NOTES

INTRODUCTION

1. Quoted in Fred Powledge, Free at Last? The Civil Rights Movement and the People Who Made It (Boston: Little, Brown, 1991), 98–99.

2. Sec. 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment reads in part: “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers. . . . But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President . . . Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, . . . or in any way abridged, . . . the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state” (emphasis added).

3. Eugene Gressman, “The Unhappy History of Civil Rights Legislation,” Michigan Law Review 50 (June 1952): 1323, 1326, 1336.

4. See, e.g., Slaughterhouse Cases, 83 U.S. 36 (1873); United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1876); Virginia v. Rives, 100 U.S. 313 (1879). For a general discussion of this development, see Gressman, “Unhappy History,” 1337–40.

5. See United States v. Stanley, 109 U.S. 3 (1883).

6. Gressman, “Unhappy History,” 1342.

7. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 544, 548–49, 551 (1896).

8. Joseph William Singer, “No Right to Exclude: Public Accommodations and Private Property,” Northwestern University Law Review 90 (Summer 1996): 1283, 1388.

9. Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (New York: Random House, 2010), 44–45.

10. Ira Berlin, The Making of African America: The Four Great Migrations (New York: Viking, 2010), 184.

11. Constance Webb, Richard Wright: A Biography (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1968), 227–28.

12. PBS Newshour Transcript, Brown v. Board of Education, www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/jan-june04/brown_05–12.html.

13. Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 495 (1954).

14. PBS Newshour Transcript, Brown v. Board of Education.

15. See Timothy B. Tyson, The Blood of Emmett Till (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017).

16. Quoted in Powledge, Free at Last, 71–72.

17. Powledge, Free at Last, 107.

18. See Raymond Arsenault, Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 511–12. See also James Laue, Action and Desegregation, 1960–1962: Toward a Theory of the Rationalization of Protest (Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, 1989), 107–8; and Diane McWhorter, Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 236.

19. Powledge, Free at Last, 523, 542.

20. Quoted in Nick Kotz, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Laws That Changed America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), 33.

21. Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. 2000a.

22. Bruce Ackerman, We the People, vol. 3: The Civil Rights Revolution (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014), 133.

23. “Civil Rights: And the Walls Came Tumbling,” Time, July 17, 1964, 25–26.

24. Benjamin Muse, The American Negro Revolution (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968), 97.

25. Stephen Tuck, We Ain’t What We Ought to Be: The Black Freedom Struggle from Emancipation to Obama (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010), 276.

26. We have benefited from a rich scholarly literature on the effect of public space on human agency. See, e.g., Sharon Zukin, Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Don Mitchell, The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space (New York: Guilford Press, 2003); Edward W. Soja, Seeking Spatial Justice (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010); and George Lipsitz, How Racism Takes Place (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011).

27. Quoted in Powledge, Free at Last, 223–24.

28. See, e.g., Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988); Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963–65 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998); and At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965–68 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006); David Halberstam, The Children (New York: Random House, 1999); Bruce Watson, Freedom Summer: The Savage Season That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy (New York: Viking, 2010); Arsenault, Freedom Riders; and Tuck, We Ain’t What We Ought to Be.

29. For an analysis of the desegregation of other public accommodations during this period, see Victoria W. Wolcott, Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters: The Struggle over Segregated Recreation in America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012).

30. See Jeanne Theoharis, “Hidden in Plain Sight: The Civil Rights Movement Outside the South,” in The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism, ed. Matthew D. Lassiter and Joseph Crespino (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 49–73.

31. Patterson Toby Graham, A Right to Read: Segregation and Civil Rights in Alabama’s Public Libraries, 1900–1965 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002).

32. Cheryl Knott, Not Free, Not for All: Public Libraries in the Age of Jim Crow (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2015). See also Untold Stories: Civil Rights, Libraries, and Black Librarianship, ed. John Mark Tucker (Champaign: Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois, 1998); and David M. Battles, The History of Public Library Access to African Americans in the South, or Leaving the Plow Behind (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2009).

33. Gavin Wright, Sharing the Prize: The Economics of the Civil Rights Revolution in the American South (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013), 1.

34. Catherine A. Barnes, Journey from Jim Crow: The Desegregation of Southern Transit (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 16.

1. JIM CROW PUBLIC LIBRARIES BEFORE 1954

1. Leon F. Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), xvi.

2. Dorothy B. Parker, “The Organized Educational Activities of Negro Literary Societies, 1828–1846,” Journal of Negro Education 5 (October 1936): 555–76, quotation on 561. See also William Henry Johnson, Autobiography of Dr. William Henry Johnson (New York: Haskell House, 1900), 159–61. Elizabeth McHenry’s Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002) is the definitive work on the subject.

3. “City News,” Cincinnati Daily Gazette, April 15, 1868; “The Public Library,” Cincinnati Daily Gazette, December 9, 1870.

4. Bliss Perry later told this story as a keynote speaker for the dedication of the public library building in Brookline, Mass. See Dedication of the Brookline Public Library Building, November 17, 1910 (Cambridge, Mass.: Riverside Press, 1911), 19–20.

5. “Colored National Liberal Convention,” Cincinnati Daily Gazette, September 26, 1872.

6. “A Negro Denied a Seat among Whites,” New York Times, March 6, 1875; “Negro Rights in Theatres,” New York Times, March 8, 1875.

7. Litwack, Trouble in Mind, 102, 234, 363, 415.

8. James A. Atkins, The Age of Jim Crow (New York: Vantage Press, 1964), 112.

9. “A Public Library for the Colored People,” Macon (Ga.) Weekly Telegraph, January 23, 1881.

10. Paula J. Giddings, Ida: A Sword among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign against Lynching (New York: Amistad, 2008), 74–76.

11. Eventually, the city gave the library thirty dollars per month. See Beverly Washington Jones, Stanford L. Warren Branch Library, 77 Years of Public Service: A Phoenix in the Durham Community (Durham, N.C.: Durham County Library, 1990).

12. Flyer found in Joan C. Browning Papers, box 1, Emory University, Manuscripts and Rare Book Library, Atlanta, Ga.

13. “Storytellers Set Dates for Summer,” New York Amsterdam News, June 17, 1950.

14. “Libraries for Colored Children,” Boston Globe, November 13, 1910. See also G. S. Dickerson, “The Marblehead Libraries,” Southern Workman 40 (August–September 1910): 491–500.

15. See Dan R. Lee, “Faith Cabin Libraries: A Study of an Alternative Library Service in the Segregated South, 1932–1960,” Libraries & Culture 26 (January 1991): 169–82.

16. “Seek Public Library,” Norfolk New Journal and Guide, January 22, 1938.

17. Pennie Williams Dickey, “A History of Public Library Service for Negroes in Jackson, Mississippi, 1950–1957” (Master’s thesis, Clark Atlanta University, 1960), 12–17.

18. Dickey, “History of Public Library Service for Negroes in Jackson,” 13–14.

19. Library History Committee, Gadsden Public Library; 100 Years of Service (Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing Co., 2008), 19, 43. In 1923 the library opened a branch in the high school serving Gadsden’s black people.

20. William T. Miller, “Library Service for Negroes in the New South: Birmingham, Alabama, 1871–1918,” Alabama Librarian 27 (November–December 1975): 6–8. See also Graham, Right to Read, 11–17.

21. Angela Davis, Angela Davis: An Autobiography (New York: Random House, 1974), 97.

22. Annie L. McPheeters, Library Service in Black and White: Some Personal Recollections, 1921–1980 (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1988), 102, 103.

23. Two more African American branches opened within a decade. See “In the Libraries,” Christian Science Monitor, January 24, 1917.

24. “Library Growth in the South,” Charlotte Observer, May 14, 1907. The library remained independent until 1929, when it became part of the Charlotte Public Library. “It continued as a branch library and the cultural center for the Black community until it was closed and demolished” in 1961. See William Gattis, “Branch Manager’s Statement,” in Jones, Stanford L. Warren Branch Library, 3.

25. Pamela R. Bleisch, “Spoilsmen and Daughters of the Republic: Political Interference in the Texas State Library during the Tenure of Elizabeth Howard West, 1911–1925,” Libraries & the Cultural Record 45, no. 4 (2010): 396.

26. “Public Library Is Opened in School,” Philadelphia Tribune, October 31, 1929.

27. See Graham, Right to Read, 17–25. See also Susan Purdy, “Mobile and the Black Experience,” Florida Times Union (Jacksonville), February 15, 1998.

28. “Library with Actor’s Name Serves Negroes of Raleigh,” Christian Science Monitor, November 12, 1936.

29. Anne Robinson, “Never Too Late,” Bulletin of the American Library Association 47 (February 1953): 57, 74.

30. Edith Foster, Yonder She Comes! A Once Told Li’bry Tale (Bremen, Ga.: Gateway Printing Co., 1985), 219–26.

31. “Colored Children in Library,” Baltimore Sun, January 16, 1910; “Defends Pratt Library,” Baltimore Sun, February 3, 1910; “Pratt Library Stoops to Jim Crow,” Baltimore Afro-American, May 19, 1934; “Mississippi Whines,” Baltimore Afro-American, April 25, 1936. See also Stanley Rubinstein and Judith Farley, “Enoch Pratt Free Library and Black Patrons: Equality in Library Services, 1882–1915,” Journal of Library History 15 (Fall 1980): 445–53.

32. Annual Report (hereafter AR) (1911), District of Columbia Public Library, 44.

33. “Segregation at Branch Libraries,” Washington Times, March 18, 1922.

34. W. E. Burghardt Du Bois, “The Opening of the Library,” Independent 54, April 3, 1902, 809. On April 7, 1902, the Chicago Tribune editorialized on this article: “Perhaps Mr. Carnegie, whose income is continually gaining upon him, if approached in the right manner might give the negroes of Atlanta a library of equal importance with that he has given to the white people of the city.” “The Color Line in a Library,” Chicago Tribune, April 7, 1902. The definitive biography of Du Bois is David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois, 1868–1919: Biography of a Race (New York: Henry Holt, 1994); and Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois, 1919–1963: The Fight for Equality and the American Century (New York: Henry Holt, 2001).

35. For quotation on being taxed, see “In Aid of the Negroes,” Springfield Republican, June 1, 1909. Quotation from Waterbury American in “A ‘Public’ Library in Atlanta,” Springfield Republican, July 6, 1909.

36. W. E. B. Du Bois, Efforts for Social Betterment among Negro Americans (Atlanta: Atlanta University Press, 1909), 117–18; Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery (New York: Norton, 1901), 38–39.

37. Julia Collier Harris, “A Library for Negroes,” New York Evening Post, quoted in Kansas City Star, July 7, 1921.

38. Ron Blazek, “Florida’s First Public Library,” Southeastern Librarian 27 (Fall 1978): 171; John Lee Curry, “A History of Public Library Service to Negroes in Jacksonville, Florida” (Master’s thesis, Clark Atlanta University, 1957), 38.

39. “‘Jim Crow’ Law for Public Libraries?” Daily Oklahoman, September 3, 1910; Editorial, Daily Oklahoman, October 25, 1910.

40. Story in Virginia Porter, “America’s Black Holocaust,” Pittsburgh Courier, September 18, 1999.

41. William Beer to George F. Bowerman, December 4, 1909, New Orleans Public Library Archives.

42. Quoted in “Carnegie Is Generous,” Savannah Tribune, June 29, 1912.

43. Quotations from Pamela Tyler, Silk Stockings and Ballot Boxes: Women and Politics in New Orleans, 1920–1963 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996), 211.

44. Elaine Hardy, “A Timeline of Important Events in Georgia Public Library History,” Georgia Library Quarterly 45 (Summer 2008): 13; “The Colored Public Library,” Savannah Tribune, July 20, 1907; “Liberal Response for the Library,” Savannah Tribune, November 19, 1911; “Carnegie Library Concert,” Savannah Tribune, June 8, 1912; “An Immense Crowd to Attend,” Savannah Tribune, June 22, 1912; “Colored Public Library,” Savannah Tribune, August 31, 1912; “Have You One?” Savannah Tribune, December 6, 1913; “Carnegie Library’s Many Readers,” Savannah Tribune, November 28, 1914. See also “Savannah” file of Carnegie Corporation Records, Columbia University, New York.

45. From “Going Up to Atlanta,” in The Norton Book of American Autobiography, ed. Jay Parini (New York: Norton, 1999), 560.

