Early life and education
She was born Dorothy Louise Burnett in 1905 in Warrenton, Virginia, Warrenton, Virginia, the first of four children of Doctor and Mrs. Hayes J. Burnett. They encouraged their children to become educated and to serve their race. Porter received a B.A. in 1928 from Howard University, a historically black college. During this time, she met James A. Porter, James Amos Porter, an art historian and instructor in Howard's art department. They married in 1929, while she completed post-graduate work. She studied at Columbia University, earning B.S. in 1931 and M.S. in 1932 in library science.Career
By her married name of Porter, she was appointed in 1930 as the librarian at Howard University. Over the next 40 years, she was key to building up what is now the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at the university as one of the world's best collection of library materials for Black/Africana history and culture. Because of her limited budget, she appealed directly to publishers and book dealers to donate specific books to the library. She developed a worldwide network of contacts that reached from the US to Brazil, Mexico and Europe. Her friends and contacts included Alain LeRoy Locke, Alain Locke, Rayford Logan, Dorothy Peterson, Langston Hughes, and Amy Spingarn. The collection is international, with books and documents in many languages. It includes music and academic studies on linguistics, as well as literature and scholarship by and about Black people in the United States and elsewhere. In addition, she was instrumental in ensuring scholars, such as Edison Carneiro, and statesmen, such as Kwame Nkrumah and Eric Williams, visited the university to increase students' interest in their African heritage. Burnett developed a new cataloging system for the growing collection, as well as expertise to assess the materials. Earlier librarians, notably Lula V. Allen, Edith Brown, Lula E. Connor and Rosa C. Hershaw, had started to develop a system suitable for the library's materials. Porter built on this to highlight genre and authors rather than to use the conventional Dewey Decimal Classification, which lacked appropriate class-marks. When Arthur B. Spingarn, Arthur Spingarn agreed to sell his private collection to Howard University, the university's treasurer required an external appraisal of its value, stating that Porter's estimate would be over the value of the collection. Although Porter requested someone from the Library of Congress to do this, they acknowledged that they lacked expertise in the subject area. They asked her to write the report, which they certified and signed. This report was accepted by the university treasurer. This estimate set the standard for appraising collections of black literature.Honors and legacy
* 1994 Charles Frankel Prize in the Humanities - given to "Americans who have brought the humanities to a wide public audience" * The Conover-Porter Award to recognize outstanding achievement in Africana bibliography and reference tools was installed in 1980 by the Africana Librarians Council of the African Studies Association. The award was established in honor of two pioneers in African Studies bibliography, Helen F. Conover, of the Library of Congress, and Dorothy B. Porter. * The Dorothy Porter Wesley Award was established in 2018 by the Information Professionals of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) "to honor and document the outstanding work of Information Professionals; Bibliophiles, Librarians, Archivists, Curators and Collectors."Personal life
In 1929 Burnett married James Amos Porter, James A. Porter, an historian and artist. He was the author of ''Modern Negro Art''. They had a daughter together, Constance, known as "Coni". She married Milan Uzelac, and initially worked with her mother. She served as Executive Director of the Dorothy Porter Wesley Library. She later helped create the African American Research Library & Cultural Center in Fort Lauderdale. James Porter died on February 28, 1970. Several years later, in 1979, Burnett Porter married Charles H. Wesley, Charles Wesley, an American historian and educator who pioneered important studies in black history. He died in 1987. Porter died in Fort Lauderdale, Broward County, Florida, Broward County, Florida, aged 91.Selected publications
Dorothy Porter published numerous bibliographies and one anthology. * Wesley, Dorothy Porter. ''Afro-American Writings Published Before 1835: With an Alphabetical List (Tentative) of Imprints Written by American Negroes, 1760–1835.'' [New York]: Columbia University, 1932. Thesis (M. Sc.)--Columbia University, New York, 1932. * Porter, Dorothy B.References
Further reading
''Chronological by publication date'' * Esme E. Bhan, "Dorothy Porter." Smith, Jessie Carney, and Shirelle Phelps. ''Notable Black American Women.'' Detroit: Gale Research, 1992, pp. 863–864. * Arthur C. Gunn, "Dorothy Burnett Porter Wesley." Hine, Darlene Clark, Elsa Barkley Brown, and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn. ''Black Women in America : an Historical Encyclopedia.'' Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994, pp. 1246–1248. * Madison, Avril Johnson, and Dorothy Porter Wesley.External links
Archival collections
*hdl:10079/fa/beinecke.wesley, Dorothy Porter Wesley Papers. James Weldon Johnson Collection in the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. * Porter Uzelac, Constance.