The Desegregation of Public Libraries in the Jim Crow South: Civil Rights and Local Activism by Wayne A. Wiegand and Shirley A. Wiegand (review)

We know the stories, or at least we think that we do—the Greensboro sit-ins, the bombing in Birmingham, the Freedom Riders, and the "I Have a Dream" speech. We have seen the images of protests and violence. We know the all-too-familiar casualties of the civil-rights movement—Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney. Yet, countless unsung heroines and heroes put their lives on the line for desegregation in venues other than lunch counters, public schools, and universities. Wayne and Shirley Wiegand's study of the integration of public libraries in the Jim Crow south is a worthy contribution to a little-explored body of work related to American library history.

Their book is organized in nine chapters accompanied by an appendix and illustrations. The first chapter, which offers context for the study, introduces a discussion about the history of services in southern public libraries prior to the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. The authors argue that only after the ruling did Black activists become emboldened to challenge Jim Crow through a systematic approach that was comprised of litigation and public library sit-ins. Chapter 2 begins with a description of one of the first public-library sit-ins, led by lawyer Samuel William Tucker in 1939 in Alexandria, Virginia (48–49), and then describes the growing frustration of African-American library patrons about their treatment in the years before the 1960s.

The core of the study is in Chapters 3 through 8, which focuses on protests and desegregation efforts in several cities in the deep south: Memphis, Tennessee; Greenville, South Carolina; Petersburgh and Danville, Virginia; Mobile, Birmingham, and Montgomery, Alabama; Albany, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi, as well as public libraries in the rural Louisiana region. Each case is well documented, revealing an impressive and effective use of primary sources. The authors claim to have been "drawn to stories that primary source documentation could support that also generated headlines (national, state and local), and contained colorful (and some now famous) personalities" (16). The Wiegands use of periodicals and newspapers to obtain contemporaneous accounts of events substantiates this assertion and adds to the veracity of the research design.

The final chapter is a discussion about how the American Library Association (ALA), the oldest professional organization for librarians, failed to address the injustices of segregated library services until the 1960s despite the exhaustive efforts of individuals like E. J. Josey, Clara Stanton Jones, Albert. P. Marshall, and Virginia Lacy Jones. Josey introduced a historic resolution to the ala Council in 1964 that ultimately led to dismantling segregation in southern-state library associations.¹ On June 24, 2018, the ala Council passed a resolution honoring Josey and other African Americans who fought library segregation, offering a long-overdue recognition of the injustices faced in segregated public libraries and apologizing for the wrongs committed. The authors would have done well to incorporate this critical information about the desegregation of public libraries earlier in the book for contextualization.

The Desegregation of Public Libraries in the Jim Crow South is an important and timely contribution to the literature. The book not only covers an unexplored topic in public-library history, but it also highlights the contributions of lesser-known individuals during the civil-rights movement.