Milestones in U.S. public library history

My studies this week addressed several important milestones in the history of U.S. public libraries: including establishment of the idea that local taxes would support public libraries, an emerging focus upon library services to young people, and the desegregation of public libraries during the civil rights movement of the ’60s.

Tax-supported public libraries
From McCook and Bossaller, we learned that “support for district school libraries set a precedent” for tax-supported public libraries (2018, p. 26), along with several other factors that laid the groundwork for public libraries: including economic resources, local pride, the acceptance of universal education to justify public libraries, self-education, vocational influence, religion and morality.

We also learned that motives for public libraries were not always altruistic. McCook and Bossaller drew attention to critical literature, which alleged that the public library “was conceived as an instrument for social control,” in response to concerns about an “increase in foreign populations, who were generally viewed as unlettered and ignorant” (ibid, p. 29). The public library would “uplift the masses so they would be sober, righteous, conservative, and devout” (ibid, p. 30).

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), in its library-history exhibit, also draws attention to the “Americanization Movement,” which reached its height around 1921: “Some of this legislation provided for positive support measures like night classes in English and civics at schools and libraries. Other legislation was more punitive, including prohibiting immigrants who had not been naturalized from holding particular jobs or the banning of foreign languages in public settings” (Brady & Abbott, 2015).

Library services to young people
As an aspiring youth librarian, one development that resonated for me was the emerging focus upon library services to young people.

School district libraries were important precursors for the public library, but again arose from motives that were not always altruistic. McCook and Bossaller talk about the Common School Movement of the 1830s, “conceived as a bulwark of traditional values against the tide of immigrants” and viewed as the means “to forge a new moral order by educating children properly” (2018, p. 25).

(The idea of “proper” reading for children even had its influence in the creation of the John Newbery Medal, which is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children “to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children” [ALSC, n.d.] In a Newbery centennial-themed issue of Children & Libraries, I learned that Clara Whitehill Hunt, one of the award’s pioneers, had a specific concern that children should not read “cheap” series fiction, which Hunt considered to be “trash” [Marcus, 2022; Grad, 2022].)

From the DPLA, I learned that “Starting in the late 1910s, the idea of developing library spaces in schools became a focus for educators, coinciding with a rise in literacy rates among young people. The movement for children’s libraries grew from libraries in schools to dedicated children’s materials at public libraries or new libraries especially for children” (Brady & Abbott, 2015).

Libraries and civil rights
The desegregation of public libraries in the 1960s was an important milestone: one that took sit-ins and other forms of civil disobedience, as well as civil lawsuits, to make public libraries open to their communities without regard to race.

For the “History is Lunch” lecture series on April 16, 2018, hosted by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Wayne A. Wiegand offered a presentation on “The Desegregation of Public Libraries in the Jim Crow South.”

Wiegand is a co-author with his wife, Shirley A. Wiegand, of a book by the same name.

During his presentation, Wiegand shared stories of direct action by young people, like that in Jackson, Mississippi by the Tougaloo Nine: college students who were arrested for failing to leave the whites-only public library.

One of these young people was Joseph Jackson Jr. who, while staying in jail overnight, became fearful for his life as he reflected upon the murder of Emmett Till in 1955 and Mississippi’s history of lynching (San Román, 2015).

A sobering takeaway from the desegregation of libraries was the role that librarians had played in perpetuating discrimination.

Wiegand (2018) related that, “Several years ago, when we told a couple of colleagues from other institutions in the south that we were working on this book, one asked, ‘You mean southern public libraries were segregated at one time?’ Another wanted us to lecture to his intellectual freedom class about the heroic defense librarians put up against segregated services.”

But far from being the heroes of intellectual freedom, white librarians locked their doors against young activists like the Tougaloo Nine, and called the police to remove the civil protestors from their attempted “read-in” at the library.

Speaking of his two colleagues, Wiegand observed, “Both had absorbed professional myths and assumed that librarianship’s 21st century rhetoric about opposing censorship, defending intellectual freedom, and offering neutral service to all people characterized its entire history” (ibid).

In his lecture, Wiegand identified a clear danger to disregarding library history: “Although librarianship has moved away from the 1960s chronologically, the story we tell here must become part of the profession’s collective memory. Without coming to grips with a history that portrays both halos and warts, librarianship will always have difficulty seeing the limits of its professional abilities.”

Another advancement in civil rights concerned participation by women in the library workforce. In its online exhibit, the DPLA noted that “Among the countless professional women who have worked in America’s libraries to serve their patrons, a number of women librarians were also pioneers who made major contributions to librarianship and stood up for women’s rights within the profession” (Brady & Abbott, 2015).

The exhibit noted that the American Library Association was founded in 1876 and that, “Despite the rapid growth of women in the library profession, the ALA would not elect its first woman president, Theresa Elmendorf, until 1911.”

References:
Association for Library Service to Children. (n.d.) John Newbery Medal. Awards, grants & scholarships. https://www.ala.org/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/newbery

Brady, H. & Abbott, F. [organizers]. (2015). A history of US public libraries. Digital Public Library of America. https://dp.la/exhibitions/history-us-public-libraries.

Grad, K. (2022). Ahead of her time: Hunt was early pioneer for children’s literature. Children & Libraries, (20) 1, p. 8-10.

Marcus, L. (2022). The people behind the medal: John Newbery, Frederic G. Melcher, and Clara Whitehill Hunt. Children & libraries, (20) 1, p. 3-7.

McCook, K. & Bossaller, J.S. (2018). Introduction to public librarianship (3rd ed.) Neal-Schuman.

San Román, G. (2015, June 25). Joseph Jackson Jr. made civil rights history as a member of Mississippi’s Tougaloo Nine. OC Weekly. https://www.ocweekly.com/joseph-jackson-jr-made-civil-rights-history-as-a-member-of-mississippis-tougaloo-nine-6442062/

Wiegand, W.A. (2018). The desegregation of public libraries in the Jim Crow south [YouTube video]. History is lunch [lecture series]. Mississippi Department of Archives and History. https://youtu.be/CaLXnvuU808.