As the library's collecting scope began to encompass non-Western peoples and subjects in the 1950s, it also slowly expanded to include women and racial and ethnic minorities. Particularly notable in this regard was former Columbia University waiter, bellhop, and proprietor of popular bookstore during the Harlem Renaissance, Alexander Gumby, who sold the university his collection of more than one hundred and seventy scrapbooks with photographs, pamphlets, and ephemera, documenting an array of topics related to African American and diasporic history. And, in 1955, Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor under President Franklin Roosevelt, the first woman to serve in a cabinet position, and Columbia alumna, donated her papers to the university.
