Black History Month 2015 - The Harlem Renaissance - L.S. Alexander Gumby

LS Alexander Gumby (circa 1950)

(image source: http://www.snipview.com/q/L.S.%20Alexander%20Gumby)

There are a lot of names in the category "Leading Intellectuals" in the Wikipedia article on the Harlem Renaissance. Some of the names that I have always associated with the late 1800s are included such as WEB DuBois and Marcus Garvey which accentuates the incompleteness of my public school education and the limitations of my biracial upbringing in Arizona. I decided to highlight the names I was unfamiliar with to supplement my personal education. Today's figure is L.S. Alexander Gumby.

~~~

Part of the information from Wikipedia:

Levi Sandy Alexander Gumby (February 1, 1885 – March 16, 1961) was an African-American archivist and historian. His collection of 300 scrapbooks documenting African-American history have been part of the collection of Columbia University since 1950 as the Alexander Gumby Collection of Negroiana. Gumby was also the proprietor of a popular bookstore during the Harlem Renaissance, where he was host of a salon. Gumby's passion for collecting earned him the nicknames "The Count" and "Mr. Scrapbook".

In the 1920s Gumby received financial assistance to help compile his collection from Charles W. Newman, a wealthy stockbroker. With Newman's help Gumby moved his collection to a large studio at 2144 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan's Harlem district, that became known as "Gumby's Bookstore". His book studio became an important gathering place for the figures of the Harlem Renaissance.

The book studio served as a workspace to compile the collection as well as an exhibition space, and an artistic and intellectual salon. Due to the imperious nature with which he conducted his salon he was nicknamed "The Great God Gumby".

In September 1901, aged 16, Gumby made his first scrapbook with clippings concerning the assassination of President McKinley. Gumby had organized his clippings by 1910, and took his archival work seriously, visiting similar collections in libraries across the United States and Canada. Gumby also became acquainted with fellow African-American archivist, Arturo Alfonso Schomburg. Working as a waiter at Columbia University Gumby began fraternizing with academia and students, adding clippings to his collection about popular professors and Columbia's president, Nicholas Murray Butler. In 1925 Gumby's collection so crowded his 2½ rooms that he was forced to lease the entire second-floor unpartitioned apartment of the house in which he lived. Gumby initially found it easy to acquire his collection as "Negro" items were considered of little interest to book dealers.

The scrapbooks contain autographed photos, stories and letters from such notable performers as Paul Robeson, Josephine Baker, Langston Hughes, Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie and Ethel Waters, and letters and autographs from Black historical figures such as Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, Father Divine, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Marcus Garvey.

Gumby kept collecting while hospitalized, including articles about his hospitalization, get-well cards and photographs of friends who visited him. Upon his release from hospital Gumby retrieved and began restoring his collection, and continued to add to them. In 1950 Gumby donated his collection to Columbia University and in 1951, Columbia hired him for eight months to help organize the collections. Gumby continued to add to his scrapbooks until his death from complications from tuberculosis in 1961. The 300 scrapbooks are part of Columbia's Rare Book and Manuscript Library in Butler Library as the Alexander Gumby Collection of Negroiana

~~~

I have to say that I find the very idea of Gumby's scrapbook collection intriguing, and the name "Negroiana" to be very amusing to my 21st century mind.  I hope that I get a chance to visit the collection someday. I guess it will have to wait until after I finish the sailing trip around the world.