Ironworkers of Louisiana, 1718-1900 (1972)

I Am New Orleans and Other Poems (1999 -- published posthumously)


In his later years, Christian taught history at the University of New Orleans. Mr. Christian passed away on November 21, 1976. His papers are housed in the Louisiana and Special Collections Department of the Earl K. Long Library at the University of New Orleans.


*Note: The Rosenwald Fund was founded in 1917 by Julius Rosenwald (1862-1932), an executive of Sears, Roebuck, and Company.  The Rosenwald Fund provided money to build schools (known as the "Rosenwald Schools), and provided aid to colleges and universities, libraries, museums, and other institutions. In addition, the Rosenwald Fund paid for African Americans to attend the First Negro Library Conference in 1927 at the Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) and to receive training in 1930 at the Summer Librarian Institute at Spelman College.

See related posts: Dryades Branch of the New Orleans Public Library (New Orleans, Louisiana) : A Colored Carnegie Library ; Arna Wendell Bontemps: Fisk University Librarian, Poet, and Author ; and Arthur Alfonso Schomburg, 1874-1938: Noted Bibliophile, Collector, Curator, and Scholar.


Sources: Mizell-Nelson, Michael. "Marcus Bruce Christian." Harlem Renaissance Lives from the African American National Biography. Ed. Henry Louis Gates and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. New York: Oxford U P, 2009. 115-116. Print. ; Hessler, Marilyn S. "Marcus Christian: The Man and His Collection." Louisiana History 28.1 (1987): 37-55. Print. ; "Marcus Bruce Christian." Black Librarians Table. Chicken Bones: A Journal for Literary & Artistic African American Themes, n.d. Web. 16 Dec. 2010. ; Redding, Joan. "The Dillard Project: The Black Unit of the Louisiana Writers' Project." Louisiana History 32.1 (1991): 47-62. Print. ; Johnson, Jerah. "Marcus B. Christian and the WPA History of Black People in Louisiana." Louisiana History 20.1 (1979): 113-115. Print. ; Dalin, David G. (1998). "What Julius Rosenwald Knew." Commentary 105.4 (1998): 36-39. Print.; Fenton, Michele T. "Stepping Out on Faith: Lillian Haydon Childress Hall, Pioneer Black Librarian." Indiana Libraries 33.1 (2014): 6. Print. ; Curtis, Florence Rising. "Colored Librarians in Conference." Library Journal 52.8 (1927): 408. Print. ; "Personal." Library Occurrent 8.2 (1927): 66. Print. ; "Library Institute for Negro Librarians." Library Journal 55.18 (1930): 932. Print.