Robert Manzo

My research traces the development of public libraries in North Carolina from 1895, when citizens started organizing the state’s first municipal public library, up to 1941, when the General Assembly approved regular state aid to municipal and county libraries. Free, tax-supported public libraries were a surprisingly late feature of the American republic. The first one in the nation opened in Boston in 1854 and the first ones in the South opened in 1893 and 1898, in Memphis, Tennessee and Durham, North Carolina, respectively. Why did the public library emerge so late in North Carolina, and indeed the South, compared to the Northeast and Midwest? What specific cultural, economic, and political conditions had to be met in order for libraries to be established? What were the barriers to library development, and how were those barriers overcome? After examining newspapers, state records, the writings of Southern leaders, and secondary sources, I found six major barriers to library development in North Carolina: strict legal limits on the authority of local governments, low population density, rural poverty, limited support for public education, racial segregation, and divisive regional sectionalism. Among the events that helped to ease these problems were the Southern Progressive movement, educational reforms, industrialists’ philanthropic crusades, state and federal government expansion, and revolutions in transportation and communication. The state’s public libraries developed under specific historical circumstances, and their development was neither easy nor removed from a range of cultural, political, and economic issues affecting society at large.

Robert Manzo is a second-year M.A. candidate in the History Department at Western Carolina University. His research interests include the history of the South, disability studies, and educational history. His Master's thesis topic is North Carolina library history. He holds a B.A. in History and an M.L.I.S. in Library and Information Studies.