Daniel Alexander Payne Murray (1852-1925), forgotten librarian, bibliographer, and historian.

Daniel Murray, well-known librarian, bibliographer, and historian, was one of the first Afro-Americans to work as a librarian at the Library of Congress in 1871. (1) Although not formally educated in the profession, he rose to the position of assistant librarian before he retired in 1923. In 1899 Murray organized an exhibit at the 1900 Paris Exposition on Negro authors. Under his direction his award-winning exhibit became the core of the Library of Congress's Colored Author Collection. Although Murray's attempt to publish an encyclopedia of Afro-Americans' achievements was not successful, it laid the groundwork for others to eventually publish multivolume encyclopedias about the Negro race. Murray was also a prolific author and a frequent contributor to Afro-American journals. This essay seeks to illustrate the historical and sociopolitical contributions of Daniel Murray as they reflect the path toward an Afrocentric consciousness.

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Daniel Murray, noted librarian, bibliographer, and historian, was one of the best-known and most-respected African Americans of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yet except for a few biographical entries and an article or two, he is absent from most contemporary studies of African American leaders and intellectuals. Quite possibly, if he had discussed his life and writings in an autobiographical work, he would be more widely known to historians and librarians today. His popularity during his lifetime and the availability of his manuscript collection at the Library of Congress should have afforded him a greater visibility in subsequent histories of African American life in the twentieth century.

During the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries life was particularly harsh for American Negroes. It was characterized in many ways by a deterioration in Negroes' status both in the South and in the North. Although Negroes made some important gains, especially during the latter part of this period, the South's embrace of slavery and later of the "Jim Crow" code of discrimination affected them until well into the Depression years. (2) This crucial time period for African Americans shaped the outlook of Daniel Murray, who lived from 1852 to 1925.

By creating Negro bibliographies, writing articles, and attempting to publish a multivolume Negro encyclopedia, Murray was setting the record straight and telling the story of a people ignored by historians. Murray believed that a people's historical traditions built nationalism and group pride. He wrote, "Every nation is estimated largely by its literature, and justly so, since it is the only means by which distant people can properly judge." (3) In light of this statement, this article illustrates the historical and social-political contributions of Daniel Murray as they reflect the path toward an Afrocentric consciousness.

The primary goal of an analysis of Murray's work will be to determine whether his efforts served to empower and uplift the African American community and society in general. An Afrocentric paradigm places Africa at the center of an analysis of African history and culture, including the African American experience. According to Tsehloane Keto, "The Africa-centered perspective of history rests on the premise that it is valid to posit Africa as a geographical and cultural starting base in the study of peoples of African descent." (4)

Life Sketch

Daniel Alexander Payne Murray was born on 3 March 1852 to free parents, George and Eliza Murray, in Baltimore, Maryland. Not much is known about his father, a Methodist preacher, or his mother, who was of Native American ancestry, except that they were able to provide young Daniel with the advantage of an education in the slaveholding state of Maryland. While attending both local public and private schools, Murray counted among his teachers some of the most prominent Negro teachers in Baltimore, including Charles C. Forte, Alfred Handy, W. H. Hunter, and James Lynch, who later became the first black secretary of state in Mississippi. Murray later attended the Unitarian Seminary, from which he graduated in 1869. He later studied modern languages, which proved useful while working at the Library of Congress.

In 1871, at the age of nineteen, Murray began working at the Library of Congress. During this time there was little or no formal professional training available. Melvil Dewey established the first library school in 1887, sixteen years after Murray began at the Library of Congress. While visiting his half-brother, a well-known caterer for the United States Senate restaurant in Washington, D.C., Murray was selected by Ainsworth R. Spofford, Librarian of Congress, to be his personal assistant. At that time Murray received a salary of $1,400 a year, suggesting that this was a professional rather than a service position.

Murray, with…