Jean Blackwell Hutson photographs

1890s-1990s D

Biography credit: This note was originially written by Allison Hughes for the Jean Blackwell Hutson papers finding aid, published in 2020. Some changes were made by Valerie Wingfield in 2023.

Jean Blackwell Hutson (1914-1998) was a librarian who served as curator of the Schomburg Collection from 1948 to 1972, then chief of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture from 1972 to 1980. She was born on September 7, 1914, in Sommerfield, Florida, to parents Paul and Sarah Myers Blackwell, and at age four moved to Baltimore, Maryland. Hutson graduated valedictorian from Douglass High School in 1931, then attended the University of Michigan before transferring to Barnard College, from which she graduated in 1935, as the second Black woman graduate after Zora Neale Hurston. In 1936, she received a master's degree in library science from Columbia University. That same year she was hired temporarily at the 135th St. branch of New York Public Library (NYPL) to fill in for Catherine Latimer, who was on maternity leave. Over the next several years, she worked at various NYPL locations and as a school librarian and teacher at high schools in Baltimore and New Jersey, earning a teaching degree from Columbia in 1941. In 1948, she returned to the 135th St. branch as curator of the Schomburg Collection after the departure of previous curator Lawrence Reddick.

As curator, she inventoried the collection and oversaw the publication of the Dictionary Catalogue of the Schomburg Collection in 1962. In 1964, she took a year-long leave of absence to work at the University of Ghana, building an Africana collection for their library at the behest of Ghana's president Kwame Nkrumah, a former 135th St. branch patron. On her return to NYPL, Hutson worked to fundraise and lobby on behalf of the Schomburg Collection, which in 1972 was designated the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, one of NYPL's four research libraries. Hutson's advocacy resulted in federal funding to construct a new building to house the collection, which opened in 1981. In 1980, Hutson was transferred to a new role as assistant director for collection management, and Wendell Wray was hired as Schomburg director. Hutson retired from NYPL in 1984.

In addition to her work as a librarian, Hutson taught classes in Black history at the City College of New York during the 1960s and 1970s and at Westchester Community College in the 1980s. She authored articles that appeared in Opportunity and Freedomways, contributed to numerous biographies and encyclopedias of notable Black figures, and was herself profiled in two publications Who's Who and Notable Black American Women. She was active in many professional and civic organizations, including the American Library Association, the Harlem Cultural Council, the National Urban League, and Delta Sigma Theta sorority. She received honors and awards from the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, the New York Black Librarians Caucus, and the National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women's Clubs.

Hutson was married to poet and songwriter Andy Razaf (1895-1973) from 1939 to 1947, then John O. Hutson from 1950 to his death in 1957. They had one daughter, Jean Frances Hutson (1952-1992). Hutson died in Harlem in February 1998.