ARCHIVISTS WE LOVE: DOROTHY PORTER-WESLEY
- NomadicArchivistsProject
- Jun 24
- 2 min read
Updated: 8 hours ago
Dorothy Louise Porter Wesley (May 25, 1905 – December 17, 1995) was the consummate librarian, bibliographer, and curator, who built the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University. Porter was the first African American to receive a degree in library science from Columbia University. She published numerous bibliographies on African American history. Prior to her intervention, the Dewey Decimal System only had two classification numbers: slavery and colonization for Black Americans. Typical nonsense. She then created a new classification system that organized books by genre and author.
Dorothy in her own words (she called herself a “bibliomaniac”):
“The only rewarding thing for me is to bring to light information that no one knows. What’s the point of rehashing the same old thing?”
“I think one of the best things I could have done was to become friends with book dealers... I had no money, but I became friendly with them. I got their catalogs, and I remember many of them giving me books, you see. I appealed to publishers, ‘We have no money, but will you give us this book?’”
Regarding the Dewey Decimal System: “Now in [that] system, they had one number—326—that meant slavery, and they had one other number—325, as I recall it—that meant colonization,” she explained in her oral history. In many “white libraries,” she continued, “every book, whether it was a book of poems by James Weldon Johnson, who everyone knew was a black poet, went under 325. And that was stupid to me.”
Citation: “Remembering the Howard University Librarian Who Decolonized the Way Books Were Catalogued.” Dorothy Porter challenged the racial bias in the Dewey Decimal System, putting black scholars alongside white colleagues.
When Ms. Dorothy joined the library staff at Howard University in 1928, she was given a mandate to administer a library of Negro life and history. The school purchased the Arthur B. Spingarn Collection in 1946, along with other collections, and Burnett, who would later become Dorothy Porter Wesley, helped create a world-class archive known as the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, cementing her place as an immensely important figure in the preservation of African American history. Wesley's zeal for unearthing materials related to African American history earned her the name of Shopping Bag Lady."
Source: Dorothy Porter Wesley at Howard University: Building a Legacy of Black History by author, historian, and former Howard University librarian Janet Sims-Wood
We love her because:
Dorothy built a world-class collection of materials produced by and about people of African descent. Her network of friends, colleagues, and creatives donated books to her cause. Dorothy was a traveler. She was known for rescuing books out of the garbage.
Links:
Dorothy Porter Wesley Papers. Call Number: JWJ MSS 93. Yale University.
Photo by Carl Van Vechten
Photo credit: ©Van Vechten Trust/Carl Van Vechten Papers Relating to African American Arts and Letters, James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