46. Clarence Thomas, My Grandfather’s Son: A Memoir (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 17.

47. Abigail A. Van Slyck, Free to All: Carnegie Libraries & American Culture, 1890–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 158.

48. Paul M. Culp Jr., “Carnegie Libraries of Texas: The Past Still Present,” Texas Libraries 43 (Summer 1981): 91; Culp, “Carnegie Libraries: The Past No Longer Present,” Texas Libraries (Fall 1981): 136; and Margaret I. Nichols, “Lillian Gunter: County Librarian,” Texas Libraries 39 (Fall 1977): 138. See also Cheryl Knott Malone, “Unannounced and Unexpected: The Desegregation of Houston Public Library in the Early 1950s,” Library Trends 55 (Fall 2007): 665–74. The Houston branch was razed in 1961 to make way for a street extension.

49. Battles, History of Public Library Access for African Americans, 44.

50. “Pittman’s Success as an Architect,” Pittsburgh Courier, July 26, 1912.

51. Quoted in Larry Grove, Dallas Public Library: The First 75 Years (Dallas: Dallas Public Library, 1977), 51, 52.

52. See “Mound Bayou Improvements,” Savannah Tribune, May 25, 1912. Correspondence between Mound Bayou and Carnegie Corporation in “Mound Bayou” file, Carnegie Corporation Records. See especially, Charles Banks to R. R. Moton, January 20, 1917; and Mrs. Mary C. Booze (club president) to Carnegie Foundation, July 11, 1925. See also Booker T. Washington, “A Town Owned by Negroes,” World’s Work 14 (July 1907): 9125–34.

53. Shirley Schutte and Nathania Sawyer, From Carnegie to Cyberspace: 100 Years at the Central Arkansas Library System (Little Rock, Ark.: Butler Center Books, 2010), 28–29, 36–37.

54. Blyden Jackson, The Waiting Years: Essays on American Negro Literature (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976), 3–4.

55. Washington to Bertram, August 28, 1909, copy found in “Savannah” file, Carnegie Corporation Records. That Washington provided Savannah with a copy of this letter strongly suggests he regularly advocated for separate Carnegie-funded “colored branches.”

56. Battles, History of Public Library Access for African Americans, 33–34.

57. Berlin, Making of African America, 25, 30.

58. AR (1906), Louisville Free Public Library, 61–64; AR (1907), 53. Racist humor followed the opening of the library. In 1905 the Duluth News Tribune claimed the Washington Post “as authority for the statement that the first book taken out of the public library for negroes at Louisville was on chicken culture.” See “The Washington Post Is Authority,” Duluth News Tribune, December 7, 1905. See also Benjamin Mays, Born to Rebel: An Autobiography (New York: Scribners, 1971), 2.

59. Lillian Taylor Wright, “Thomas Fountain Blue, Pioneer Librarian, 1865–1935” (Master’s thesis, Clark Atlanta University, 1955), 32–37.

60. AR (1910), Louisville Free Public Library, 37.

61. See Joseph S. Cotter Sr., “The Story Hour,” Library Journal 35 (October 1910): 466.

62. Pamphlet for “Dedication Ceremony of the Eastern Colored Branch, January 28–30, 1914,” in Library of Congress collections. See also “Colored Department, Louisville Free Public Library” (1927), Library of Congress collections.

63. Quoted in “Negro Libraries as Social Centers,” Savannah Tribune, July 17, 1915.

64. Thomas F. Blue, “The Library as a Community Center,” paper read at the Library Conference, Hampton Institute, Hampton, Va., March 1927, quoted in Wright, “Thomas Fountain Blue, Pioneer Librarian,” 27.

65. Southern Workman, quoted in “Louisville Negroes and the Public Library System,” Philadelphia Tribune, August 4, 1927. In The Political Worlds of Slavery and Freedom (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009) Steven Hahn critiques the “integrationist framework” in black history that he says privileges and legitimizes black struggles for “inclusion and assimilation” but treats separatist efforts as “somehow lacking in integrity” (160). The loyalty many black public library patrons showed for their branches, and in some cases their subsequent resistance to integrating because they did not want to share these spaces with whites, lends some credence to Hahn’s critique.

66. “Negro Branch of Louisville Library Novel,” Philadelphia Tribune, April 4, 1929.

67. Julia A. Hersberger, Lou Sua, and Adam L. Murray, “The Fruit and Root of the Community: The Greensboro Carnegie Negro Library, 1904–1964,” in The Library as Place: History, Community, and Culture, ed. John E. Buschman and Gloria J. Leckie (Westport, Conn.: Libraries Unlimited, 2007), 79–99, quotations on 87, 88, 95, and 97.

68. Ella Carruth and Isabel Monro, “Hannibal Square Library,” Wilson Library Bulletin 26 (February 1952): 463–65.

69. “Books in Dixie,” Christian Science Monitor, April 22, 1933. See also Rosemary Ruhig Du Mont, “Race in American Librarianship: Attitudes of the Library Profession,” Journal of Library History 21 (Summer 1986): 494.

70. “Library Bias in South, Says FDR Committee,” Philadelphia Tribune, April 4, 1940.

71. Tommie Dora Barker, Libraries of the South: A Report on Developments, 1930–1935 (Chicago: American Library Association, 1936), 35–36, 199–201. See also Eliza Atkins Gleason, The Southern Negro and the Public Library: A Study of the Government and Administration of Public Library Services to Negroes in the South (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1941), 89–109.

72. Barker, Libraries of the South, 35–36, 50–57, 199–201. See also Edwin R. Embree and Julia Waxman, Investment in People: The Story of the Julius Rosenwald Fund (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949), 5–28, 37–51.

73. “Free Library,” New York Amsterdam News, September 3, 1938.

74. Louisiana Library Commission, Report on the Louisiana Library Demonstration, 1925–1930 (New York: League of Library Commissions, 1931), 47–49.

75. Quoted in Lillie S. Walker, “Black Librarians in South Carolina,” in The Black Librarian in the Southeast: Reminiscences, Activities, Challenges, ed. Annette L. Phinazee (Durham: North Carolina Central University School of Library Science, 1980), 92.

76. Graham, Right to Read, 27–30, 31–32.

77. Jones, Stanford L. Warren Branch Library, 17.

78. Hardy, “Timeline of Important Events in George Public Library History,” 14. By 1939 the WPA funded 140 bookmobiles nationwide. See “The Library Takes to the Trail,” Christian Science Monitor, November 14, 1939.

79. Quoted from Edward Barrett Stanford, “Library Extension under the WPA: An Appraisal of an Experiment in Federal Aid” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1944), 182–83.

80. McPheeters, Library Service in Black and White, 105.

81. Graham, Right to Read, 34, 35–36.

82. Graham, Right to Read, 36–43.

83. Graham, Right to Read, 49–56, quotation on 49.

84. Dorothy M. Broderick, Image of the Black in Popular and Recommended American Juvenile Fiction, 1927–1967 (New York: R. R. Bowker, 1973), 177–78.

85. Litwack, Trouble in Mind, 91, 108, 187, 429.

86. “Fond of Good Books,” Washington Post, April 6, 1902.

87. George B. Utley, “What the Negro Reads,” Critic 49 (July 1906): 28; “Negro Reads; Jacksonsville,” Macon (Ga.) Daily Telegraph, August 5, 1906.

88. AR (1906), Louisville Free Public Library, 61–64; AR (1907), 53.

89. “Negro Branch Library,” Biloxi (Miss.) Daily Herald, April 18, 1920.

90. Report on the Louisiana Library Demonstration, 1925–1930, 47–49.

91. “Selecting Suitable Books for Public Libraries,” Dallas Morning News, October 13, 1903.

92. Sam W. Small, “Looking and Listening,” Atlanta Constitution, December 9, 1928.

93. “Library Lacks ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’” New York Times, March 15, 1931.

94. Halberstam, Children, 72–73.

95. Transcript, Oral History Interview with Annie McPheeters, Collection No. aarlohe 92-001, Archives Division, Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History, Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System, quotations on 54–56. There is some disagreement among historians concerning how much King knew about Gandhi before the Montgomery bus boycott. Glenn Smiley, a student of Gandhian thinking and field secretary for a civil rights organization in Montgomery, remembers King saying he knew “very little about the man” at the time. See Arsenault, Freedom Riders, 72.

96. McPheeters Transcript, 57–58.

97. Erik Larson, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin (New York: Broadway Books, 2011), 12; Marion Humble, Rural America Reads: A Study of Rural Library Service (New York: American Association for Adult Education, 1938), 68.

98. Joseph Moreau, Schoolbook Nation: Conflicts over American History Textbooks from the Civil War to the Present (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 272, 277; Hillel Black, The American Schoolbook (New York: William Morrow, 1967), 121.

99. See Catherine A. Barnes, Journey from Jim Crow: The Desegregation of Southern Transit (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).

2. Rumbles of Discontent before 1960

1. Gleason, Southern Negro and the Public Library, 74–85, 90–96. See also Knott, Not Free, Not for All.

2. Anna Holden, “The Color Line in Southern Libraries,” New South 9 (January 1954): 1.

3. C. D. Halliburton, “Inadequate Library Facilities,” Philadelphia Tribune, May 29, 1951.

4. L. D. Reddick, “Where Can a Negro Read a Book?” New South 9 (January 1954): 5.

5. Quoted in Access to Public Libraries (Chicago: American Library Association, 1963), 37, 38, and 39.

6. James R. Wright, “The Public Library and the Black Experience,” quoted in Peter Booth Wiley, A Free Library in This City: The Illustrated History of the San Francisco Public Library (San Francisco: Weldon Owen, 1996), 82.

7. Evelyn C. White, Alice Walker: A Life (New York: Norton, 2004), 58.

8. Richard Wright, Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1937), 214–17, 224. See also Constance Webb, Richard Wright: A Biography (New York: Putnam, 1968), 56, 78–79, 96.

9. Quotations can be found in Charles S. Johnson, Patterns of Negro Segregation (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1943), 27. See also Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, 2 vols. (New York: Transaction Publishers, 1944); and Richard Kluger, Simple Justice (New York: Random House, 1975), 256. Gavin Wright believes “the growing regional isolation noted by Myrdal is what made the southern Civil Rights revolution both necessary and possible.” See Wright, Sharing the Prize, 6.

10. See “Suit Filed to Secure Use of City Library,” Norfolk New Journal and Guide, May 13, 1939; “Va. Library War in Court Again,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 2, 1939.

11. “Boys Wanted to Read, but Librarians Had Them Jailed,” Norfolk New Journal and Guide, September 2, 1939; “5 Youths Face Strike Charge,” New York Amsterdam News, September 9, 1939.

12. “Smash Va. Library Color Bar,” Baltimore Afro-American, January 20, 1940. See also “Find No Legal Bars to Virginia Library,” Atlanta Daily World, January 21, 1940.

13. For a complete account of the Alexandria sit-ins, see Brenda Mitchell-Powell, “A Seat at the Reading Table: The 1939 Alexandria, Virginia, Public Library Sit-In Demonstration—A Study in Library History, 1937–1941” (Ph.D. diss., Simmons College, Boston, 2015). See also “Alexandria Library to Be Named for Minister,” Baltimore Afro-American, March 30, 1940; and Gleason, Southern Negro and the Public Library, 64–66. In 1959 black Alexandrian adults and high school students were allowed to check books out of the main library. Not until 1962 was the library fully integrated.

14. Louise S. Robbins, The Dismissal of Miss Ruth Brown: Civil Rights, Censorship and the American Library (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000).

15. “Speaks Up for Negro Plea, Ga. Newscaster Resigns Post,” Pittsburgh Courier, February 16, 1952.

16. Richard Morris, “Calvert Foes Threaten to Burn Bookmobile,” Washington Post, April 20, 1952.

17. Graham, Right to Read, 56–62. See also Battles, History of Public Library Access to African Americans, 94.

18. Rosa Parks, Rosa Parks: My Story (New York: Dial Books, 1992), 94. See also Montgomery Branch, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Minutes, May 22, 1955, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.

19. Ackerman, We the People, 135.

20. All quotations in P. L. Prattis, “Plain Murder,” Pittsburgh Courier, January 18, 1958. See also “Miss Juliette Hampton Morgan,” Alabama Librarian 8 (October 1957): 91–92 (commemorations by Margaret L. McClurkin and Dixie Lou Fisher); and Graham, Right to Read, 102.

