It all starts with a question: Who are some badass black librarians more people should
know about?
My name’s Peter, and this is Stacks and Facts.
[intro music]
While librarianship as a profession is known for advocating for social inclusion, it also
has a long track record of exclusion, in many ways.
First, there were many segregated libraries, mostly but not exclusively in the South.
This segregation could mean that black people weren’t allowed into libraries, period;
or it could be in the form of “separate but equal” situations where black people
had to use different entrances, or didn’t have access to the same materials or the same
hours of operation as white people.
Black librarians also found themselves hitting glass ceilings in terms of employment -- assuming
they could afford the education in the first place, they might never get the chance to
fill a management role.
And even the American Library Association itself hosted Council meetings and conferences
in places where segregation was the law of the land, preventing black librarians from
participating fully.
If you’ve been around this channel for a while, you might remember the video I did
back in October, talking about why librarians are mostly women, and mostly white -- it talks
a bit more about how librarianship is set up to be mostly accessible to women, and white
folks.
If not, have a look -- I’ll put a link at the end of this video and in the description.
But since it’s Black History month, I wanted to use this as a chance to highlight some
black excellence, and tell you about 5 black librarians that you really should know about.
#1: Dr. Carla Hayden: Dr. Hayden got her start working at Chicago
Public Library in 1973, and is the current Librarian of Congress, appointed by President
Obama in 2016.
She’s the first librarian in over 60 years to hold the position, and the first woman
*ever,* which is ridiculous in its own right.
Before her appointment as the Librarian of Congress, she was the CEO of Enoch Pratt Free
Library in Baltimore, Maryland.
When the police killed Freddie Gray in 2015, protesters took to Baltimore’s streets peacefully
to speak out against the systems in place that led to his death.
When the protests turned violent (thanks in no small part to Baltimore Police shutting
down public transit), the city shut down -- but she kept one branch of Enoch Pratt’s doors
open to the community, making sure there was at least one safe place people could go.
It ended up becoming a command center of sorts, where daily necessities got distributed and
media outlets set up camp to cover it all.
And on top of it all, she was also the president of the ALA from 2003-2004.
#2: Dorothy B. Porter: Dorothy B Porter was the first african american
to graduate from Columbia’s library school, in 1932.
She became a librarian at Howard University, where she’s credited with turning the Moorland-Spingarn
Research Center into one of the most important and well-developed collections of African-American
materials in the world through some excellent collection development.
She became friends with book dealers around the world, and so when something of interest
came up she’d drop them a line and see if they might be able to get her a copy, maybe
even for free.
She also did important work implementing an alternative classification system to Dewey’s,
which (let’s be honest) was woefully under-equipped to recognize and organize anything outside
of colonial knowledge.
Whereas libraries using Dewey at the time would often lump anything to do with blackness
into just a couple of subject headings with very little regard to what they actually /were/
(325 and 326 if you were curious) , in this new classification system works by all authors
would be organized by genre, and then by an author’s name.
This put black authors on equal footing with their white counterparts, rather than just
squirrelling them away to one or two shelves.
#3: Audre Lorde Audre Lorde worked in libraries in the 1950’s
and 60’s, and got her MLS in 1961 from Columbia, too -- but is perhaps best known for helping
people recognize that not all women were treated or advocated for equally in the feminist movement.
This helped lead the movement toward a better understanding of intersectionality as a thing,
before it formally entered the vocabulary in 1989 thanks to Kimberlé Crenshaw.
An exceptional poet and author, Lorde’s poem, “Who Said It Was Simple,” says it
best, I think:
There are so many roots to the tree of anger that sometimes the branches shatter
before they bear.
Sitting in Nedicks the women rally before they march
discussing the problematic girls they hire to make them free.
An almost white counterman passes a waiting brother to serve them first
and the ladies neither notice nor reject the slighter pleasures of their slavery.
But I who am bound by my mirror as well as my bed
see causes in colour as well as sex
and sit here wondering which me will survive
all these liberations.
#4: Daniel Murray was born a free man in 1852
in Baltimore.
In 1861 he started working for his brother at the United States Senate Saloon and helped
him with his catering business, which exposed him not just to the politicians of the era
but also a number of government workers, among them the Librarian of Congress, Ainsworth
Rand Spofford.
This likely helped Murray to get part-time work with the library in 1871, at the age
of 19.
Murray distinguished himself in Spofford’s eyes such that Spofford made Murray his personal
assistant in 1874.
This helped him get the skills in historical inquiry and foreign languages that he needed
to excel in the library, and so he was promoted to assistant librarian in 1881.
As a librarian, he did extensive work creating bibliographies of black-authored works, and
even curated a selection of works -- literature, portraits, and even patents by african-americans
-- which got displayed at the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris.
In his private life, he advocated for the advancement and equality of african-americans,
and in 1897 helped found the National Afro-American Council, a precursor to the NAACP, in response
to a rise of political disenfranchisement, anti-black riots, and lynchings at the turn
of the century.
Murray himself was on the receiving end of some of this when Spofford’s successor was
appointed.
Murray was demoted and took a pay cut in 1897 because of “the friction incident to caste.”
In other words, as Elizabeth Dowling Taylor wrote in her biography of Murray, “[r]equiring
white employees to report to a black superintendent was apparently deemed inadvisable.”
*visible eye roll*
#5: E.J.Josey and the BCALA
Not just one librarian, but many -- the Black
Caucus of the American Library Association formed partly in response to the ALA’s own
not-great policies around race in the United States.
Remembering the 1964 ALA conference, the founder of BCALA EJ Josey explained:
The Black Caucus formed in 1970, and in 1971 it presented a formal Statement of Concern
regarding the treatment of black Librarians, as well as a resolution to censure libraries
and librarians who provided materials to private segregated schools, as a way to circumvent
integration.
Today, according to it’s mission statement:
You can learn more about the BCALA at their website, www.bcala.org.
These are just a handful of the many black librarians who’ve done good things for the
profession and their community, but maybe there’s someone else you think should be
added to this list?
If so, tell me all about them in a comment below!
Today, there are thousands of black librarians and library workers around the world, and
among them plenty of examples of excellence in the profession!
But for all the progress we’ve made, we still have a long way to go.
Making the profession resemble the communities we serve demographically means tackling the
problems that prevent it in the first place: bringing down the costs of education,
confronting the fact that part-time and contract work for the first year or more privileges
people who have financial support, which usually excludes people of color -- and then changing
it; and continuing to push white people -- and
yes, that includes myself -- to question how the attitudes we pick up from society and
the media around race impact our behaviours, so that we can be more just and equitable
toward others.
I put some links in the description to resources that’ll help us get started.
But these are just some ideas -- what am I missing?
Let me know in the comments below, or tweet at me -- @StacksEtFacts.
Alright, that’s all I got!
As always, thank you for watching -- and until next time, don’t forget to ask questions.
Okay bye!