Library Activism
Not Free, Not for All by
Americans tend to imagine their public libraries as time-honored advocates of equitable access to information for all. Through much of the twentieth century, however, many black Americans were denied access to public libraries or allowed admittance only to separate and smaller buildings and collections. While scholars have examined and continue to uncover the history of school segregation, there has been much less research published on the segregation of public libraries in the Jim Crow South. In fact, much of the writing on public library history has failed to note these racial exclusions. In Not Free, Not for All, Cheryl Knott traces the establishment, growth, and eventual demise of separate public libraries for African Americans in the South, disrupting the popular image of the American public library as historically welcoming readers from all walks of life. Using institutional records, contemporaneous newspaper and magazine articles, and other primary sources together with scholarly work in the fields of print culture and civil rights history, Knott reconstructs a complex story involving both animosity and cooperation among whites and blacks who valued what libraries had to offer. African American library advocates, staff, and users emerge as the creators of their own separate collections and services with both symbolic and material importance, even as they worked toward dismantling those very institutions during the era of desegregation.
Call Number: Sc E 16-237ISBN: 9781625341778Publication Date: 2016-01-31
Untold Stories by
Liberty & literacy : Sunday schools and reading for African-American females in New York City, 1799-1826 / Marilyn H. Pettit -- The founding & prevalence of African-American social libraries & historical societies, 1828-1918: gatekeepers of early Black history, collections, & literature / Rosie L. Albritton -- Private dominance in Black academic libraries, 1916-1938 / James E. Hooper -- A history of Holland Public Library, Wichita Falls, Texas, 1934-1968 / Andra L. Williams -- The ugly side of librarianship: segregation in library services from 1900 to 1950 / Klaus Musmann -- From segregation to integration: library services for Blacks in South Carolina, 1923-1962 / Dan Lee -- Reading for liberation : the role of libraries in the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Project / Donald G. Davis, Jr. & Cheryl Knott Malone -- Racial integration at the University of Houston: a personal perspective I. Edward G. Holley ; II. Charles Churchwell -- Black women, civil rights, & libraries / Jessie Carney Smith -- Unique gatekeepers of Black culture: three Black librarians as book publishers / Donald Franklin Joyce -- ACRL's historically Black college & universities libraries project, 1972-1994 / Casper L. Jordan ; Beverly P. Lynch -- Liberating & empowering minds: the African/Caribbean Canadian women librarian & the development of the West Indian/Black heritage collection of the North York Public Library, 1980-1994 / Norman G. Kester -- Uprooting Black heritage: lessons from an African-American collection at auction / Detine L. Bowers -- Civil rights, libraries, & African-American librarianship, 1954-1994: a bibliographic essay / Edward A. Goedeken.
Call Number: Sc D 02-346ISBN: 0878451048Publication Date: 1998-01-01
Activism in American Librarianship, 1962-1973 by
Bundy and Stielow designed Activism in American Librarianship, 1962-1973 to address two key questions: How did the various social movements of the time express themselves in librarianship? What happened to the various library institutions during this era? . . . Activism is a pivotal work. This is the first monograph-length analysis of an unprecedented period in our professional history. . . . The fifteen essays included in Activism were specially commissioned of eminent leaders such as E.J. Josey, Kay Ann Cassell, Fay Blake, Major Owens, Mary Lee Bundy, John Axam, and Robert P. Haro, who helped create and were witness to the events of this decade. . . . It should be required reading for all students of library history and scholars interested in interaction between professions and social change. RQ This is a useful work of scholarship. In addition to presenting facts, it will speak different things to different people, depending on individual reactions to the social and political elements that were addressed by librarian activists in the Sixties. Whatever the individual reactions, this is a book that should not be ignored. International Journal of Reviews in Library and Information Science This collection of essays, written by library professionals who took an active role in the various rights movements, the war on poverty, and the campaign to end the Vietnam war, is the first serious exanination of the subject. The author offers a thoughtful review of the struggles of activists to achieve institutional change within their profession and the overall effect of these social movements on the outlook and professionalism of a new generation of librarians.
Call Number: Sc E 88-593ISBN: 0313246025Publication Date: 1987-10-05
The African American Struggle for Library Equality by
The African American Struggle for Library Equality: The Untold Story of the Julius Rosenwald Fund Library Program unveils the almost forgotten philanthropic efforts of Julius Rosenwald, former president of Sears, Roebuck, Co. and an elite business man. Rosenwald simply desired to improve, "the well-being of mankind" through access to education. Many people are familiar with Mr. Rosenwald as the founder of the Julius Rosenwald Fund that established more than 5,300 rural schools in 15 Southern states during the period 1917-1938. However, there is another major piece of the puzzle, the Julius Rosenwald Fund Library Program. That program established more than 10,000 school, college, and public libraries, funded library science programs that trained African American librarians, and made evident the need for libraries to be supported by local governments. The African American Struggle for Library Equality is the first comprehensive history of the Julius Rosenwald Fund Library Program to be published. The book reveals a new understanding of library practices of the early 20th century. Through original research and use of existing literature, Aisha Johnson Jones exposes historic library practices that discriminated against blacks, and the necessary remedies the Julius Rosenwald Fund Library Program implemented to cure this injustice, which ultimately influenced other philanthropists like Andrew Carnegie and Bill Gates (the Gates Foundation has a library program) as well as organizations like the American Library Association.
