The Desegregation of Public Libraries in the Jim Crow South: Civil Rights and Local Activism

317 Pages·2018·3.46 MB·English

by  Wayne A. Wiegand, Shirley A. Wiegand

THE DESEGREGATION OF PUBLIC
LIBRARIES
IN THE JIM CROW SOUTH
THE DESEGREGATION
OF
PUBLIC LIBRARIES
IN THE
JIM CROW SOUTH
Civil Rights and Local Activism
WAYNE A. WIEGAND | SHIRLEY A. WIEGAND
Louisiana State University Press Baton Rouge
Published with the assistance of the Michael H. and Ayan Rubin Fund
Published by Louisiana State University Press
Copyright © 2018 by Louisiana State University Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
FIRST PRINTING
DESIGNER: Michelle A. Neustrom
TYPEFACES: Whitman, text; Meltow San 200
PRINTER AND BINDER: Sheridan Books, Inc.
Several paragraphs from chapter 1 first appeared in Wayne A. Wiegand, Part of Our Lives: A
People’s History of the American Public Library (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), and are
reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press.
Several paragraphs from chapters 7 and 8 first appeared in Wayne A. Wiegand, “Forgotten
Heroes in Civil Rights History,” American Libraries 48 (June 2017): 3–7.
Portions of chapter 9 and the epilogue first appeared in Wayne A. Wiegand, “‘Any Ideas?’ The
American Library Association and the Desegregation of Public Libraries in the American South,”
Libraries: Culture, History, and Society 1, no. 1 (March 2017): 1–22, copyright © 2017 by the
American Library Association’s Library History Round Table. This article is used by permission of
The Pennsylvania State University Press.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Wiegand, Wayne A., 1946– author. | Wiegand, Shirley A., author.
Title: The desegregation of public libraries in the Jim Crow South : civil rights and local activism
/ Wayne A. Wiegand and Shirley A. Wiegand.
Description: Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017038119| ISBN 978-0-8071-6867-7 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 978-0-8071-
6868-4 (pdf) | ISBN 978-0-80716869-1 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: African Americans and libraries—Southern States—History—20th century. |
Discrimination in public accommodations—Southern States—History—20th century. | Public
libraries—Southern States—History—20th century. | Civil rights movements—Southern States
—History—20th century.
Classification: LCC Z711.9 .W54 2018 | DDC 027.475—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017038119
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on
Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
To the black youths
who risked their lives to desegregate
Jim Crow public libraries
in the American South.
A sadly belated “Thank you.”
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Introduction
1 Jim Crow Public Libraries before 1954
2 Rumbles of Discontent before 1960
3 Memphis, Tennessee, and Greenville, South Carolina
4 Petersburg and Danville, Virginia
5 Alabama
6 Georgia
7 Mississippi
8 Black Youth in Rural Louisiana
9 The American Library Association
Epilogue
APPENDIX: Selected List of Public Library Protesters
NOTES
NOTE ON PRIMARY SOURCES
INDEX
ILLUSTRATIONS
Louisville Public Library Children’s Room, 1928
Sit-in arrest at the Alexandria, Virginia, Library, August 21, 1939
Jesse H. and Allegra W. Turner
Petersburg chief of police W. E. Traylor serving warrant on Lillian Pride, March 7, 1960
African Americans assembling at Petersburg Courthouse, March 8, 1960
Miles College student speaking to Birmingham public librarians, April 10, 1963
Sit-in at the Birmingham Public Library, April 10, 1963
Albany Public Library, closed during summer 1962
James “Sammy” Bradford surrounded by police in Jackson Public Library, March 27, 1961
Police escorting “Tougaloo Nine” from Jackson Public Library, March 27, 1961
Mug shots of “Tougaloo Nine,” March 27, 1961
Clara Stanton Jones, first African American president of the American Library Association,
addressing the ALA Council, summer 1978
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Our thanks to Christine Pawley, who painstakingly went through an
earlier draft of this book and gave wise counsel and advice that
substantially improved it; Chris Dodge, who compiled the index; the
anonymous reader for Louisiana State University Press, who not only
carefully screened the manuscript but also prodded us to take a broader
perspective; and especially our editor, Rand Dotson, who showed
amazing patience with sometimes fussy authors and who certainly made
this into a better book.
We also thank former students and colleagues with whom we’ve
discussed ideas and conclusions that found their way into our narrative;
Karen Muller of the American Library Association Library, who screened
the American Library Association Executive Board minutes for mention
of amicus briefs filed by the association between 1954 and 1965; the
American Library Association, for a Diversity Grant that Wayne used in
May 2012 for research into newspaper databases at the Library of
Congress; Emory University’s Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book
Library for a short-term fellowship in October 2012, and especially
Randall Burkett, who made Wayne’s weeklong stay there so profitable;
librarians at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and especially
Michele Besant of the School of Library and Information Studies;
archivists at the Wisconsin Historical Society, where Wayne perused the
records of the Louisiana Section of the Congress on Racial Equality,
which was so heavily involved in desegregating rural Louisiana public
libraries; Marquette University Law School, and especially Dean Joseph
Kearney, for supporting this project, and Patricia Cervenka and other
law school librarians who helped retrieve research materials at so many
stages of this project; Florida A&M University Law School, for supporting
this project in so many ways while Shirl was visiting professor there
from 2008 through 2011; librarians at Florida State University, and
especially the School of Information’s Goldstein Library director, Pamala
Doffek, and her staff, many of whom helped this project in so many
ways; librarians and archivists at the Library of Congress (where Wayne
spent weeks going through newspaper databases—especially the
ProQuest African American newspapers—and several days going through
the papers of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People in the Manuscripts Reading Room); archivists at the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (where Wayne consulted the American
Library Association Archives); librarians and archivists at the Virginia
State Library in Richmond, the University of South Carolina Library in
Columbia, the University of Georgia in Athens, the Louisiana State
University in Baton Rouge, the Alabama State Department of Library and
Archives in Montgomery, and the Mississippi Department of Library and
Archives in Jackson, where Wayne perused microfilmed newspapers
from small towns within each state; librarians and archivists at the Civil
Rights Museum in Albany, Georgia, where director Lee Formwalt
showed Shirl documents relating to the desegregation of the public
library and where Wayne and Shirl perused copies of local newspapers;
archivists at the National Archives and Records Service in Philadelphia;
librarians at the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American
Culture in Atlanta, who kindly copied and mailed to us a transcript of an
oral history interview with Annie McPheeters, longtime director of
Atlanta’s black public libraries; and indirectly the National Endowment
for the Humanities, for a Fellowship for University Teachers for Wayne
in 2008–9 that funded research for a book entitled Part of Our Lives: A
People’s History of the American Public Library (2015), which Wayne also
used to screen huge newspaper databases at the Library of Congress for
valuable information used in The Desegregation of Public Libraries in the
Jim Crow South.
THE DESEGREGATION OF PUBLIC
LIBRARIES
IN THE JIM CROW SOUTH