Jean Blackwell Hutson, ex-chief of Schomburg Center, dies

Jean Blackwell Hutson, 83, who was curator and chiefof the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, one of the nation's leading institutions for Black culture, died at Harlem Hospital in New York.

From 1948 until she retired in 1980, Hutson helped build the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem into the world's primary source for books, art, historical documents and other materials on people of African Descent.

Hutson, a graduate of Barnard College, earned a master's degree in library science from Columbia University.

The Sommerfield, FL, native helped the center, in 1981, win a federal grant so the collection could move from its cramped quarters to a more spacious $3.7 million, five-story building in Harlem. By then, Hutson had retired as the institution's head and had taken a job in the office of library administration at the Public Library's headquarters in New York.

Today, the Schomburg Collection holds about 150,000 volumes, 3.5 million manuscripts, the largest assemblage of photographs documenting Black life, and rare artifacts-including a 16th century manuscript, Ad Catholicum by Juan Latino, believed to be the first book written by a Black man.

There are no known survivors.