Call Number: Sc E 20-193ISBN: 1538103087Publication Date: 2019-09-17
Desegregating Libraries in the South
The Desegregation of Public Libraries in the Jim Crow South by
In The Desegregation of Public Libraries in the Jim Crow South, Wayne A. and Shirley A. Wiegand tell the comprehensive story of the integration of southern public libraries. As in other efforts to integrate civic institutions in the 1950s and 1960s, the determination of local activists won the battle against segregation in libraries. In particular, the willingness of young black community members to take part in organized protests and direct actions ensured that local libraries would become genuinely free to all citizens. The Wiegands trace the struggle for equal access to the years before the Supreme Court?s Brown v. Board of Education decision, when black activists in the South focused their efforts on equalizing accommodations, rather than on the more daunting?and dangerous?task of undoing segregation. After the ruling, momentum for vigorously pursuing equality grew, and black organizations shifted to more direct challenges to the system, including public library sit-ins and lawsuits against library systems. Although local groups often took direction from larger civil rights organizations, the energy, courage, and determination of younger black community members ensured the eventual desegregation of Jim Crow public libraries. The Wiegands examine the library desegregation movement in several southern cities and states, revealing the ways that individual communities negotiated?mostly peacefully, sometimes violently?the integration of local public libraries. This study adds a new chapter to the history of civil rights activism in the mid-twentieth century and celebrates the resolve of community activists as it weaves the account of racial discrimination in public libraries through the national narrative of the civil rights movement.
Call Number: Sc E 18-426ISBN: 080716867XPublication Date: 2018-04-14
The History of Public Library Access for African Americans in the South by
The story of African Americans' long struggle to attain civil rights, particularly in the South, is well documented. The story of the public library movement in America is also well documented. However, the story of the African American struggle to access public libraries in the South is limited; much of what has been written was told in piecemeal fashion in short studies or confined to a particular southern state.
Call Number: Sc E 09-446ISBN: 0810862476Publication Date: 2008-11-06A Right to Read by This original and significant contribution to the historiography of the civil rights movement and education in the South details a dramatic and disturbing chapter in American cultural history. The tradition of American public libraries is closely tied to the perception that these institutions are open to all without regard to social background. Such was not the case in the segregated South, however, where public libraries barred entry to millions of African Americans and provided tacit support for a culture of white supremacy. A Right to Read is the first book to examine public library segregation from its origins in the late 19th century through its end during the tumultuous years of the 1960s civil rights movement. Graham focuses on Alabama, where African Americans, denied access to white libraries, worked to establish and maintain their own "Negro branches." These libraries-separate but never equal-were always underfunded and inadequately prepared to meet the needs of their constituencies. By 1960, however, African Americans turned their attention toward desegregating the white public libraries their taxes helped support. They carried out "read-ins" and other protests designed to bring attention and judicial pressure upon the segregationists. Patterson Toby Graham contends that, for librarians, the civil rights movement in their institutions represented a conflict of values that pitted their professional ethics against regional mores. He details how several librarians in Alabama took the dangerous course of opposing segregationists, sometimes with unsettling results. This groundbreaking work built on primary evidence will have wide cross-disciplinary appeal. Students and scholars of southern and African-American history, civil rights, and social science, as well as academic and public librarians, will appreciate Graham's solid research and astute analysis. Patterson Toby Graham is Head of Special Collections at the University of Southern Mississippi. His research on library segregation has won four awards, including the ALISE-Eugene Garfield Dissertation Award.
Call Number: Sc E 02-1117ISBN: 0817311440Publication Date: 2002-04-11
Freedom Libraries by
Freedom Libraries: The Untold Story of Libraries for African-Americans in the South. As the Civil Rights Movement exploded across the United States, the media of the time was able to show the rest of the world images of horrific racial violence. And while some of the bravest people of the 20th century risked their lives for the right to simply order a cheeseburger, ride a bus, or use a clean water fountain, there was another virtually unheard of struggle--this one for the right to read. Although illegal, racial segregation was strictly enforced in a number of American states, and public libraries were not immune. Numerous libraries were desegregated on paper only: there would be no cards given to African-Americans, no books for them read, and no furniture for them to use. It was these exact conditions that helped create Freedom Libraries. Over eighty of these parallel libraries appeared in the Deep South, staffed by civil rights voter registration workers. While the grassroots nature of the libraries meant they varied in size and quality, all of them created the first encounter many African-Americans had with a library. Terror, bombings, and eventually murder would be visited on the Freedom Libraries--with people giving up their lives so others could read a library book. This book delves into how these libraries were the heart of the Civil Rights Movement, and the remarkable courage of the people who used them. They would forever change libraries and librarianship, even as they helped the greater movement change the society these libraries belonged to. Photographs of the libraries bring this little-known part of American history to life.
Call Number: Sc E 19-1580ISBN: 1538115530Publication Date: 2019-10-01
Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA)
As described on the website of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA), "As far back as the 1930s, a small number of Black librarians would gather in hotel rooms at ALA Conferences about the injustice they experienced at work and the lack of leadership opportunities for them. Under the suggestion of Effie Lee Morris, Black librarians met at the 1968 Annual conference to discuss their concerns about not having a voice in the ALA. At a meeting in 1969, it was decided by several Black librarians that ALA was not serving the needs of Black Library professionals, and the Black Caucus was formed to address concerns. The following year, E.J. Josey – a member of the ALA Nominating Committee wanted to find qualified Black candidates and socially responsible white candidates to run for Council in the 1971 election. Josey sent out letters inviting all African American librarians to attend the 1970 Mid-Winter meeting to discuss a candidate they would support. In 1970 BCALA was founded at ALA Mid-Winter by Effie Lee Morris, Dr. E.J. Josey, Thomas E. Alford Sr. and a few others. Dr. Josey was elected the first chairperson of BCALA.
The first two goals of the organization were to present a formal Statement of Concern to the ALA and to submit a resolution to the ALA Council that would ensure libraries and librarians providing materials and services to private segregated schools that were formed in order to avoid integration."
The Schomburg Center has collected numerous items documenting the history and work of this organization, some example available from the Research and Reference Division include: