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raccoon

(31,088 posts)
Tue Mar 31, 2015, 09:03 AM Mar 2015

Anybody here remember public libraries in the pre-Civil Rights era? Were

blacks not allowed to use them, or could only use them during certain hours?

I'm old, but I don't know about this. I saw this in a comment on Daily Kos:

...it also seems to me that Blacks could not use the library either, or were limited to certain hours.


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/03/29/1374127/-What-Do-Conservatives-Want-When-They-Say-When-I-Want-My-Country-Back?detail=email#
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Anybody here remember public libraries in the pre-Civil Rights era? Were (Original Post) raccoon Mar 2015 OP
I remember this. leftofcool Mar 2015 #1
"Were blacks not allowed to use them?" mahatmakanejeeves Mar 2015 #2
Thank you! Yes, it does help. nt raccoon Mar 2015 #3

leftofcool

(19,460 posts)
1. I remember this.
Tue Mar 31, 2015, 09:06 AM
Mar 2015

The one exception in some states were university libraries. I remember in Oklahoma when the small college in my small town had no limits on Blacks using the libraries when they wanted to but there was a city ordinance that Blacks had to be off the streets by 6 pm. It was horrible.

mahatmakanejeeves

(56,874 posts)
2. "Were blacks not allowed to use them?"
Tue Mar 31, 2015, 09:11 AM
Mar 2015

You are correct, at least for some places. For example, Alexandria, Virginia:

Samuel Wilbert Tucker

Alexandria library sit-in

In 1939, Tucker organized a sit-in at Alexandria's public library, which refused to issue library cards to black residents. On August 21, five young black men whom Tucker had recruited and instructed – William Evans, Otto L. Tucker, Edward Gaddis, Morris Murray, and Clarence Strange – entered the library one by one, requested applications for library cards and, when refused, each one took a book off the shelf and sat down in the reading room until they were removed by the police. Tucker had instructed the men to dress well, speak politely and offer no resistance to the police so as to minimize the chance of the men being found guilty of disorderly conduct or resisting arrest. Tucker defended the men in the ensuing legal actions which resulted in the protestors not being convicted of disorderly conduct and in a branch library being established for blacks. While the sit-in received a four paragraph story in the local Alexandria Gazette newspaper and brief mention in the Washington Post, the Chicago Defender ran the story on its front page accompanied by a photograph of the arrest, noting that the protest was being viewed as a "test case" in Virginia. Other African American newspapers covered the legal action, reporting such developments as Tucker's cross-examination of the police, bringing forth an admission that had the men been white they would not have been arrested under similar circumstances. While Tucker succeeded in defending the sit-in participants, he was not satisfied with the separate but equal resolution of creating a new branch library for blacks. In a 1940 letter to the librarian of the whites-only library, Tucker stated that he would refuse to accept a card to the new blacks-only branch library in lieu of a card to be used at the existing library.

The photograph of the sit-in participants in jackets and ties calmly but resolutely being escorted from the library by uniformed police has itself become a learning aid in Alexandria. Periodically, the city has commemorated the sit-in and used it as a teaching opportunity about the Jim Crow segregation era, with students from Samuel W. Tucker Elementary donning similar attire, acting out the sit-in events and posing in recreations of the photograph.



Police removing sit-in participants from the Alexandria Library

If you want more information on this, please let me know. I exchange emails with the historic collection librarians every now and then, and they can provide all the details you will ever need.

I hope this helps.
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