21. Robert S. Alvarez, Library Log: The Diary of a Public Library Director (Foster City, Calif.: Administrator’s Digest Press, 1991), 280–83, 305–8. See also Mary Ellen McCrary, “A History of Public Library Service to Negroes in Nashville, Tennessee, 1916–1958” (Master’s thesis, Clark Atlanta University, 1959).

22. Halberstam, Children, 100, 101.

23. “Richmond Branch Library Inviting,” Norfolk New Journal and Guide, August 22, 1925; “Richmond Branch Library Rapidly nears Completion,” Norfolk New Journal and Guide, October 17, 1931; “EMR Dresses Up Bowser Library,” Norfolk New Journal and Guide, August 25, 1934.

24. “Richmonders Request Use of Public Library,” Norfolk New Journal and Guide, April 19, 1947; “Board Defers Action on White Library Rule,” Richmond Afro-American, April 19, 1947.

25. “Race Bar Is Removed at Central Library,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, May 28, 1947; “City Library Opens Its Doors to All Citizens,” Richmond Afro-American, May 31, 1947; “Richmond Opens Main Library to Negroes,” Atlanta Daily World, June 7, 1947; “White Boycott Hits Library in Richmond,” Pittsburgh Courier, February 21, 1948.

26. “Louisville Drops Ban on Libraries,” Philadelphia Tribune, April 19, 1952; William R. Bryer, comp., Libraries and Lotteries: A History of the Louisville Free Public Library (Cynthiana, Ky.: Hobson Book Press, 1944), 199. See also George C. Wright, “Desegregation of Public Accommodations in Louisville,” in Southern Businessmen and Desegregation, ed. Elizabeth Jacoway and David R. Colburn (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1982), 191–210.

27. Quotations from Kim Lacy Rogers, Righteous Lives: Narratives of the New Orleans Civil Rights Movement (New York: New York University Press, 1993), 43.

28. Robert Franklin Williams, Negroes with Guns (New York: Marzani & Munsell, 1962), 14–15.

29. Email, Patricia Poland (Dickerson Genealogy and Local History Room, Union County Public Library, N.C.), to Wayne A. Wiegand, May 7, 2014. For a discussion of Williams’s role in the larger civil rights movement, see Arsenault, Freedom Riders, 404–18.

30. McPheeters Transcript, 24–25; Howard Zinn, “A Quiet Case of Social Change,” in The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy, ed. Howard Zinn (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1997), 31–39, quotation on 31–32. See also McPheeters, Library Service in Black and White, 75–89, quotations on 78, 87.

31. These events are described in greater length in Graham, Right to Read, 81–82.

32. “File Suit against Library Practices,” Philadelphia Tribune, August 12, 1950; “Newport News Library Target of Litigation,” Philadelphia Tribune, July 19, 1952; “Newport News Opens Library to Negroes,” New York Amsterdam News, July 19, 1952.

33. Graham’s statement quoted in Isaac R. Barfield, “A History of the Miami Public Library, Miami, Florida” (Master’s thesis, Clark Atlanta University, 1958), 31.

34. “Library Threatened with Legal Action for Denying Service to Negro Reader,” Washington Post–Times Herald, February 23, 1957; “Library Is Told to Lend to All,” Washington Post–Times Herald, March 5, 1957; “Supervisors Say Library Should Obey Virginia Law,” Blue Ridge Herald (Purcellville, Va.), March 7, 1957; “Library Must Obey Law to Get Money from Town,” Blue Ridge Herald (Purcellville, Va.), March 14, 1957; “Pays Taxes, He May Sue to Use Library,” Baltimore Afro-American, March 2, 1957; “Upholsterer Acts to Wipe Out Discrimination in Va. Library,” Baltimore Afro-American, March 16, 1957; “Negro Makes News as Va. Library Lends a Book,” Philadelphia Tribune, March 30, 1957. Those Austrian shades stayed in the Eisenhower family. When President Eisenhower and his wife saw them, “they asked the Murrays to fashion and refurbish the drapes . . . at the Eisenhower farm near Gettysburg. There, millions have admired [them].” Eugene Scheel, “Couple Wrote the First Chapter of County’s Civil Rights Movement,” Washington Post, April 8, 2001.

35. “Countians Speak Up on Tax Hike, Library at Hearing; Dog Control Extended,” Blue Ridge Herald (Purcellville, Va.), April 4, 1957; “Supervisors Set $2.10 Tax Rate, Appropriate $6,000 for Library,” Blue Ridge Herald (Purcellville, Va.), April 11, 1957.

36. “Plans Shaping at Portsmouth Public Library,” Norfolk New Journal and Guide, August 18, 1945. See also “Judge Tells Portsmouth Library to Open to All,” Norfolk New Journal and Guide, February 20, 1960.

37. “Ministers Endorse Stand Taken by Two Dentists,” Norfolk New Journal and Guide, April 19, 1958; Johnnie Moore, “Conference on Library Practices Is Postponed,” Norfolk New Journal and Guide, October 25, 1958; Norman Regner, “Library Integration Asked,” Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk), November 26, 1959. See also Owens v. Portsmouth Library, Civil Action No. 3100, Records of the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Norfolk Division (1960), RG 21, box 277, National Archives and Record Administration at Philadelphia. The quoted language became standard in future federal suits arguing against segregated public library services.

38. “Desegregation Pledge Given,” Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk), December 23, 1959; “The Law and Reason at a Library Door,” Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk), December 24, 1959.

39. William L. Tazewell, “Negroes Win at Library,” Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk), February 18, 1960; “Library Integration to Stay on Docket,” Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk), February 19, 1960; “Civil Rights Roundup,” Philadelphia Tribune, February 27, 1960.

40. “Portsmouth Library Open; Petersburg Arrests Group,” Norfolk New Journal and Guide, March 12, 1960; John Jordan, “This Is Portsmouth,” Norfolk New Journal and Guide, March 12, 1960 and March 16, 1963.

41. Quoted in Ellen Levine, Freedom’s Children: Young Civil Rights Activists Tell Their Own Stories (New York: Puffin Books, 1993), 42. At Green’s Central High School graduation ceremony he had empty chairs on either side “because nobody wanted to sit next to me.”

42. See John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 60–61. See also Tom Brady, Black Monday (Winona, Ala.: Association of Citizens’ Council of Mississippi, 1955), 12; and Karen Cook “Struggles Within: Lura G. Currier, the Mississippi Library Commission and Library Services to African Americans,” Information & Culture 48, no. 1 (2013): 143.

43. Graham, Right to Read, 102–12. Reed’s story was reproduced in a play that premiered in 2015 entitled Alabama Story. See www.sltrib.com/home/1965509-155/newly-mounted-utah-play-tells-an.

3. MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE, AND GREENVILLE, SOUTH CAROLINA

1. Quotations in Powledge, Free at Last, 104–5, 116.

2. For more complete coverage of these incidents and the desegregation of Memphis public libraries, see Steven Anthony Knowlton, “Memphis Public Library Service to African Americans, 1903–1961: A History of Its Inauguration, Progress, and Desegregation” (Master’s thesis, University of Memphis, 2015), esp. 61–95.

3. See U.S. Census, https://www.census.gov/prod/www/decennial.html. The population of blacks in Memphis would remain at approximately 40 percent throughout the 1940s and 1950s.

4. Rheba Palmer Hoffman, “A History of Public Library Service to Negroes in Memphis, Tennessee” (Master’s thesis, Clark Atlanta University, August 1955).

5. Allegra W. Turner with Jini M. Kilgore, Except by Grace: The Life of Jesse H. Turner (Jonesboro, Ark.: Four-G Publishers, 2003), viii, 110.

6. “Farewell Salute to Allegra W. Turner,” Tri-State Defender: A Quiet Engine for Desegregation, February 21–27, 2008. Louisiana State University enrolled its first black student in 1953.

7. Ed Frank, “Tri-State Bank,” The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture, http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=1403.

8. Turner, Except by Grace, 111, 112; Turner v. Randolph, Civil Action 3525 (W.D. Tenn. 1958), Deposition of Wassell Randolph.

9. Unsigned letter, Dig Memphis—The Digital Archive of the Memphis Public Library & Information Center, http://memphislibrary.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/search/searchterm/desegregation%20library/order/nosort.

10. Randolph to Lockard, October 2, 1957, Dig Memphis, https://memphislibrary.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15342coll4/id/91/rec/14.

11. Lockard to Randolph, January 3, 1958, Dig Memphis, https://memphislibrary.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15342coll4/id/95/rec/25.

12. “A Petition by Employees of Memphis State University in Support of the Integration of Library Facilities,” Dig Memphis, http://memphislibrary.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/search/searchterm/desegregation%20library/mode/all/order/nosort/page/2; “Library Board Revises Rules on Segregation,” newspaper article, n.d., A-16 (listing the specific numbers).

13. Randolph to Lockard, letter, n.d., Dig Memphis, https://memphislibrary.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15342coll4/id/96/rec/7.

14. Turner v. Randolph et al., Turner v. Randolph, Civil Action 3525 (W.D. Tenn. 1958), Complaint.

15. Brown v. Board of Education (Brown II), 349 U.S. 294 (1955).

16. Daniel Kiel, “Exploded Dream: Desegregation in the Memphis Public Schools,” Law & Inequality 26 (Summer 2008): 261, 270.

17. “Nashville and Memphis Close, but Still Far Apart,” Baltimore Afro-American, October 15, 1960.

18. “Nashville and Memphis Close, but Still Far Apart.”

19. Letter from E. M. Hall, a broker of fruits, vegetables, and produce, to head librarian Jesse Cunningham, Dig Memphis, http://memphislibrary.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/search/searchterm/desegregation%20library/mode/all/order/nosort/page/1.

20. “Handwritten Letter from an Unknown Author to Mr. and Mrs. C. Lamar Wallis” and “Letter from Lamar Wallis to Mr. Edward P. Russell, Sr. of Canada,” Dig Memphis, http://memphislibrary.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/search/searchterm/desegregation%20library/mode/all/order/nosort/page/1.

21. “Negroes Stage Sitdowns in 2 Libraries,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 20, 1960; “41 Arrested in Memphis Libraries,” Atlanta Daily World, March 20, 1960; “40 Arrested in Memphis,” New York Times, March 20, 1960.

22. “37 Negroes Fined in Memphis Case,” New York Times, March 22, 1960; “37 Fined in Sitdown at Library,” Washington Post–Times Herald, March 22, 1960; “Negroes Fined for Sitdowns in Libraries,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 22, 1960.

23. “Memphis Stops 2 New Sitdowns,” New York Times, May 23, 1960.

24. “2 Week ‘Cooling Off Period’ in Memphis Protest,” Atlanta Daily World, March 24, 1960.

25. “Sitdowns Successful in Galveston, San Antonio,” Philadelphia Tribune, April 9, 1960.

26. “Judge Denies Order Opening Memphis Libraries,” Philadelphia Tribune, July 12, 1960; “A Copy of a Letter Sent from Lamar Wallis to Frank Gianotti,” Dig Memphis, http://memphislibrary.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/search/searchterm/desegregation%20library/mode/all/order/nosort/page/1; Turner, Except by Grace, 116.

27. “A Letter from Memphis Resident Malcolm McAlpin to the Board of Trustees of the Memphis Public Library,” Dig Memphis, http://memphislibrary.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/search/searchterm/desegregation%20library!McAlpin/field/all!all/mode/all!all/conn/and!and/order/nosort/ad/asc; “Integration: An Interim Report,” Wilson Library Bulletin 35 (April 1961): 632.

28. Dawley v. City of Norfolk, 159 F. Supp. 642 (E.D. Va. 1958).

29. Turner v. Randolph, Civil Action 3525 (W.D. Tenn.), Memorandum Brief on Behalf of the Defendants, n.d., 7.

30. Turner v. Randolph, 195 F. Supp. 677, 679, 680 (W.D. Tenn. 1961).

31. Turner, Except by Grace, 70–71.

32. See Turner v. City of Memphis, 199 F. Supp. 585 (W.D. Tenn. 1961).

33. Turner v. City of Memphis, 369 U.S. 350, 353 (1962) (citing Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority, 365 U.S. 715 (1961).

