Not Free, Not for All: Public Libraries in the Age of Jim Crow by Cheryl Knott (review)

Historians have certainly been aware that during the era of Jim Crow in the South, almost every institution, from factory floors to telephone booths, was segregated. Public libraries, belying their name, were likewise arenas of contestation and segregation. Although many scholars have stated this fact, few of them have looked into the matter further. This oversight has now been addressed in Knott’s engrossing and detailed study that explains how these segregated libraries were created; what materials they contained; and, most importantly, how Africans Americans fought to gain access to these facilities from which they were routinely barred. As a result, African Americans themselves sought to establish their own public libraries.

Knott quotes John Hope Franklin’s wry comment about the “imaginative” tactics of segregation: “The supply of ideas for new ways to segregate whites and Negroes seemed inexhaustible” (52). Indeed, denying African Americans access to public spaces was an idea older than the republic. What additional light Knott brings to the discussion is the part played by certain venerable institutions in this process. The role of the Carnegie Corporation in creating public libraries is well known. But what is less well known, and what Knott explores, is the Foundation’s role in creating libraries in the segregated South. Although Carnegie’s Corporation did not challenge local racial practices excluding African Americans from libraries, it tried to ameliorate this exclusion to some extent by building Colored Carnegie Libraries. Knott also details how the federal government, through the Works Progress Administration, supplied books and personnel to poor white and black communities in the South while maintaining the racial status quo.

The one library-building institution that deserves special attention for its refusal to accept Southern mores is the Rosenwald Foundation, named for magnate and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, best known for contributing to the construction of more than 5,000 school buildings for African Americans in the South. In addition, they built public libraries that were truly public in that they were mandated to serve both the white and black communities without discrimination. As Knott observes, “The Rosenwald Foundation officials required demonstration libraries to provide equitable service to all county residents” (89).

Knott provides an excellent description of how African Americans fought to gain library privileges. What made their fight especially difficult were the scarce resources earmarked for books and the kind of materials that many controlling library boards would not allow black libraries to order, such as books praising racial and social equality or showing white people in a bad light. African Americans faced an immense struggle attempting to establish black libraries or even to gain access to white ones. A delegation of African Americans, led by W. E. B. Du Bois, met in 1904 with the board of the Carnegie Library in Atlanta, seeking permission for African American to use the facilities. The board objected, arguing that if blacks gained access to the library, no white person would want to use it. The board was willing, however, to ask Carnegie for funds for a separate black branch. Carnegie assented, but nothing happened. In the 1950s, Du Bois recalled that “he had pointed out to the board members the unfairness and absurdity of the situation: the books he had written were in a library he himself was not allowed to enter” (79). Not until the 1960s, following sit-ins at dozens of libraries across the South, combined with the legal remedies supplied by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, did the segregated library doors finally open.

Knott’s study goes beyond the mere outlines of the segregation of American libraries under Jim Crow. It offers a detailed account of how these institutions were constructed by entities that were putatively working against segregation (such as the Carnegie Corporation and the federal government). Knott concludes her study by describing the final destruction of these segregated library spaces as testimony to the...