[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 81 (Wednesday, May 26, 2010)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E953-E954]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




HONORING THE LIFE AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF HOWARD DODSON, JR.: HISTORY'S 
                            KEEPER IN HARLEM

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, May 26, 2010

  Mr. RANGEL. Madam Speaker, I rise today in order to pay tribute to 
the commendable work of Mr. Howard Dodson. As director of the Schomburg 
Center for Research in Black Culture he has provided the community with 
an abundant collection of African American historical materials. 
Recently, The New Yorker published an article profiling Mr. Dodson and 
his contributions to African American history.
  Mr. Dodson, who is turning 71 in June, has been running Harlem's 
Schomburg Center for the last 25 years. Under his leadership, the 
center has raised over 40 million dollars and has preserved some of 
African American history's most important treasures, including Malcolm 
X's diaries from Mecca and first editions

[[Page E954]]

of 18th century poet Phyllis Wheatley's poems.
  Dodson has dedicated his life to presenting to the outside community 
a fuller picture of Black America. His devotion to this work has made 
him a connector of the past and present. Dodson sees his upcoming 
retirement as an opportunity to start a new, broader legacy.
  At the Schomburg Center he built an array of respected educational 
and cultural programs, including seminars, exhibitions, film 
screenings, and performing arts projects to complement its permanent 
collection. It was during his time at Villanova University, where he 
graduated with a Masters in History and Political Science in 1964, that 
Dodson became fascinated with African and African American history. His 
work at the Schomburg pays homage to Arthur A. Schomburg, the historian 
whose personal collection served as the starting point for today's 
internationally renowned center. One of the highlights of Dodson's 
career was his involvement with the African Burial Ground project, 
which oversaw the exhumation and reburial of the remains of hundreds of 
Africans buried in New York City during the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries.
  Today, Mr. Dodson continues to improve the research and intellectual 
resources available to the community for investigating African and 
African American culture.
  I commend to your attention the attached May 3 New Yorker article.

                            Treasure Hunter

                   [From the New Yorker, May 3, 2010]

                          (By Lauren Collins)

       When Howard Dodson, Jr., the director of the Schomburg 
     Center for Research in Black Culture, in Harlem, was thirty, 
     the life expectancy for a black male was sixty. Dodson was 
     just enrolling in a doctoral program at U.C. Berkeley. ``I 
     figured I'd be forty by the time I was done, and I'd only 
     have twenty years to work,'' Dodson recalled last week, 
     sitting in one of the center's conference rooms. ``So I went 
     into this conversation with me and God. I said, `Look, God. I 
     need some more time. Give me seventy-two years. I'll have 
     done all the work I needed to do. I'll be ready to, you know, 
     waltz on out of here.' '' Dodson paused for a minute--quiet, 
     grave. ``Well, about five years ago, I started 
     renegotiations!'' he said.
       Dodson, who turns seventy-one in June, will retire next 
     year, after a quarter century of running the Schomburg, the 
     world's premier facility for the preservation and study of 
     African-American culture. Under his stewardship, the center 
     has raised more than forty million dollars. Its treasures, 
     ten million of them, are various: Richard Wright's manuscript 
     of ``Native Son,'' a first edition of Phyllis Wheatley's 
     poems, African fertility masks, sheet music for spirituals, 
     photographs of strawberry pickers and uptown grandees, 
     Malcolm X's diaries from Mecca. Dodson has salvaged artifacts 
     from dumpsters (the love letters of the muralist Aaron 
     Douglas) and from storage units (the papers of Leon Damas, 
     the founder of the Negritude movement). Rummaging in the 
     collection one day, Dodson came upon a sheet of commemorative 
     stamps from the 1936 Olympics. ``It was signed by Jesse Owens 
     and the six other African-American athletes who won medals,'' 
     he said. ``And by Goring and Hitler!'' If the African-
     American experience is a diaspora, Dodson has amassed its 
     richest seed bank.
       Dodson grew up in Chester, Pennsylvania, where his parents, 
     both natives of Danville, Virginia, had moved during the 
     First World War. His father found work in construction. His 
     mother became a silk presser. ``It was a rough town,'' Dodson 
     recalled. ``I was, for some reason, designated from an early 
     age to--in the language of the time--`represent the race.' 
     For that reason, everybody drew a ring of protection around 
     me.'' Dodson went on to West Chester State College, and to 
     Villanova, where he earned a master's in history and 
     political science. He joined the Peace Corps in 1964, and 
     spent two years in Ecuador. ``I was inspired by reading `The 
     Ugly American,' '' he recalled. ``It talked about the ways 
     that expatriates were misrepresenting Americans abroad, and I 
     decided that I could do a better job.''
       In 1968, he said, ``the combination of King's death, the 
     collapse of the Poor People's Campaign, and Bobby Kennedy's 
     assassination drove a stake into my plans.'' He felt that he 
     had debts to redeem in America. ``I was the first person in 
     my family to go to college, and I didn't have a right to 
     individualism,'' he said. Confused and bereft, he retreated 
     to a friend's cabin in the mountains near Mayaguez, Puerto 
     Rico. ``I declared myself insane and was trying to read 
     myself back into sanity, to ground myself in the history of 
     my people,'' he said.
       After his exile in Puerto Rico, Dodson went to Berkeley, 
     where he studied slavery in the Western Hemisphere, and 
     favored an outfit of flared pants and a flat-topped hat, 
     which helped him become known as the Cisco Kid. At the 
     Schomburg, he was wearing a double-breasted tweed suit, a 
     brown paisley tie, and laceless leather slippers, and, on his 
     left index finger, a gold pyramid ring, signifying his status 
     as a thirty-third-degree Mason. A lucky cowrie shell was 
     pinned to his left lapel. ``I've been dressing since I was in 
     high school,'' Dodson said. ``I worked with my mother at the 
     dry-cleaning plant off the Main Line, where I had my pick of 
     anything left after thirty days.''
       One of the high points of Dodson's tenure at the Schomburg 
     was his involvement with the African Burial Ground project, 
     which oversaw the exhumation and reburial of the remains of 
     more than four hundred Africans, which had lain in an 
     unmarked cemetery downtown. ``Those seventeenth- and 
     eighteenth-century ancestors gave me assignments,'' Dodson 
     said. ``I'd do stuff, and they'd say, `Look, follow through.' 
     I'd say, `I've got a full-time job, and I don't have time.' 
     And they'd say, `No, you've gotta do this.' '' Now the 
     ancestors are urging Dodson to visit the rock churches in 
     Ethiopia, to go to Xi'an to see the terra-cotta warriors, to 
     visit Machu Picchu. They're telling him it's his time. ``I 
     fulfilled all my service obligations,'' he said. ``I don't 
     owe anything to anybody! But me.''

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