34. Turner, Except by Grace, 122–23.

35. See “Time for Level Heads to Take Over,” Greenville News, July 23, 1960.

36. Calverta Elnora Davis, “A Survey of Public Library Service Offered to Negroes in Greenville County, South Carolina” (Master’s thesis, Clark Atlanta University, 1958), 53.

37. Quoted in Eugene Griffin, “The South Has Its Own Version of U.S. History,” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 11, 1947.

38. “Group of Young Negroes Enters Greenville Library,” Greenville News, March 2, 1960; “Close Library after 20 S.C. Pupils Use It,” Chicago Defender, March 12, 1960; “7 Arrested in Greenville,” New York Times, March 17, 1960.

39. “7 Negroes Leave Library Quietly When Greenville Police Show Up,” Charleston News and Courier, July 17, 1960. See also “Sitdown in a Library,” New York Times, July 17, 1960.

40. Leslie Timms, “8 Negros Sit-In at Library Here,” Greenville News, July 17, 1960. See also “8 Arrested in Sit-In at Greenville,” Columbia (S.C.) State, July 17, 1960.

41. Marshall Frady, Jesse: The Life and Pilgrimage of Jesse Jackson (New York: Random House, 1996), 130–35. Quotations taken from Frady’s interviews with Jackson.

42. “Time for Level Heads to Take Over,” Greenville News, July 23, 1960; Frady, Jesse, 130–35. See also columns in Greenville News that summer reporting the incidents. Joan Mattison Daniel quotation in Rodney L. Hurst Sr., Unless WE Tell It . . . It Never Gets Told! (Jacksonville, Fla.: KiJas Press, 2015), 172.

43. “White Youth Leads Negroes in Protest,” New York Times, July 19, 1960; “Spectators Rough Up Leader of Sitdown,” Washington Post–Times Herald, July 19, 1960; “White Man Hurt in S. Carolina Sit-In Attempt,” Philadelphia Tribune, July 19, 1960.

44. Gil Rowland, “Federal Litigation in Library Case Promised,” Greenville News, July 21, 1960. See also “Atlantan Leads Demonstration in Greenville,” Atlanta Daily World, July 19, 1960; “NAACP Pledges Litigation Soon,” Columbia State, July 21, 1960.

45. “Greenville Has Mixed Street Fight,” Columbia State, July 22, 1960; “Mixed Fight Breaks Out at Greenville,” Columbia State, July 26, 1960.

46. “Races Clash in Greenville,” Greenville News, July 26, 1960; “NAACP Leader for Race Group,” Greenville News, July 27, 1960; “Curfew Imposed in Race Clashes,” New York Times, July 27, 1960.

47. “Greenville Library Segregation Suit Filed,” Columbia State, July 29, 1960; “Integration in Local Library Is Sought,” Greenville News, July 29, 1960.

48. “Chain Stores Desegregate in 69 Dixie Communities,” Columbia State, August 11, 1960; “The Curfew Is Lifted,” Greenville News, August 25, 1960. See also Gavin Wright, Old South, New South: Revolutions in the Southern Economy since the Civil War (New York: Basic Books, 1986), 84.

49. “Dismissal of Library Mixing Suit Is Asked,” Greenville News, August 27, 1960; “White and Negro Libraries Closed,” Greenville News, September 3, 1960; “City Library Closes at Greenville,” News and Courier, September 3, 1960; “Greenville Library Closes in Face of Mixing Suit,” Columbia State, September 3, 1960; “Library Integration Suit Voided,” Columbia State, September 14, 1960.

50. “Mayor to Hold Meeting on Status of Library,” Greenville News, September 17, 1960; “Inadequacies at Libraries Cited,” Greenville News, September 18, 1960.

51. “Library Is Open for ‘Any Citizen,’” and “Library Needs Help, Not Criticism, Greenville News, September 19, 1960. See also “Library Opens at Greenville as Integrated,” Columbia State, September 20, 1960.

52. J. Hunter Stokes, “City Library Reopens on Integrated Basis,” Greenville News, September 20, 1960. See also “Greenville Library Admits Negroes,” News and Courier, September 20, 1960.

53. Charles E. Stowe, Reply to Editorial, Wilson Library Bulletin 35 (November 1960): 210.

54. “Sex and Library,” Richmond Afro American, October 1, 1960.

4. PETERSBURG AND DANVILLE, VIRGINIA

1. Susan McBee, “Negro Relates Objectives of Sitdown,” Washington Post–Times Herald, June 12, 1960. See also “Petersburg Students in Library Protest,” Richmond Afro-American, February 28, 1960; “Council to Consider Future of the Library,” Petersburg Progress-Index, March 1, 1960; and Robert Gordon, “Integrated, Library May Revert to Estate,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, March 1, 1960.

2. Arsenault, Freedom Riders, 115. See Douglas Southall Freeman, Robert E. Lee: A Biography (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1934).

3. See John Lewis, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), 135–36. See also Jimmy Ezzell, “Negroes Here Protest Segregation at Library,” Petersburg Progress-Index, February 28, 1960; letter of Mrs. Robert W. Claiborne (McKenney’s daughter) in “Library Desegregation Asked by Kin of Donor,” Washington Post–Times Herald, April 5, 1960. Wyatt T. Walker later became the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s “chief logistician and strategist” and a major player in the desegregation of Birmingham’s public library in 1963. See also Powledge, Free at Last, 108.

4. Jimmy Ezzell, “Negroes Here Protest Segregation at Library,” Petersburg Progress-Index, February 28, 1960; “From the Right Way to the Wrong,” Petersburg Progress-Index, February 29, 1960. See also “Petersburg Students in Library Protest,” Richmond Afro-American, February 28, 1960; “NAACP Branch Leaders Stand In for Pickets,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, February 28, 1960; and Robert Gordon, “If Integrated, Library May Revert to Estate,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, March 1, 1960.

5. Robert Gordon, “Segregation to Continue at Library,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, March 2, 1960; Mary Cherry Allen, “Library to Be Reopened on Segregated Basis” and “Law and Order Will Be Served,” Petersburg Progress-Index, March 2, 1960; “No Demonstrations as Library Reopens,” Petersburg Progress-Index, March 3, 1960; “No More Incidents Reported at Library,” Petersburg Progress-Index, March 4, 1960; and Ernest Shaw, “Student’s Say Petersburg, Va. Is ‘Police State,’” Baltimore Afro-American, March 12, 1960.

6. Mary Cherry Allen, “Trials Set Monday in Trespass Case,” Petersburg Progress-Index, March 8, 1960. See also Robert Gordon, “11 Negroes Are Arrested at Petersburg Library,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, March 8, 1960; “11 Arrested in Library,” Richmond Afro- American, March 12, 1960.

7. Mary Cherry Allen, “5 Arrested in Trespass Case Freed on Bond,” Petersburg Progress-Index, March 9, 1960; Robert Gordon, “Negro Group Scores Petersburg Arrests,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, March 9, 1960; Ruth Jenkins, “2,000 Sing, Pray at Library Trial,” Richmond Afro-American, March 19, 1960.

8. Robert Gordon, “Petersburg Library Case Injunction to Be Asked,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, March 10, 1960; Thacher Lascelle, “2 Negro Ministers Draw Fines, Terms,” Petersburg Progress-Index, March 14, 1960.

9. Civil Action No. 3072, Plaintiffs Rev. Wyatt T. Walker, Rev. R. G. Williams et al. v. Petersburg Public Library et al., in Civil Action No. 3072, Records of the District Court for the Eastern Division of Virginia, Richmond Division, RG 21, box 19, NARS Philadelphia. See also Lascelle, “2 Negro Ministers Draw Fines”; “Negroes Given Fines, Terms,” Los Angeles Times, March 15, 1960.

10. “Library to Stay Open Pending Injunction Petition Outcome,” Petersburg Progress-Index, March 15, 1960. See also “Virginia’s Library Folly,” Richmond Afro-American, March 15, 1960; “13 Negroes File U.S. Suit in Library Case,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, March 15, 1960.

11. Mary Cherry Allen, “New Negro Group Pledges Wave of Counter Sitdowns,” Petersburg Progress-Index, March 17, 1960; “Segregation Protests Produce More Arrests,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, March 20, 1960.

12. Elsie Carper, “White Leaders Unruffled by Petersburg Sitdowns,” Washington Post–Times Herald, April 4, 1960.

13. “Klan Note Is Hurled at Window,” Richmond Afro-American, March 26, 1960. See also “Negroes Open Major Fight against Segregation,” Washington Post–Times Herald, April 14, 1960.

14. “Library Desegregation Asked by Kin of Donor,” Washington Post–Times Herald, April 5, 1960; “Dismissal of Suit Filed by Negroes Asked,” Danville Bee, April 5, 1960. Claiborne quoted in “Parents Would Want Library J-C Halted,” Richmond Afro-American, April 9, 1960; “Daughter of Library Donor Wants Facility Integrated,” Atlanta Daily World, April 17, 1960; Ernest Shaw, “Inside—Petersburg, Va.,” Baltimore Afro-American, May 21, 1960.

15. “Negroes Open Major Fight against Segregation”; Chester M. Hampton, “’Lid Is Off’ in Petersburg as Sitdowns Imperil All Jim Crow,” Baltimore Afro-American, April 23, 1960. “Anti-Trespass Law Ruled Constitutional,” Washington Post–Times Herald, April 16, 1960. See also O. L. Edwards, letter to the editor, Petersburg Progress-Index, May 22, 1960.

16. “Closing of Library Here Held Possible,” Petersburg Progress-Index, May 21, 1960; “Library Racial Suit Being Studied by Judge,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, May 21, 1960; “Petersburg Library Suit in U.S. Court,” Baltimore Afro-American, May 28, 1960; “Court Pictures Seized,” New York Times, May 21, 1960.

17. Thacher Lascelle, “Integration of Library Here Is Backed,” Petersburg Progress-Index, June 19, 1960.

18. “Negro Student’s Appeal Upheld at Petersburg,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, June 17, 1960; “Council Says Decision on Library Up to Court,” Petersburg Progress-Index, June 22, 1960; “While the Lecturing Goes On,” Petersburg Progress-Index, June 23, 1960.

19. “Library Closes after Negroes Ask for Service in White Section,” Petersburg Progress-Index, July 7, 1960; “Harassment for Its Own Sake?” Petersburg Progress-Index, July 8, 1960; “Librarian Is Named, Starts Next Month,” Petersburg Progress-Index, July 9, 1960; “Public Library Closing Here Is Indefinite,” Petersburg Progress-Index, July 12, 1960; “Library at Petersburg Is Closed Indefinitely,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, July 7, 1960. See also “Town Closes Library to Keep Negroes Out,” Washington Post–Times Herald, July 8, 1960.

20. “Ten Negroes Freed in City Library Case,” Washington Post–Times Herald, July 23, 1960; “300 Negroes Demonstrate for 11 Jailed in Petersburg,” Washington Post–Times Herald, August 1, 1960. See also “Petersburg Library Sit-Down Charges Are Dropped,” Norfolk New Journal and Guide, July 30, 1960.

21. “Ruling on Library Declined by Judge,” Petersburg Progress-Index, October 7, 1960; “Court Declines Library Ruling,” Washington Post–Times Herald, October 8, 1960.

22. “Public Library to Open Doors Here Tomorrow,” Petersburg Progress-Index, November 6, 1960; “Library to Reopen,” New York Times, November 6, 1960; Ernest Shaw, “Petersburg, Va. Council Integrates Public Library,” Richmond Afro-American, November 12, 1960; “Petersburg Opens Library on Integrated Basis,” Library Journal 85, December 15, 1960, 4440.

23. Arsenault, Freedom Riders, 115.

24. Interview with Robert A. Williams, “Danville, Virginia, 1945–1975,” Mapping Local Knowledge online exhibit, www.vcdh.virginia.edu/cslk/danville; “Negroes Given Fines, Terms,” Los Angeles Times, March 15, 1960.

25. Evans D. Hopkins, Life after Life: A Story of Rage and Redemption (New York: Free Press, 2005), 12.

26. See “Summer 1963: Danville’s Racial Unrest,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, September 16, 1963. See also “First Library Opens in Danville Soon,” Atlanta Daily World, January 13, 1950; “Danville, Va.,” Baltimore Afro-American, January 30, 1954. See also Hopkins, Life after Life, 12.

