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Fifty-six years ago, on March 27, 1961, 9 college students got arrested at the Carnegie Library in Jackson, Mississippi. Their crime? They were black kids who wanted to read. (Picture to the left: Geraldine Edwards, participant at the Tugaloo Nine sit-in. Illustrator: Michael Crowell. Freedom to Read.)
About a month ago, (on 23/02/2017), I had the pleasure of participating in a webinar organized by the Freedom to Read Foundation called, Libraries in the Jim Crow South and A Conversation with One of the Tougaloo Nine. One of the Tougaloo Nine, Geraldine Hollis (nee Edwards) was one of the speakers. It was indeed a personal, moving and inspiring experience to hear her describe the preparation before the sit-in, the series of events at the library and the consequences. Geraldine noted several times that they simply wanted to read. The city had built and assigned several libraries for the black communities. However the services, amenities and collection in these designated libraries were always significantly of lower and poorer quality. Geraldine and her friends did not understand why these issues were still taking place in a country which had already deliberated and unanimously decided against segregation in Brown v. Board of Education back in 1953.
The reality was that segregation was still taking place in the South years after the US Supreme Court had declared segregation to be unconstitutional. Despite early movements towards desegregation in libraries, the pace was not matching the legal reality and the community needed to fight for their rights. Another speaker at the webinar, Cheryl Knott, a professor at the University of Arizona put it better: "Libraries were not desegregated out of the goodness of their hearts. They had to." Cheryl's presentation actually presented numbers on how many libraries were not integrated ten years after Brown v. Education. Cheryl's book "Not Free, Not for All" is an outstanding resource, which I highly recommend to anyone interested in this topic.
For us as librarians resisting, it is really important to be aware of these struggles and efforts in our profession's history and learn the lessons of those who resisted. As we have said before, no action is small when it comes to promoting literacy, knowledge, curiosity, and access to information for all. We strongly believe that every single information professional is asked to contribute to the struggle regardless of how small and "insignificant" his/her acts might be considered. Because as we see in this example with the Tugaloo Nine and others, these acts are never small to begin with. During the webinar, I asked Geraldine how did the library staff react while the sit-in and subsequent arrest was taking place? They apparently did not make much of an effort to either prevent or take part on what was going on. In other words, they remain passive actors. Here at #LibrariesResist, we are committed at not being complicit by silence. We believe the library should vocally and actively promote itself as an open and safe space to those groups alienated, dehumanized and harassed by an administration promoting hate, intolerance and bigotry. Because open to everyone means each and every one of us, not just a handful group of people.
While reading Knott's book and researching prior to this blog, we became aware of other sit-ins in libraries or "read-ins" taking place during those years. Tougaloo Nine has become one of the most popular ones considering the documentation available. However if any of you is aware of others, please do share any information with us in the comments or at librariesresist@queeryparty.org (Picture on the right: The entire Tougaloo Nine getting arrested in 1961. They were Joseph Jackson, Jr., Geraldine Edwards, James Cleo Bradford, Evelyn Pierce, Albert Lassiter, Ethel Sawyer, Meredith Coleman Anding, Jr., Janice L Jackson, and Alfred Lee Cook. Source: http://www.mdah.ms.gov)
If you are interested in listening to this webinar, you can vision it at the ALA Intellectual Freedom eLearning page: http://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/webinar/jimcrow
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