Joel Elias Spingarn papers

Joel Elias Spingarn (1875-1939) was a university professor, solider, civil rights leader, and member of the Board of Managers for The New York Botanical Garden. He was professor (1899-1911) of comparative literature at Columbia, and a founder (1919) of the publishing firm of Harcourt, Brace and Company. His literary work includes A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance (1899), Creative Criticism and Other Essays (1931), and several books of poems. During World War I, Spingarn was active in the United States military where he worked his way up to the rank of colonel.

Throughout his life, Spingarn was actively involved with issues of civil rights; he is probably most noted because of his involment in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He was on of the first white leaders of the organization and Chairman of the Board in 1914 where he established the Spingarn Medal; still awarded annually for outstanding achievement by an African American. Spingarn served off and on in the role of chariman up until his death in 1939. His brother, Arthur Spingarn was in charge of the NAACP's legal issues during this time as well.

Spingarn's interest in botany began when he was just a boy. Later in life he took elective classes at the New York Botanical Garden under the Garden's first director, Dr. Nathaniel L. Britton. Soon though, he became focused more on horticulture; he began working with perennials and rock gardens on his Troutbeck estate in Amenia, New York. He explored further and was introduced to the genus Clematis on a visit to England in the late 1920s. After discovering that nearly all of the varieties he encountered were unobtainable in the United States, he made it his mission to import them all. At one time, with the addition of a new propagation greenhouse on the estate, Spingarn was responsible for the largest collection in the world of species and varieties of Clematis. He wrote extensively in horticulture periodicals and journals. Spingarn was also a prolific speaker on the subject of Clematis; he was invited to speak at local and national horticulture clubs and flower shows. He also wrote on the early history of landscape gardening and horticulture in Dutchess County, New York.