27. Williams Interview, “Danville, Virginia, 1945–1975.”

28. “Young Negroes Invade Library, Bringing about Early Closing,” Danville Bee, April 2, 1960; “Council Limits Use of Main Library and Parks to Head Off Further Negro Demonstrations,” Danville Bee, April 3, 1960; “An Invasion of Community Quiet,” Danville Bee, April 3, 1960.

29. Williams Interview, “Danville, Virginia, 1945–1975.” See also “Library Callers Rarely Use Own Facilities,” Danville Bee, April 6, 1960; “Negroes Seek Court Order on Library,” Danville Bee, April 11, 1960; “Burning Crosses Does No Good,” Danville Bee, April 11, 1960.

30. “Committee to Be Named on Library,” Danville Bee, April 12, 1960

31. “31 Petition to Keep Open City Library,” Danville Bee, April 20, 1960; “Library Petition Signed by 300,” Danville Bee, April 26, 1960.

32. “Defendants in Library Suit File Reply in Federal Court,” Danville Bee, May 4, 1960.

33. “Judge Says Library Cannot Be Closed to Negroes Solely Because of Race,” Danville Bee, May 6, 1960; “Library Suit Topic before Rotary Club,” Danville Bee, May 31, 1960.

34. “Count-Down on the Library,” Danville Bee, May 10, 1960.

35. “Library Referendum Set June 14, Same Day of Council Election,” Danville Bee, May 14, 1962; “Libraries, Industry, Education, Taxes Discussed during Forum,” Danville Bee, May 28, 1960; “Library Suit Topic before Rotary Club,” Danville Bee, May 31, 1960.

36. “Danville Ordered to Let Negroes in City Library,” Washington Post–Times Herald, May 7, 1960; “Danville Closes Public Libraries,” Washington Post–Times Herald, May 20, 1960; “Council Faces Library Decisions after City Loses Round in Court,” Danville Bee, May 7, 1960; “Two Moves to Foil Library Integration,” Danville Bee, May 17, 1960; “Library Staff Not Affected by Closing,” Danville Bee, May 19, 1960; “Sign Placed on Library on Weekend,” Danville Bee, May 23, 1960.

37. “Danville Plans Private Library after Closing of Public Libraries,” Library Journal 85, September 1, 1960, 2902; “Library Group Gets Charter, Details Plans,” Danville Bee, June 1, 1960.

38. “New Danville Library Will Be ‘Private,’” Norfolk New Journal and Guide, June 4, 1960; “Virginians Plan Private Library,” New York Times, June 19, 1960.

39. Gerald Tetley, “A Library Closes in Danville,” Wilson Library Bulletin 35 (September 1960): 52–54.

40. “Closing Libraries Silly, Says Author,” Richmond Afro-American, June 4, 1960.

41. “Keep the Libraries Open!” Richmond Times-Dispatch, June 13, 1960.

42. “Library Group Mails Appeal,” Danville Bee, June 8, 1960; “Library Debate Reaches Climax; Letter Draws Replies from Private Group,” Danville Bee, June 13, 1960.

43. “Election Activity Erupts,” Danville Bee, June 14, 1960.

44. “Danville Votes to Close Library,” Washington Post–Times Herald, June 15, 1960.

45. “Council Backs Up Library Vote; Facilities Will Remain Closed,” Danville Bee, June 15, 1960; “Vox Populi,” Danville Bee, June 15, 1960.

46. “Bid Renewed to Re-Open City Library,” Danville Bee, June 21, 1960; “Site Is Leased for Library: Officers Named,” Danville Bee, June 25, 1960; “Group Plans to Try Again on Library,” Danville Bee, June 25, 1960.

47. Tetley, “Library Closes in Danville,” 54.

48. “The Danville Story, Open Again, but Not an Open Library,” Library Journal 85, November 1, 1960, 3942.

49. Tetley, “Library Closes in Danville,” 52.

50. Harry Golden, Only in America (Cleveland, Ohio: World Publishing, 1958), 122.

51. “Klansman Assails ‘Judas’ Preachers,” New York Times, September 5, 1960.

52. “Danville Story, Open Again, but Not an Open Library,” 3942–43. See also “City’s Libraries Re-Open Today after 5–4 Vote by City Council,” Danville Bee, September 13, 1960.

53. “Letters: Danville and Russia,” Wilson Library Bulletin 36 (November 1961): 218.

54. “In the Face of Public Sentiment,” Danville Bee, September 13, 1960; “Library Catechism,” Danville Bee, September 15, 1960.

55. “Danville Library Injunction Ends,” Washington Post–Times Herald, September 15, 1960; Ruth Jenkins, “A Library Where You Can’t Read,” Baltimore Afro-American, October 8, 1960; “Judge Dalton Dismisses Library Suit,” Danville Bee, September 15, 1960.

56. “Danville Reopens Public Library under Stiff Rules for Borrowing,” New York Times, September 18, 1960.

57. Hopkins, Life after Life, 14–15.

58. “Danville Story, Open Again, but Not an Open Library,” 3942–43.

59. “Library Sets Up Formal Sit-Down,” Washington Post–Times Herald, November 30, 1960; “Virginia Library Shift,” New York Times, December 2, 1960; “The Danville, Virginia, Public Library,” Wilson Library Bulletin 36 (June 1962): 798.

5. Alabama

1. Much of chapter 5 relies on information in Graham, Right to Read. For a more comprehensive account of civil rights activities in the state of Alabama, see Frye Gaillard, Cradle of Freedom: Alabama and the Movement That Changed the World (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004).

2. These events are described in greater length in Graham, Right to Read, 71–75. See also “Alabama Library Serves Negroes,” Wilson Library Bulletin 36 (March 1962): 504, 506.

3. Summarized in Graham, Right to Read, 62–66.

4. Foster Hailey, “Negroes Uniting in Birmingham,” New York Times, April 11, 1963.

5. Hailey, “Negroes Uniting in Birmingham”; “More Racial Moves,” Birmingham News, April 11, 1963.

6. These events described in greater length in Graham, Right to Read, 82–91. See also “Nine Years After: How Desegregation Stands in Dixie,” Chicago Defender, May 18, 1963.

7. Graham, Right to Read, 75–76.

8. Arsenault, Freedom Riders, 211–21.

9. Cobb v. Montgomery Library Board, Civil Action 1807-N (M.D. Ala.1962), Deposition of Robert L. Cobb, June 15, 1962. See also Graham, Right to Read, 76.

10. “Negroes Stage Library Test but Leave without Incident,” Montgomery Advertiser, March 16, 1962. See also Bessie Rivers Grayson, “The History of Public Library Service for Negroes in Montgomery, Alabama” (Master’s thesis, Clark Atlanta University, 1965); “City on ‘Bottom’ in Library Funds,” Alabama Journal, April 12, 1962.

11. “Charles Conley (1921–2010),” NYU Law Magazine online, http://blogs.law.nyu.edu/magazine/2011/charles-conley-1921–2010/.

12. Quoted in Graham, Right to Read, 77.

13. “Suit Demands Library End Segregation,” Montgomery Advertiser, April 28, 1962. See also Dan T. Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000), 105. Because he was a minor, Robert Cobb’s father had to serve as plaintiff on behalf of his son. Cobb v. Montgomery Library Board, 207 F. Supp. 880 (M.D. Ala. 1962).

14. “Frank M. Johnson Jr., Judge Whose Rulings Helped Desegregate the South, Dies at 80,” New York Times, July 24, 1999.

15. “Frank M. Johnson Jr.”

16. Cobb, 207 F. Supp. at 883.

17. Museum News, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, April–May 1962 (emphasis added).

18. Cobb, 207 F. Supp. at 881–82.

19. Id. at 882, citing Giles v. Library Advisory Committee of the City of Danville, Civil Action No. 452, W.D. Va., September 1960. See also “Judge Rules Integration of Library,” Montgomery Advertiser, August 8, 1962.

20. “‘Vertical Integration’ Installed at Montgomery Public Library,” Library Journal 87, September 1, 1962, 2856.

21. “Birmingham Will Have Stand-Up Integration,” Norfolk New Journal and Guide, August 11, 1962. (The article discusses Montgomery but erroneously names Birmingham in its title.)

22. “Library ‘Stand Up’ Follows Court Order,” Baltimore Afro-American, August 18, 1962.

23. “New Jim Crow Law May Wipe Out ‘Slouching’ in Alabama Libraries,” Philadelphia Tribune, August 25, 1962; “The World Today,” Pittsburgh Courier, August 25, 1962; “Library Patrons Find ‘Standing Room Only,’” Montgomery Advertiser, August 10, 1962; “Library Still Unvisited by Negroes,” Montgomery Advertiser, August 11, 1962; “Negro Youth Gets Library Card, Checks Out One Book,” Montgomery Advertiser, August 12, 1962. See also Graham, Right to Read, 78–79.

24. See the following letters to the editor in the Montgomery Advertiser: Helen M. Chance, August 18, 1962; Mrs. E. M., August 19, 1962; Harold Anderson, August 13, 1962; Mrs. John Moffiet, August 14, 1962; John T. Parker, August 19, 1962; J. Mills Thornton III, August 19, 1962; Stephen Saltzman, August 19, 1962; Fred D. Terry, August 21, 1962; Marion Marsh, August 2, 1962; Nell Jordan, August 16, 1962; Mrs. J. M. Parker, August 16, 1962; J. C. Kendrick, August 17, 1962; Richard Harris, August 17, 1962; Mrs. D. G. Hallmark, August 22, 1962; Bill Rogers, August 22, 1962; Jesse Hodges, August 23, 1962.

25. “Take the Library,” Montgomery Advertiser, August 21, 1962.

26. Graham, Right to Read, 79, 81; “Negroes Served at Library under Careful Police Watch,” Montgomery Advertiser, August 14, 1962.

27. Graham, Right to Read, 79–80; “Only Few Negroes Seen Using Branch Library on Cleveland,” Montgomery Advertiser, August 14, 1962.

28. See Arsenault, Freedom Riders, 140–49.

29. These events described in Graham, Right to Read, 91–98.

30. Summarized from Graham, Right to Read, 112–20.

6. GEORGIA

1. For a comprehensive account of the history of civil rights activities in Georgia, see Stephen G. N. Tuck, Beyond Atlanta: The Struggle for Racial Equality in Georgia, 1940–1980 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2003).

2. “Mayor Says Library Open to All Races,” Savannah Morning News, July 21, 1961.

3. Kevin Merida and Michael A. Fletcher, Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 1.

4. Arsenault, Freedom Riders, 477.

5. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Norton, 1903), 82, 85.

6. Bernice Johnson Reagon, “Since I Laid My Burden Down,” in Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC, ed. Faith S. Holsart et al. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010), 147–48. Among SNCC leaders several “grew up” in Atlanta’s black libraries. Some—including Julian Bond, well-known civil rights activist who later became a long-serving Georgia legislator, NAACP chairman, and first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center—used the branches for meetings and “as a place where they could rest in between activities,” Annie McPheeters later recalled. See McPheeters Transcript, 27–28, 34–35.

7. Norma L. Anderson and William G. Anderson, D.O., Autobiographies of a Black Couple of the Greatest Generation (Lansing, Mich.: Norma L. and William G. Anderson, 2004), 177–78, 179.

8. See Arsenault, Freedom Riders, 468–75.

9. “Ten Suspended Albany Students Try Libraries,” Atlanta Daily World, January 1, 1962; “Integrating Carnegie Library,” Freedom on Film website, University of Georgia, www.uga.edu/civilrights/cities/albany/library.htm.

10. “Young Negroes Again Invade Albany Library,” Albany Herald, January 11, 1962; Jimmy Robinson, “Hearing Completed on Race Suits Here,” Albany Herald, September 26, 1962.

11. “Library Arrests—A ‘Sad Picture,’” Baltimore Afro-American, August 11, 1962.

12. Martin Luther King Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Warner Books, 1998), 159.

13. “Negroes Pushing Tests in Georgia: Albany Masses Police Units—F.B.I. Reinforced,” New York Times, July 18, 1962.

14. “Negroes Pushing Tests in Georgia.”

15. “Library Arrests—‘A Sad Picture.’”

16. Jim Houston, “Judge Elliott Reflects on Career,” Columbus (Ga.) Ledger-Enquirer, July 4, 2006.

17. Judge Elliott remained on the bench for thirty-eight years and is perhaps best remembered as the judge who overturned the conviction of army lieutenant William Calley in the 1968 My Lai massacre of civilians in Vietnam.

