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

Two trends dominate the literature on integrationist civil rights in the American South. The first celebrates the national leaders and heroism on display in famous campaigns against segregation in places such as Birmingham and Selma; the second focuses on the necessary, but often unheralded, efforts of ordinary people in scores of desegregation efforts throughout the South. Though famous leaders regularly dot its pages, Wayne and Shirley Wiegand's The Desegregation of Public Libraries in the Jim Crow South falls firmly into this latter category. A sweeping overview of attempts to desegregate public libraries, the book has two aims: to champion the leadership of Black young people in desegregating local libraries and to reveal the American Library Association's failure to play a significant role in fighting for desegregation. It achieves both.

That the authors succeed in proving their arguments should not be surprising. In the case of young people, few readers interested in civil rights would not be primed to recognize the youthful tinge of integrationist efforts. Black students sparked a wave of sit-in efforts throughout the South and the leading role of youth, in particular through the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, permeates scholarship. Aside from suggesting that discussions of library desegregation be added to the dominant civil rights narrative, the book does not seek to reshape how historians understand civil rights. Rather, the book's main interest is in commemoration, which it achieves commendably through its case studies and an eight-page appendix listing the names of activists.

The bulk of the book consists of case studies organized into chapters by state rather than theme, which elevates narrative over analysis. To be sure, this is a difficult history to synthesize. As the authors note, there was no single Jim Crow library. Some library systems provided separate facilities to Black people, while others did not provide facilities at all. Some libraries allowed Black people to request that books from white branches be sent to Black libraries (a process often made exceptionally difficult by the absence of a card catalog in Black branches), while other systems prevented any interracial circulation of materials. Because segregated library practices within states could differ as much as those between states, the decision to structure the chapters by state provides little argumentative clarity. In the case of the chapter on Alabama, it results in an unsatisfying three-sentence introduction that ends by stating that "some Alabama communities capitulated fairly easily to desegregating their public libraries when pressured by protesters; others held out as long as possible" (113). The reader is left to theorize why.

The book resists a sustained discussion of the relative institutional importance of the public library in maintaining Jim Crow segregation. Taken together, the case studies reveal that public libraries were far easier places to desegregate than public schools or swimming pools. Explanations of why are occasionally given, but they are buried within the narrative rather than functioning as argumentative focal points. Largely without elaboration from the authors themselves, these explanations tend to be found in quotes from segregationist newspapers. The Richmond Times-Dispatch, while editorializing against integration in schools, restaurants, hotels, and swimming pools, argued that "libraries are in a different category" because they are places "where interracial contact is at a minimum, and where students and readers sit quietly and mind their own business" (95). Similarly, the Greenville News held that interracial contact in libraries was "lacking in the intimacy which exists in parks, swimming pools, and schools" (80). This evidence calls out for a strengthened argumentative framework, one highlighting the relative importance of libraries to institutional Jim Crow and capable of justifying putting library desegregation in the dominant civil rights narrative. Similarly, a thorough discussion of practices unique to library desegregation would shed further light on the logic underlaying...