A Right to Read : Segregation and Civil Rights in Alabama's Public Libraries, 1900-1965.
Title:
A Right to Read : Segregation and Civil Rights in Alabama's Public Libraries, 1900-1965.
Author:
Graham, Patterson Toby.
ISBN:
9780817313357
Personal Author:
Physical Description:
1 online resource (208 pages)
Contents:
Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Booker T. Washington Branch in Birmingham, 1919 -- Davis Avenue Branch, Mobile, 1931 -- Mobile Public Library, 1926 -- Elizabeth Parks Beamgaurd visits the Dulcina DeBerry Branch, 1951 -- Bertha Pleasant Williams and the Montgomery "Friends of the Library," 1960 -- Montgomery City-County Library, 1961 -- Montgomery's Cleveland Avenue Branch, 1961 -- Sit-in at the Birmingham Public Library, 1963 -- Miles College student speaks to librarians, 1963 -- Anniston's Carnegie Library, circa 1938 -- Cover of The Rabbits' Wedding, 1958 -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Black Libraries and White Attitudes, The Early Years: Birmingham and Mobile, 1918-1931 -- Birmingham and the Booker T. Washington Branch Library -- Mobile and the Davis Avenue Branch Library -- 2. Black Libraries and White Attitudes II: The Depression Years -- Black Libraries and Philanthropy during the Depression: Walker County -- The Works Progress Administration and Black Libraries -- The Tennessee Valley Authority: Black Libraries and Regional Development -- Welfare Capitalism and the National Youth Administration: The Sloss¤eld Negro Branch Library -- 3. African-American Communities and the Black Public Library Movement, 1941-1954 -- The Dulcina DeBerry Branch Library, Huntsville -- The Union Street Branch Library, Montgomery -- Birmingham Negro Advisory Committee -- 4. The Read-In Movement: Desegregating Alabama's Public Libraries, 1960-1963 -- Mobile, 1961 -- Montgomery, 1962 -- Huntsville, 1962 -- Birmingham, 1963 -- Anniston, 1963 -- 5. Librarians and the Civil Rights Movement, 1955-1965 -- Juliette Hampton Morgan and the Montgomery Bus Boycott -- Emily Wheelock Reed and The Rabbits' Wedding Controversy -- Patricia Blalock and the Selma Public Library -- The American Library Association -- The Alabama Library Association -- Conclusion.
Notes -- Bibliographic Essay -- Contemporary Literature on Segregated Libraries, 1913-1953 -- Contemporary Literature on Segregated Libraries, 1954-1972 -- Atlanta University Theses -- American Library Association -- Library History Secondary Works -- Segregated Libraries and Progressivism -- The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama -- Other Historical Works on Race -- Unpublished Sources.
Abstract:
This original and significant contribution to the historiography of the civil rights movement and education in the South details a dramatic and disturbing chapter in American cultural history. The tradition of American public libraries is closely tied to the perception that these institutions are open to all without regard to social background. Such was not the case in the segregated South, however, where public libraries barred entry to millions of African Americans and provided tacit support for a culture of white supremacy. A Right to Read is the first book to examine public library segregation from its origins in the late 19th century through its end during the tumultuous years of the 1960s civil rights movement. Graham focuses on Alabama, where African Americans, denied access to white libraries, worked to establish and maintain their own "Negro branches." These libraries-separate but never equal-were always underfunded and inadequately prepared to meet the needs of their constituencies. By 1960, however, African Americans turned their attention toward desegregating the white public libraries their taxes helped support. They carried out "read-ins" and other protests designed to bring attention and judicial pressure upon the segregationists. Patterson Toby Graham contends that, for librarians, the civil rights movement in their institutions represented a conflict of values that pitted their professional ethics against regional mores. He details how several librarians in Alabama took the dangerous course of opposing segregationists, sometimes with unsettling results. This groundbreaking work built on primary evidence will have wide cross-disciplinary appeal. Students and scholars of southern and African-American history, civil rights, and social science, as well as academic and public librarians, will appreciate Graham's solid research and
astute analysis. Patterson Toby Graham is Head of Special Collections at the University of Southern Mississippi. His research on library segregation has won four awards, including the ALISE-Eugene Garfield Dissertation Award.
Local Note:
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2017. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.
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