18. Hedrick Smith, “Leader Disavows Georgia Violence,” New York Times, August 2, 1961.

19. Kelley v. Page, Civil Action No. 727 (U.S. Dist. Ct., M.D. Ga., Albany Division), Hearing, August 7, 1962.

20. Frank Hunt, “‘We’ll Keep on Marching until Victory Is Ours,’” Baltimore Afro-American, August 18, 1962.

21. Hedrick Smith, “Albany, Ga., Closes Parks and Libraries to Balk Integration,” New York Times, August 12, 1962.

22. Hunt, “‘We’ll Keep on Marching until Victory Is Ours.’”

23. Powledge, Free at Last, 406.

24. Anderson v. City of Albany, 321 F.2d 649 (5th Cir. 1963).

25. Anderson v. City of Albany, 321 F. 2d 649.

26. Jackie Robinson, “Home Plate: The Right to Hate,” New York Amsterdam News, August 25, 1962; Hunt, “‘We’ll Keep on Marching until Victory Is Ours.’”

27. “Library Involved in Incidents in Albany, Ga., Demonstrations,” Library Journal 87, September 1, 1962, 2856; Anderson and Anderson, Autobiographies of a Black Couple, 220–21.

28. “Albany Trustees Chairman Protests CBS Documentary,” Library Journal 87, September 15, 1962, 3006; Everett T. Moore, “Still No Decision in Albany,” ALA Bulletin 57 (February 1963): 111–16.

29. “Judicial Filibuster,” Baltimore Afro-American, December 15, 1962; Jim Houston, “Judge Elliott Reflects on Career,” Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, July 4, 2006.

30. Moore, “Still No Decision in Albany,” 111–16.

31. “Albany Wipes Out Segregation Statutes in Maneuver to Block Court Action to Knock Down Laws,” Atlanta Daily World, March 8, 1963; “City Cancels Out Segregation Laws,” Albany Herald, March 7, 1963.

32. “Albany Desegregates ‘Chairless’ Library,” Atlanta Daily World, March 12, 1963; “Three ‘Mixing’ Preachers Slated for Albany Trials,” Albany Herald, March 12, 1963.

33. Martin Luther King Jr., “The Solid Wall Cracks,” New York Amsterdam News, April 13, 1963; Claude Sitton, “Negro ‘Victory’ Fades in Georgia,” New York Times, March 14, 1963; “Albany, Ga., Public Library Reopens on ‘Vertical Integration’ Basis,” Library Journal 88, April 15, 1963, 1638.

34. “Integration Comes—but Slyly,” Albany Herald, March 9, 1963.

35. Sitton, “Negro ‘Victory’ Fades in Georgia.”

36. “Appeal Filed in Albany Dismissal,” Atlanta Daily World, March 15, 1963.

37. See Peterson v. Greenville, 373 U.S. 244 (May 20, 1963); Shuttlesworth v. Birmingham, 373 U.S. 262 (May 20, 1963); Lombard v. Louisiana, 373 U.S. 267 (May 20, 1963). The Court had reached a similar decision the previous year in Turner v. Memphis, 369 U.S. 350 (1962).

38. Anderson v. City of Albany, 321 F.2d 649 (5th Cir. 1963).

39. Anderson v. City of Albany, 321 F.2d 649.

40. Anderson and Anderson, Autobiographies of a Black Couple, 179–80, 188, 191, 192, 193–94.

41. Powledge, Free at Last, 352, 418–19. See also Anderson and Anderson, Autobiographies of a Black Couple, 222.

42. “Negroes Use Library Here,” Columbus Ledger, July 6, 1963.

43. “Group Tries to Integrate Library Here,” Columbus Ledger, July 9, 1963; “Four Negroes Bound Over in ‘Read-In,’” Columbus Ledger, July 10, 1963; “Five Bound Over in Library Case,” Columbus Ledger, July 11, 1963. See also “Eleven Negroes Arrested in Georgia at Horizontally Integrated Library,” Library Journal 88 (August 1963): 2854.

44. “Negro Leaders Say Demonstrations Unnecessary,” Columbus Ledger, July 11, 1963; “19 Negroes Halt Read-In after Plea,” Columbus Ledger, July 12, 1963.

45. “39 State ‘Read-In’; No Arrests Made,” Columbus Ledger, July 14, 1963.

46. “2 Arrested at Library ‘Read-In’ Tiff,” Columbus Ledger, July 15, 1963; “Read-Ins Continue at Library Here,” Columbus Ledger, July 16, 1963; “Negro Fined in ‘Scuffle’ at Library,” Columbus Ledger, July 17, 1963.

47. “Community Can Continue to Be City of Peace and Orderliness,” Columbus Ledger, July 18, 1963.

48. “Muscogee County to Integrate Public Libraries,” Atlanta Daily World, August 22, 1963; “Negroes ‘Apply through Channels’ at Latest ‘Integrated’ Library,” Library Journal 88, October 15, 1963, 3566.

7. MISSISSIPPI

1. “Dawn of Freedom in Darkest Dixie? Plans for ‘Operation Mississippi’ Made during High-Level Meeting,” New Journal and Guide, April 22, 1961. See also Medgar Wiley Evers, The Autobiography of Medgar Evers: A Hero’s Life and Legacy Revealed through His Writings, Letters, and Speeches (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2005), 60–61. For a comprehensive account of civil rights activities in Mississippi, see John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995).

2. Quoted in Cook, “Freedom Libraries,” 264.

3. Wright, Sharing the Prize, 85.

4. Virginia Steele, “‘Freedom Libraries’ of the Mississippi Summer Project,” Southeastern Librarian 15 (Summer 1965): 77.

5. See Jeanne Broach, The Meridian Public Libraries: An Informal History, 1913–1974 (Meridian, Miss.: Meridian Public Library, 1974), 45; and Cook, “Freedom Libraries,” 210.

6. Gabriel San Román, “Joseph Jackson Jr. Made Civil Rights History as a Member of Mississippi’s Tougaloo Nine,” OC Weekly (Orange County, Calif.), June 25, 2015; “9 Seized at Sit-In at Jackson, Miss.,” New York Times, March 28, 1961. This article also reported that the only other anti-segregation demonstration in the state had occurred the previous year, when a group of black youths tried to swim at an all-white beach. They were chased off by whites armed with clubs, chains, and sticks.

7. Clark v. Thompson, Civil Action No. 3235 (S.D. Miss. 1962), Transcript of Evidence, Direct Examination of Miss Frances French, 72–73, 28.

8. Elise Chenier interview with Ethel Sawyer, “Neither Sin nor Civil Rights: Ethel Sawyer’s Study of a Lesbian Community,” Elise Chenier blog, elisechenier.com/2016/02/10/neither-sin-nor-civil-rights. Sawyer, herself a heterosexual, conducted a 1965 academic study of a black lesbian community.

9. Román, “Joseph Jackson, Jr.”

10. Quoted in “Library Segregation at Work,” America 195, April 15, 1961, 139.

11. Clark v. Thompson, Transcript of Evidence, Direct Examination of Miss Frances French, 70–73, and Direct Examination of Ethel Sawyer, 28.

12. Clark v. Thompson, Transcript of Evidence, Direct Examination of Ethel Sawyer; “’Read-In’ Demonstration at Jackson (Miss.) Public Library,” Library Journal 85, May 1, 1961, 1750, 1751.

13. Román, “Joseph Jackson, Jr.”

14. “Dogs, Clubs Used on Negroes; Ask Whites to Leave,” Atlanta Daily World, March 30, 1961; Clark v. Thompson, Transcript of Evidence, Plaintiff’s Exhibit no. 3, Deposition of W. R. Wren, 294; “‘Concerned Department of Justice Asks: Were Savage Dogs Really Necessary?” Baltimore Afro-American, April 8, 1961.

15. Evers, Autobiography of Medgar Evers, 228–29.

16. “Call Off Dogs—Slavery Is Over,” Philadelphia Tribune, April 4, 1961; “SNCC Sends Miss. Protest on Beatings,” Pittsburgh Courier, April 8, 1961; “Arrests Unjustified; Convictions Illegal,” Baltimore Afro-American, April 8, 1961; “‘Concerned’ Department of Justice Asks: Were Savage Dogs Really Necessary,” Baltimore Afro-American, April 18, 1961; “Dawn of Freedom in Darkest Dixie? Plans for ‘Operation Mississippi’ Made during High-Level Meeting,” New Journal and Guide, May 22, 1961.

17. Everett T. Moore, “The ‘Study-In’ as Reported in Jackson, Mississippi,” ALA Bulletin 55 (June 1961): 497–99, quoting the Clarion-Ledger article.

18. See David M. Oshinsky, “Worse than Slavery”: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice (New York: Free Press, 1996).

19. For a description of the 1961 Freedom Rider “visits” to Jackson, see Arsenault, Freedom Riders, 269–98. Martin Luther King quotation on 371.

20. “Jack Young,” Mississippi Civil Rights Project website, http://mscivilrightsproject.org/hinds/person-hinds/jack-young/.

21. State Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 125 (1956); Mississippi Code sections 4065.3, 2056 (7) (emphasis added).

22. Clark v. Thompson, Transcript of Evidence, Direct Examination of Leon F. Hendrick, 128–32.

23. Clark v. Thompson, Transcript of Evidence, Plaintiff’s Exhibit 2, Deposition of Mayor Allen C. Thompson, 160–62 (emphasis added).

24. Clark v. Thompson, Transcript of Evidence, Plaintiff’s Exhibit 3, Deposition of Rev. L. A. Clark Sr.; Clark v. Thompson, Transcript of Evidence, Plaintiff’s Exhibit 3, Deposition of Mary Cox; Clark v. Thompson, Transcript of Evidence, Plaintiff’s Exhibit 3, Deposition of W. R. Wren. A Mississippi Sovereignty Commission investigator later identified Cox as a “homosexual,” then apparently thought he needed to explain the term to superiors as a “lesbian, or one that prefers to have sex relations with other women instead of men.” See a report on Mary Cox to the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission at www.mdah.ms.gov/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/result.php?image=images/png/cd03/019665.png&otherstuff=2|55|7|47|1|1|1|19273|.

25. Clark v. Thompson, Transcript of Evidence, Testimony of W. D. Rayfield; Clark v. Thompson, Transcript of Evidence, Defendant’s Exhibit 3, Affidavit of A. L. Grey, executive secretary of the Mississippi State Board of Health.

26. Clark v. Thompson, 204 F. Supp. 30 (S.D. Miss.), April 19, 1962.

27. Clark v. Thompson, 206 F. Supp. 539, 541 (S.D. Miss. 1962), affd, 313 F.2d 637 (5th Cir. 1963).

28. Clark v. Thompson, 206 F. Supp. 539, 541.

29. Clark v. Thompson, 206 F. Supp. 543 (S.D. Miss. 1962), affd, 313 F.2d 637 (5th Cir. 1963).

30. See Cook, “Freedom Libraries”; story of the Schwerners on 98–101. See also Sandra E. Adickes, “The Legacy of the Mississippi Freedom Schools,” Radical Teacher 44 (Winter 1993): 177, quoted in Cook, “Freedom Libraries,” 346.

31. Donald G Davis Jr. and Cheryl Knott Malone, “Reading for Liberation: The Role of Libraries in the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project,” in Tucker, Untold Stories, 110–25, quotation on 121.

32. Essay by Sandra Adickes, Civil Rights Movement Veterans website, www.crmvet.org/vet/adickes.htm.

33. Interview with Sandra Adickes, October 26, 2011, New Brunswick, N.J.

34. All quotations in Cook, “Freedom Libraries,” 377. Rochell was not alone. Evidence suggests, Cook argues, that Walter Wicker, Jackson Public Library director from 1955 to 1957, resigned “because he refused to allow the Citizens’ Council to dictate who could use the library and what books he could put in the collection” (377). For an analysis of the dilemma in which Currier found herself, see Karen Cook, “Struggles Within: Lura G. Currier, the Mississippi Library Commission and Library Services to African Americans,” Information & Culture 48, no. 1 (2013): 134–56.

35. “Woman Recalls Library Card Denial,” Hattiesburg American, November 26, 2006.

36. Quoted in Cook, “Freedom Libraries,” 263.

37. “Woman Recalls Library Card Denial”. See also Cook, “Freedom Libraries,” 260–63.

38. “Library Closed after Integration Attempt,” Hattiesburg American, August 14, 1964.

39. Adickes went on to successfully challenge that conviction, and when she returned to New York, she filed a Civil Rights action against the Kress store, ultimately winning a settlement. She donated her portion to the Southern Conference Education Fund. See Adickes essay, Civil Rights Movement Veterans website. See also Adickes v. S. H. Kress and Company, 39 U.S. 144 (1970), Brief for the Petitioner (July 28, 1969).

40. Achtenberg v. Mississippi, 393 F.2d 468 (5th Cir. 1968), at 470.

41. Affidavit of William D. Jones, Achtenberg v. Mississippi, 393 F.2d 468 (5th Cir. 1968), at 471.

42. Jones Affidavit, Achtenberg v. Mississippi, at 471–72.

43. “Library Shut Again,” Jackson Clarion Ledger, August 18, 1964. See also “Public Library Is Closed Again,” Hattiesburg American, August 17, 1964.

44. “One Tough Case,” Berkeley Law blog, https://www.law.berkeley.edu/article/one-tough-case/.

45. “Judge William Harold Cox,” Famous Trials blog, University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law, www.famous-trials.com/mississippi-burningtrial/145-keyfiguresmissi/1965-cox.

46. “William Harold Cox, Outspoken Judge,” New York Times, February 27, 1988.

47. “Elbert Parr Tuttle, 1897–1996,” International Civil Rights Walk of Fame, National Park Service website, www.nps.gov/features/malu/feat0002/wof/Elbert_Tuttle.htm. For an excellent biography of Judge Tuttle, see Anne Emanuel, Elbert Parr Tuttle: Chief Jurist of the Civil Rights Revolution (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011).

48. Nina Totenberg, “Elbert Tuttle, Quiet Civil Rights Revolutionary,” www.npr.org/2011/10/05/140948689/elbert-tuttle-quiet-civil-rights-revolutionary.

49. “Elbert Parr Tuttle, 1897–1996”; Totenberg, “Elbert Tuttle”; and Emanuel, Elbert Parr Tuttle, xv–xvi.

50. Achtenberg v. Mississippi, 393 F.2d 468, 474 (5th Cir. 1968).

51. “Hattiesburg Public Library Reopened on Integrated (but Not Really) Basis,” Library Journal 89, November 15, 1964, 4490.

52. “Will Mississippi Library Integrate?” Baltimore Afro-American, October 3, 1964.

53. Cook, “Freedom Libraries,” 307–8.

54. Quotations in Cook, “Freedom Libraries,” 367. See also Miriam Braverman, “Mississippi Summer,” Library Journal 90, November 15, 1965, 5046.

55. Braverman, “Mississippi Summer,” 5046.

56. Vicksburg Project Newsletter, February 17, 1965, folder 1, box 3, Bryan Dunlap Papers, 1964–66, Wisconsin Historical Society (WHS) Archives, Madison; “Negroes at Library,” Vicksburg Citizens’ Appeal, March 15, 1965; Braverman, “Mississippi Summer,” 5047.

57. Quoted in Cook, “Freedom Libraries,” 398–99.

8. BLACK YOUTH IN RURAL LOUISIANA

1. Benjamin Muse, The American Negro Revolution (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968), 97.

2. For a deeper analysis of the civil rights era in Louisiana history, see Adam Fairclough, Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915–1972 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999). See also Adam Fairclough, “Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana,” Southern Changes 17, no. 1 (1995): 16.

3. “Weekly Field Report, August 19–24, 1963,” folder 18, box 1, Mss 516, CORE Papers, WHS.

4. See Field Report, Pointe Coupee Parish, January 1964, found in folder 12, box 1, Mss 516, “District CORE Records, Field Reports—Miscellaneous Parishes, 1964,” CORE Papers.

5. “CORE Meets Resistance Testing Civil Rights Bill,” New York Amsterdam News, August 1, 1964.

6. See “Negroes Charged after Attempts at Integration,” Monroe (La.) News-Star, July 10, 1964; and “Church Announcement,” July 12, 1964 (circular prepared by the Monroe CORE Chapter), box 3, Mss 119, Monroe Branch, La., CORE Papers.

7. Etta Faye Baker, “Affidavit,” July 11, 1964, Dorothy Higgins, “Affidavit,” July 12, 1964, both in box 3, Mss 119, Monroe Branch, La., CORE Papers.

8. Bonnie Ray Brass, “Affidavit,” copy found in box 3, Mss 119, Monroe Branch, La., CORE Papers.

9. Bennie Ray Brass, “Affidavit,” copy found in box 3, Mss 119, Monroe Branch, La., CORE Papers.

10. Brass, “Affidavit.”

11. Dorothy Higgins, “Affidavit,” copy found in box 3, Mss 119, Monroe Branch, La., CORE Papers.

12. Brass, “Affidavit.”

13. David Paul Kramer, “Affidavit,” July 19, 1964, box 3, Mss 119, Monroe Branch, La., CORE Papers.

14. Brass, “Affidavit.”

15. Form in box 3, Mss 119, Monroe Branch, La., CORE Papers.

16. Report dated July 20, 1964, and authored by Mike Lesser, CORE Task Force worker, in box 3, Mss 119, Monroe Branch, La., CORE Papers.

17. Joint Statement, Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Smith, July 22, 1964, document in box 3, Mss 119, Monroe Branch, La., CORE Papers. See also Gretha Castle (director of CORE’s North Louisiana Committee on Registration Education) to L. L. Mitchell (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights), December 9, 1964, box 1, Mss 119, Monroe Branch, La., CORE Papers.

18. Descriptions of these incidents in individual documents signed by protesters Robert Garner, George Padio, Donnell Wyatt, and Tommy Robinson, dated July 22, 1964, in box 3, Mss 119, CORE Papers. See also Michael Lesser’s description, same date.

19. See descriptions of these events in documents signed by testers dated July 22, 1964, in box 3, Mss. 119, CORE Papers. It was no surprise that police were at the West Monroe Branch because a CORE Task Force worker had not only contacted the FBI before testers approached the library, but he had also called the local police. It is likely CORE believed that giving advance notice to police would minimize the chances of violence. See undated notes, box 3, Mss 119, Monroe Branch, La., CORE Papers.

20. Lettie Bess’s description of these incidents in document she signed, dated July 22, 1964, box 3, Mss 119, Monroe Branch, La., CORE Papers. See also Michael Lesser’s description, same date.

21. Notes found in box 3, Mss 119, Monroe Branch, La., CORE Papers.

22. “Court Asked to End Ban at Libraries,” Monroe (La.) Morning World, July 29, 1964; “Negroes Ask for Federal Jurisdiction,” Monroe Morning World, August 4, 1964.

23. CORE complained about this practice—“as pernicious as it is out-of-date”—on January 6, 1965. See CORE Freedom News (CORE Monroe office newsletter), February 6, 1965, copy found in box 4, Mss. 119, Monroe Branch, La., CORE Papers.

24. “Carver-McDonald Branch Public Library,” Monroe Black History, Wikispaces.com, http://monroeblackhistory.wikispaces.com/Carver-McDonald+Branch+Public+Library.

25. Statement, Earlene Knox, July 22, 1964, CORE Testing Form, found in box 1, Mss 537, Jackson Parish Records, 1961–65, CORE Papers.

26. W. C. Flanagan and E. N Francis to C. E. Thompson, Frank Dunbaugh, and L. L. Mitchell, July 23, 1964, box 1, Mss 537, Jackson Parish Records 1961–65, CORE Papers.

27. Statement, Larry Robinson, age thirteen, July 27, 1964; Statement, Will Farmer Jr., August 3, 1964, both in box 1, Mss 537, Jackson Parish Records, 1961–65, CORE Papers. When asked by the New York Times, the sheriff said he had “some 25 to 30 Negroes in jail, but that’s not unusual after a weekend.” He declined to comment on whether any were library picketers. See “Jonesboro, La.,” New York Times, July 28, 1964.

28. Robinson Statement, July 27, 1964; Farmer Statement, August 3, 1964.

29. “5 Integrate Library at Jonesboro,” Louisiana Weekly (New Orleans), January 2, 1965. See also CORE Press Release, December 17, 1964, box 1, Mss 119, Monroe (La.) Office, CORE Papers.

30. Brief for Petitioners, Brown v. State of Louisiana, 383 U.S. 131 (1966).

31. See “Library Sit-In,” East Feliciana Watchman, April 24, 1964.

32. Report titled “Louisiana in Brief,” “New Orleans CORE Research Office, Memos and Reports, 1963, 1965,” folder 4 (p. 11), box 1, Mss 516, CORE Papers; “Negro Students Arrested in Attempt to Use Library in Louisiana,” Library Journal 89, April 15, 1964, 1702.

33. See Ellis Howard, Report, “Refused Public Library Service,” n.d.; Loria Davis, “Field Report—St. Helena’s Parish, March 1–Mar. 31, 1964”; Mimi Feingold, “Field Report—St. Helena, Apr. 14–30, 1964”; Report, “Negroes Again Refused Public Library Service,” March 13, 1964; Report, “St. Helena Youths Refused Public Library Service, March 16, 1964; all in folder 13, box 1, Mss 516, Louisiana, Sixth Congressional District Records, 1963–65, CORE Papers.

34. “Negro Students Arrested in Attempt to Use Library in Louisiana,” Library Journal 89, April 15, 1964, 1702.

35. “Field Report, West Feliciana Parish, Feb. 10–Feb. 29, 1964,” in folder 13, box 1, Mss 516, CORE Papers.

36. “Field Report, West Feliciana Parish, Feb. 10–Feb. 29, 1964.”

37. Neither the librarian nor the sheriff had ever seen African Americans in the library. Brief for Petitioner, Brown v. Louisiana, 383 U.S. 131 (1966).

38. Brown v. Louisiana, 383 U.S. 131, 135.

39. Actually, Brown handed the librarian a slip of paper that read, “Wandell Arna, the Story of the Negro, Bontems.” The librarian was apparently able to decipher the request. Brown v. Louisiana, Brief for the Respondent, 1965 WL 115711 (August 25, 1965).

40. La. Rev. Stat. sec. 14:103.1.

41. See Loria Davis, “Field Report—East Feliciana Parish, Mar. 1–Mar. 31, 1964,” folder 13, box 1, Mss 516, CORE Papers. See also “Six Arrested in Library ‘Sit-In’ Scheduled for Trial March 25,” East Feliciana Watchman, March 13, 1964.

42. Copy of cable in folder 14, box 1, Mss 85, CORE Papers.

43. “Branch Libraries in Louisiana Shut Down to ‘Improve’ Service,” Library Journal 89, June 15, 1964, 2566. See also East Feliciana Watchman, April 17 and 24, 1964.

44. “Lockouts and Arrests—Repeat Performance,” Wilson Library Bulletin 39 (September 1964): 22.

45. Oral Argument, Brown v. Louisiana (USSC 1966), www.oyez.cases/1960–1969/1965/1965_41.

46. See “At the Library,” East Feliciana Watchman, April 2, 1964; and “KKK Beats Newsman,” East Feliciana Watchman, April 24, 1964.

47. Obituaries, “Carl Rachlin, 82, a Lawyer for Civil Rights Demonstrators,” New York Times, March 3, 2000.

48. Robert Morris, “Southern Politics: Judge Robert Collins Speaks,” Southern Changes: The Journal of the Southern Regional Council 1 no. 7 (1979). Unfortunately, less than fifteen years later he also became the first judge in the federal judiciary’s two hundred–year history to be convicted of taking a bribe. He was sentenced to six years and ten months in prison and resigned his position under threat of impeachment. “Judge Is First Federal Jurist Convicted of Taking a Bribe,” Los Angeles Times, June 30, 1991; John McQuaid, “Collins Resigns Federal Judgeship; Resignation Letter Is Given to Clinton,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, August 7, 1993.

