This chapter centers on the education and role of “ethnic” librarians during the founding and professionalization of children’s literature and librarianship at the New York Public Library, tracing a legacy back to Afro-Boricua public pedagogies in Puerto Rico. This chapter also analyzes the centrality of Blackness and activism project of Latinx children’s literature as a US tradition grounded in the work of librarians of color, interweaving the stories of Pura Belpré and Arturo Schomburg, both key figures in the Harlem Renaissance and history of African American and AfroLatinx literature.
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