Collection: Dorothy Porter Wesley papers | Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History

Scope and Contents

This collection consists of bibliographies, correspondence, and research materials pertaining to Latin American authors and literature, in addition to conference papers and documents from the 1973 Phyllis Wheatley Poetry Festival held at Jackson State College in Jackson Mississippi. These documents were compiled by librarian and bibliophile Dorothy Porter Wesley.

Dates

Majority of material found within 1932 - 1975

Biographical / Historical

Dorothy Porter Wesley was born Dorothy Burnett on May 25, 1905 in Warrenton, Virginia, the oldest of Dr. Hayes J. Burnett and his wife Bertha Ball Burnett’s four children. She received a B.A. in 1928 from Howard University, and both a B.S. in 1931 and a M.S. in 1932 in library science from Columbia University. She was the first African American to graduate from Columbia University‘s library school.

Porter Wesley was a librarian and curator who began her career as library assistant at Howard University’s Founders Library in 1926. She is known for building the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University into one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of African American history in the world.