The desegregation of public libraries in the Jim Crow South : civil rights and local activism

Title:

Author:

Wiegand, Wayne A., 1946- author

ISBN:

9780807168677

Publication:

Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, [2018]

Physical Description:

xii, 266 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Contents:

Jim Crow public libraries before 1954 -- Rumbles of discontent before 1960 -- Memphis, Tennessee, and Greenville, South Carolina -- Petersburg and Danville, Virginia -- Alabama -- Georgia -- Mississippi -- Black youth in rural Louisiana -- The American Library Association -- Appendix: selected list of public library protesters.

Abstract:

"Wayne A. and Shirley A. Wiegand tell the comprehensive story of the integration of southern public libraries. As in other efforts to integrate civic institutions in the 1950s and 1960s, the determination of local activists won the battle against segregation in libraries. In particular, the willingness of young Black community members to take part in organized protests and direct actions ensured that local libraries would become genuinely free to all citizens."-- Provided by publisher.

Subject Term:

African Americans and libraries -- Southern States -- History -- 20th century.

Discrimination in public accommodations -- Southern States -- History -- 20th century.

Public libraries -- Southern States -- History -- 20th century.

Civil rights movements -- Southern States -- History -- 20th century.

African Americans and libraries. (OCoLC)fst00799718

Civil rights movements. (OCoLC)fst00862708

Discrimination in public accommodations. (OCoLC)fst00895124

Public libraries. (OCoLC)fst01082640

Aufhebung

Bürgerrechtsbewegung

Öffentliche Bibliothek

Geographic Term:

Genre:

Local Subject:

LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE COLLECTION

EQUITY, DIVERSITY, AND INCLUSION COLLECTION

Added Author:

Wiegand, Shirley A.

Available:

Library	Call Number	Material Type	Status
Searching... State Library of Oregon	027.475 Wiega	4-Week Loan	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

In The Desegregation of Public Libraries in the Jim Crow South , Wayne A. and Shirley A. Wiegand tell the comprehensive story of the integration of southern public libraries. As in other efforts to integrate civic institutions in the 1950s and 1960s, the determination of local activists won the battle against segregation in libraries. In particular, the willingness of young black community members to take part in organized protests and direct actions ensured that local libraries would become genuinely free to all citizens.

The Wiegands trace the struggle for equal access to the years before the Supreme Court?s Brown v. Board of Education decision, when black activists in the South focused their efforts on equalizing accommodations, rather than on the more daunting?and dangerous?task of undoing segregation. After the ruling, momentum for vigorously pursuing equality grew, and black organizations shifted to more direct challenges to the system, including public library sit-ins and lawsuits against library systems. Although local groups often took direction from larger civil rights organizations, the energy, courage, and determination of younger black community members ensured the eventual desegregation of Jim Crow public libraries. The Wiegands examine the library desegregation movement in several southern cities and states, revealing the ways that individual communities negotiated?mostly peacefully, sometimes violently?the integration of local public libraries.

This study adds a new chapter to the history of civil rights activism in the mid-twentieth century and celebrates the resolve of community activists as it weaves the account of racial discrimination in public libraries through the national narrative of the civil rights movement.

Author Notes

Wayne A. Wiegand is F. William Summers Professor of Library and Information Studies Emeritus and professor of American Studies at Florida State University.

Shirley A. Wiegand is professor emerita of law at Marquette University. The Wiegands are the authors or coauthors of numerous books, including Books on Trial: Red Scare in the Heartland.

Summary:

Reviews (2)

Booklist Review

Drawing heavily on rigorously documented primary sources (25-plus pages of notes), including black newspapers, library annual reports, master's theses, and law cases, this thorough academic study tells the story of efforts to open southern public libraries as part of civil rights efforts across the American South. Nine very readable chapters examine Jim Crow-era public libraries prior to the landmark 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education in individual Southern states, and the lack of support for desegregation by state library associations and, most damningly, by the American Library Association. ( For the most part the American Library Association and certainly southern state library associations chose to ignore the issue of public library segregation rather then challenge, confront, or even discuss it until compelled by protests against segregated public libraries across the South. ) This is a little-discussed aspect of American library history, and anyone interested in the history of civil rights, pubic institutions in general, and libraries in particular will find this to be an engaging, highly informative, and appropriately disturbing study.--Art Lichtenstein Copyright 2018 Booklist

Choice Review

For much of the first two-thirds of the 20th century, segregated public libraries were a fact of life in the American south. This is the story of how a number of brave young African Americans led the struggle in local communities to slowly but steadily create integrated public libraries in their communities. The Wiegands, both of whom are well-known historians of American libraries and librarianship, have crafted a foundational study of public libraries in the southern states based on a vast array of primary and secondary resources. Over the years, other library historians have researched various aspects of the African American public library experience, but the Wiegands bring an erudition and overall depth of knowledge about American public libraries that greatly enhances their contribution to an understudied aspect of American librarianship. The authors, for example, show clearly that the courage of the young African Americans who tested the social strictures surrounding their libraries was not mirrored in the tepid and timid response of the American Library Association to the challenges of the Civil Rights Movement to segregated libraries during the 1950s and 1960s. This is an absolutely essential book for all library collections. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Travis Dolence, Iowa State University