author
Dorothy Porter Wesley
1905–1995
A pioneering librarian, bibliographer, and curator, she transformed Howard University's Moorland-Spingarn collection into a major center for the study of Black history and culture. Her work helped preserve and organize materials that made Black studies far more accessible to generations of readers and scholars.
1 Audiobook
The Negro in the United States; a selected bibliography. Compiled by Dorothy B. Porter
by Dorothy Porter Wesley
About the author
Born on May 25, 1905, Dorothy Porter Wesley became one of the most influential figures in the preservation of African American history. She studied at Howard University and later earned a library science degree from Columbia University, where she is widely recognized as the first African American to do so.
In 1930, she began her long career at Howard University, where she developed the Moorland Foundation—later the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center—into a world-class research collection on the history and culture of people of African descent. She was known not just for building the collection, but for rethinking how it should be organized, creating systems that made Black history easier to find and study rather than burying it inside standard library categories.
Porter Wesley was also a writer and bibliographer whose published reference works supported serious scholarship in Black studies long before the field was widely recognized in universities. She retired in 1973 and died on December 17, 1995, leaving behind a lasting legacy in libraries, archives, and the study of the African diaspora.