Black women have historically been hidden figures in librarianship, yet their passion, courage, and tenacity paved the way for future generations of knowledge workers. Profiling more than a dozen librarians, book champions, activists, and pioneers of the profession from across the country, this powerful work of archival storytelling will inspire readers both inside and outside of the library field. These personal histories of advocacy and resilience

• span the entire 20th Century, stretching from rural South Carolina and Florida to urban centers like New York and Los Angeles;
• profile better known figures such as Augusta Baker and Eliza Atkins Gleason as well as many who have yet to receive their due;
• grapple with the toxic legacy of segregation in library education, universities, public libraries, schools, and other institutions, showing how these persevering Black women dared to strive and work towards more equitable futures;
• include an inspiring Afterword by Dr. Aisha Johnson-Jones, an educator and revelator of Southern intellectual history;
• will encourage LIS students and newer librarians of all backgrounds to see themselves reflected in the profession’s long and rich heritage; and
• shed light on how librarianship can become ever more diverse and community centered.

This first Special Report in a two-volume set on Black and African Americans’ experiences in libraries provides an overview of their historical exclusion from libraries and educational institutions in the United States, also exploring the ways in which this legacy is manifest in our contemporary context. A compelling call to action, it will serve as the beginning of many conversations in which librarianship reckons with its racist past to move towards a more equitable future.

Still a predominantly white profession, librarianship has a legacy of racial discrimination, and it is essential that we face the ways that race impacts how we meet the needs of diverse user communities. Identifying and acknowledging implicit and learned bias is a necessary step toward transforming not only our professional practice but also our scholarship, assessment, and evaluation practices. From this Special Report, readers will

• learn the hidden history of Africa’s contributions to libraries and educational institutions, which are often omitted from K-12, higher education, and library school curricula;
• engage with the racist legacies of libraries as well as contemporary scholarship related to Black and African American users’ experiences with libraries;
• be introduced to frameworks and theories that can help to identify and unpack the role of race in librarianship and in library users’ experiences; and
• garner practical takeaways to bring to their own views and practice of librarianship.

Librarianship is still a predominantly white profession. It is essential that current practitioners as well as those about to enter the field take an unflinching look at the profession’s legacy of racial discrimination, including the ways in which race might impact service to users such as students in school, public, and academic libraries. Given the prevalence of implicit and explicit bias against Black and African American people, authors Folk and Overbey argue that we must speak to these students directly to hear their stories and thereby understand their experiences. This Special Report shares the findings of a qualitative research study that explored the library experiences of Black and African American undergraduate students both before and during college, grounding it within an equity framework. From this Report readers will

• learn details about the study, which focused on the potential role of race in the students’ interactions with library staff, including white staff and staff of color;
• gain insight into Black and African American users’ perceptions of libraries and library staff, attitudes towards reading, frequency of library usage, and the importance of family;
• understand the implications of the study’s findings for our practice and for librarianship more broadly, including our ongoing commitment to diversifying the profession; and
• walk away with recommendations that can be applied to every library and educational context, such as guidance for developing an antiracist organization and more equitable service provision.

Winner of the 2016 Eliza Atkins Gleason Book Award and the 2016 Lillian Smith Book Award
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.

Library History Round Table Reads Selection, March 2024
Alexandria Historical Society Special Merit Award, 2023

When Alexandria, Virginia’s first public library, was constructed just a few blocks from his home, Samuel Wilbert Tucker, a young, Black attorney, was appalled to learn that he could not use the library because of his race. Inspired by the legal successes of the NAACP in discrimination cases, he organized a grassroots protest to desegregate the library that his tax dollars supported.

Public in Name Only tells the important, but largely forgotten, story of Tucker and a group of Black citizens who agitated for change in the terms and conditions of their lives. Employing the combined strategies of direct-action public protest, nonviolent civil disobedience, and municipal litigation, Tucker’s initiative dovetailed with the national priorities and tactics of larger civil rights organizations. While Tucker’s campaign did not end with the desegregation of the Alexandria Library, but instead resulted in the creation of a “separate-and-unequal” Jim Crow Black branch, the sit-in demonstration represents a momentous early struggle for racial equity waged through civil rights activism.

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.