There is simply no way to tell the 5 million archival stories tucked away in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem.
But that won’t stop the staff from trying.
Howard Dodson, the Schomburg Center chief, and assistants Christopher Moore and Roberta Yancy have written “The Black New Yorkers: 400 Years of African-American History,” a 470-page hardcover companion to the exhibit on display at the landmark institution.
“We had an idea a book on this subject would be published, but we never knew we’d be the central parties,” said Dodson, who started on the project during the city’s centennial two years ago.
The exhibit has hundreds of photos lining three galleries, cataloging the black Gotham experience, including Dr. Susan Maria Smith, the first black female physician in New York, circa 1870; Thomas McCant Stewart, a Brooklyn School Board member in the 1890s; and actor Ira Aldridge playing Othello in 1850.
Dodson said he was astonished by some of the information the staff uncovered.
“As late as 1900, only 60,000 black people were in New York,” Dodson said. “At the end of the century there were 2.3 million — that’s mind-boggling.”
Dodson said 80,000 Africans immigrated here in the 1980s.
“That’s larger than the total slave population that came here during the entire slavery era,” said Dodson, who wrote his doctorate thesis on slavery in the Western Hemisphere at the University of California at Berkeley.
Dodson pointed out another fallacy.
“People in America have a misconception the majority of the 10 million who actually survived the Middle Passage [the primary shipping route from Africa] ended up in the U.S., but actually it was less than 500,000,” he said.
For the record, 50 percent of slaves went to South America, 43 percent to the Caribbean and 7 percent to North America, one exhibit shows.
“The Black New Yorkers: 400 Years of African-American History,” continues at the Schomburg Center, 515 Lenox Ave., from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays, through April 30.