49. Brief for the Respondent, Brown v. Louisiana, 383 U.S. at 131.

50. Oral Argument, Brown v. Louisiana (USSC 1966), www.oyez.cases/1960–1969/1965/1965, 41.

51. Brown v. Louisiana, 393 U.S. 131, 142, 159.

52. Brown v. Louisiana, 383 U.S., 159–60.

53. Brown v. Louisiana, 383 U.S., 160–61, 165, 167–68 (J. Black, dissenting).

54. Brown v. Louisiana, 383 U.S. 131, 133, 139, 142, 143. Only two other justices joined Justice Fortas’s entire opinion. Justices William J. Brennan and Byron White concurred in the result—i.e., reversing the convictions—but neither thought it necessary to determine whether the protesters’ actions were constitutionally protected. It was enough to find that their actions did not violate the Louisiana statute.

55. “Editorial: Access and the Supreme Court,” Library Journal 91, April 1, 1966, 1788.

9. THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION

1. See William Henry Beer to Anne Wallace, February 6, 1899, New Orleans Public Library Archives; Anne Wallace to Henry J. Carr, March 7, 1899; William Coolidge Lane to Carr, March 30, 1899; Carr to Lane, March 30, 1899; Wallace to Carr, April 1, 1899; Carr to Wallace, April 4, 1899; and Lane to Carr, April 15, 1899, all in Henry J. Carr Mss, American Library Association Archives (hereafter cited as ALA Archives). See also Litwack, Trouble in Mind, 404–6. We have been unable to determine if Du Bois knew he was being considered for a lecture slot at the conference.

2. Stated in a letter to the editor, Columbia State, June 22, 1919.

3. “The Library: New Developments in Training for Librarianship,” Christian Science Monitor, February 3, 1926.

4. “Memorandum on Efforts to Establish Segregated Training School for Librarians,” August 25, 1925; Walter F. White (NAACP assistant secretary) to ALA president Charles F. D. Beldon, August 28, 1925; White to Frederick Keppel (Carnegie Corp. president), August 29, 1925, all in box C-204, NAACP Papers, Manuscripts Reading Room, Library of Congress. See also S. L. Smith, “The Passing of the Hampton Library School,” Journal of Negro Education 9 (January 1940): 51–58.

5. Barker, Libraries of the South, 50–57, quotation on 51.

6. Wallace Van Jackson, “Negro Segregation,” Library Journal 61 (June 1936): 467–68; editorial, New Republic 87, May 20, 1936, 30; Jesse Cunningham, letter to the editor, Library Journal 61 (May 1936): 515.

7. Cunningham, letter to the editor, 515.

8. E. J. Josey, “Race Issues in Library History,” in Encyclopedia of Library History, ed. Wayne A. Wiegand and Donald G. Davis (New York: Garland Publishing, 1994), 534.

9. “U.S. Libraries Demand Freedom of Choice of Books,” Christian Science Monitor, May 31, 1940.

10. See Intellectual Freedom Manual, 5th ed. (Chicago: American Library Association, 1996), 6–7.

11. See Carrie C. Robinson, “First by Circumstance,” in The Black Librarian in America, ed. E. J. Josey (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1970), 282; S. R. Harris, “Civil Rights and the Louisiana Library Association: Stumbling toward Integration,” Libraries & Culture 38 (Fall 2003): 322–50; and K. Barrett and B. A. Bishop, “Integration and the Alabama Library Association: Not So Black and White,” Libraries & Culture 33 (Spring 1998): 141–61.

12. Susan Lee Scott, “Integration of Public Library Facilities in the South: Attitudes and Actions of the Library Profession,” Southeastern Librarian 18 (Fall 1968): 162.

13. “No Segregation Here,” Library Journal 80, November 15, 1955, 2633–34. The council, founded in 1919, has for nearly one hundred years monitored and produced influential reports on racial conditions in the South and advocated for racial justice.

14. These letters are quoted in Archie McNeal, “Integrated Service in Southern Public Libraries,” Library Journal 86, June 1, 1961, 2045–46.

15. Excerpt from ALA Executive Board Minutes, March 27, 1960, box 1, ser. 69/2/6, ALA Archives.

16. “ALA Adopts Integration Statement,” Wilson Library Bulletin 35 (March 1961): 486.

17. John Wakeman, “Segregation and Censorship,” Wilson Library Bulletin 35 (September 1960): 63–64.

18. Eric Moon, “The Silent Subject,” Library Journal 85, December 15, 1960, 4436–37; Rice Estes, “Segregated Libraries,” Library Journal 85, December 15, 1960, 4418–21. See also Kenneth F. Kister, Eric Moon: The Life and Library Times (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 2002), 154–76.

19. W. R. Eshelman, Editorial, California Librarian 22 (January 1961): 23–24. See also William R. Eshelman, No Silence! A Library Life (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1997), 145–47.

20. “Readers’ Voices,” Library Journal 86, February 15, 1961, 730–33.

21. See “Readers’ Voices,” Library Journal 86, February 15, 1961, 733–35.

22. “Pratt Library Stoops to Jim Crow,” Baltimore Afro-American, May 19, 1934. Baker quotation in Braverman, Youth, Society, and the Public Library, 227.

23. Eshelman, No Silence, 147.

24. See, e.g., “Jerry” of the New Orleans Public Library to David Clift, March 11, 1963, regarding efforts to ban The Last Temptation of Christ, box 1, ser. 69/2/6, ALA Archives. Quotation from McNeal in Archie McNeal, “A New Statement and Its Significance,” ALA Bulletin 56 (July 1962): 623+.

25. Eric Moon, “A Survey of Segregation,” Library Journal 86 (March 1961): 1110.

26. Harold C. Gardiner, “National Library Week—for All?” America 105, April 15, 1961, 139+.

27. Everett T. Moore to McNeal, January 12, 1961, box 1, ser. 69/2/6, ALA Archives.

28. Grace Stevenson to Archie McNeal, March 28, 1961, box 1, ser. 69/2/6, ALA Archives; Kister, Eric Moon, 161.

29. “Segregation in Libraries: Negro Librarians Give Their Views,” Wilson Library Bulletin 35 (May 1961): 707–10. “When the dean of a library school is refused membership in her own state library association it is hard to believe that there can be any other reason than racial discrimination within the profession,” Eric Moon wrote. “Perhaps even before we can hope to be very effective in removing discriminatory practices from our libraries, we shall have to set our own internal house in order.” See Moon, “Internal Integration,” Library Journal 86 (June 1961): 2060.

30. Beatrice Rossell, “Have We Sufficient Vision?” ALA Bulletin 55 (June 1961): 477–78.

31. “ALA and the Segregation Issue,” ALA Bulletin 55 (June 1961): 485–67. See also “ALA Adopts Integration Statement,” Wilson Library Bulletin 35 (March 1961): 486–88.

32. Paul K. Swanson to American Library Association, June 21, 1961, box 2, ser. 69/2/6, ALA Archives.

33. Eric Moon, “On Editorials,” Library Journal 86 (August 1961): 2618–19.

34. “Legislation Urged against Segregated Libraries,” Wilson Library Bulletin 36 (November 1961): 202.

35. Eli M. Oboler, “Attitudes on Segregation: How ALA Compares with Other Professional Associations,” Library Journal 86, December 15, 1961, 4233–39.

36. Eric Moon, “Who’s Out of Step?” Library Journal 87, March 1, 1962, 936–37; John Wakeman, “Time to Act,” Wilson Library Bulletin 36 (April 1962): 677. All council quotations taken from “Integration and Censorship,” Library Journal 87, March 1, 1962, 904–7. See also “Segregation and ALA Membership,” Wilson Library Bulletin 36 (March 1962): 558–61.

37. “Segregation and ALA,” Wilson Library Bulletin 37 (September 1962): 12.

38. All quotations taken from “Questioning a Question—and Some of the Answers,” Library Journal 88 (July 1963): 2644–47.

39. “Library Bias Report Draws Angry Denials,” Chicago Tribune, July 16, 1963.

40. “Library Bias Report Draws Angry Denials.”

41. “Library Bias Report Draws Angry Denials.”

42. “The Access to Public Libraries Study,” ALA Bulletin 57 (September 1963): 745; “The Access Study: An Lj Forum,” Library Journal 88, December 15, 1963, 4685–4712; and Austin C. Wehrwein, “Integration of South’s Libraries Outpaces That of Its Schools,” New York Times, July 16, 1963. For evidence of discrimination in urban housing practices in the North in the 1950s that gave rise to International Research Associates observations and left urban public library systems vulnerable to these kinds of criticisms, see Tuck, We Ain’t What We Ought to Be, 247–56. See also Lizbeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Knopf, 2003), 251.

43. Access to Public Libraries: A Research Project Prepared for the Library Administration Division, American Library Association by International Research Associates, Inc. (Chicago: American Library Association, 1963).

44. “Access Study,” 4685–4712, quotations on 4690, 4693, 4702–3, 4704–5, 4706, and 4711. See also E. J. Josey, “The Civil Rights Movement and American Librarianship: The Opening Round,” in Activism in American Librarianship, 1962–1973, ed. Mary Lee Bundy and Frederick J. Stielow (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1987), 13–20.

45. Bernice Lloyd Bell, “Public Library Integration in Thirteen Southern States,” Library Journal 88, December 15, 1963, 4713–15.

46. Quotations taken from Cook, “Freedom Libraries in the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer Project,” 189–90. Three years earlier Currier had offered to help African American Frankie Bethea set up a black library in McComb but only privately as “an individual librarian,” not officially as Mississippi Library Commission director. See chap. 7.

47. Scott, “Integration of Public Library Facilities in the South,” 162–69.

48. Graham, Right to Read, 99, 120, 130.

49. Kister, Eric Moon, 175.

EPILOGUE

1. “Ala. Civil Rights Campaigners Start with Public Library,” Library Journal 90 (July 1965): 2992; “Bessemer, Ala. Negroes Integrate Public Library,” New York Times, June 3, 1965.

2. Mary Edna Anders, Libraries and Library Services in the Southeast: A Report of the Southeastern States Cooperative Library Survey, 1972–1975 (University: University of Alabama Press, 1976), 145.

3. Halberstam, Children, 92–93.

4. McPheeters Transcript, 27–28.

5. Graham, Right to Read, 129, 133.

6. E. J. Josey, “Use of Libraries: Key to Negro Progress,” Negro History Bulletin 26 (April 1963): 219–21, quotations on 220 and 221.

7. Wolcott, Race Riots, and Roller Coasters, 225.

8. See Dale Russakoff, “Relations Changing Rapidly in Segregation’s Old Citadel,” Washington Post, September 16, 1984.

9. “Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auburn_Avenue_Research_Library_on_African_American_Culture_and_History.

10. “African American Center, Library Worthy Goal for Entire Community,” Sun Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale), May 6, 1996.

11. Lewis, Walking with the Wind.

12. “Schwerner’s Widow Donates to Phila. Library,” Deep South Jewish Voice 16 (February 2006): 20.

13. “Branch Library Will Be Named for Mississippi Author Richard Wright,” Mississippi Link (Jackson) 15, April 5–11, 2007.

14. Petra Gertjegerdes, “Travelling Civil Rights Exhibit Arrives at Columbus Public Library,” Columbus (Ga.) Times, December 10–16, 2008.

15. Drew Taylor, “Mural Depicting Selma March Unveiled after 20 Years Inside Library,” Montgomery Advertiser, March 19, 2015.

16. John Hope Franklin, “Libraries in a Pluralistic Society,” in Libraries and the Life of the Mind in America: Addresses Delivered at the Centennial Celebration of the American Library Association (Chicago: American Library Association, 1977), 11–14.

17. Phil Morehart and George M. Eberhart, “Resurrecting the Speaker,” American Libraries, July 1, 2014, 21:21, https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/blogs/the-scoop/resurrecting-the-speaker/.

18. Quoted in “Plowing through Chicago,” School Library Journal 24 (March 1978): 87.

19. See “Viewing and Speaking about ‘The Speaker’ at ALA Annual Conference,” Intellectual Freedom blog, May 22, 2014, www.oif.ala.org/oif/?p=4985.

20. Todd Honma, “Trippin’ over the Color Line’: The Invisibility of Race in Library and Information Studies,” InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies 1, no. 2 (1995): 1–28.

21. Principle 2, Library Bill of Rights. See Intellectual Freedom Manual, 5th ed. (Chicago: American Library Association, 1996), 13–14.

22. John Eby, “‘Greenville 8’ Together 50 Years after Segregation,” WYFF.com, July 12, 2010, www.wyff4.com/-Greenville-8-Together-50-Years-After-Segregation/6161420.