The Negro has been throughout the centuries of controversy an active collaborator, and often a pioneer, in the struggle for his own freedom and advan… - Arturo Alfonso Schomburg

The remark attributed to John C. Calhoun,' "that the Negro race was so inferior it could not produce a single individual who could conjugate a Greek verb," was accepted half a century ago in this country as the last word on the subject of the inferiority of the Negro. Thomas Jefferson, one of the fathers of the revolution, and a friend of the Negro race, who was not so dogmatic as Calhoun, said: "I think one (Negro) could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid: and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless and anomalous.... Never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never saw even an elementary trait of painting or sculpture. ... Religion indeed, has produced a Phyllis Wheatley, but it could not produce a poet." So much for the American statesmen.

We need in the coming dawn the man who will give us the background for our future; it matters not whether he comes from the cloisters of the university or from the rank and file of the fields. The Anglo-Saxon is effusive in his praises to the Saxon shepherds who lived on the banks of the river Elbe, to whom he pays blind allegiance. We need the historian and philosopher to give us with trenchant pen the story of our forefathers and let our soul and body, with phosphorescent light, brighten the chasm that separates us. When the fact has been put down in the scroll of time, that the Negroes of Africa smelted iron and tempered bronzes at the time Europe was wielding stone implements, that the use of letters was introduced among the savages of Europe about 1500 BC and the European carried them to America about the fifteenth century after the Christian era, that Phoenicia and Palestine will live forever in the memory of mankind since America as well as Europe has received letters from the one and religion from the other, we will feel prouder of the achievements of our sires. We must research diligently the annals of time and bring back from obscurity the dormant example of agriculture, industry, and commerce, upon these the arts and sciences and make common the battleground of our heritage.

The works of José Julián Acosta and Salvador Brau have been my first inspiration to a further and intense study of the Negro in America.