Abstract
Theories about American public libraries as ‘arsenals of a democratic culture’ and ‘cornerstones of liberty’ have asserted the institution’s enduring role as a ‘civic space’ where community members find enter- tainment, education and information (Ditzion 1947; Kranich 2001; Molz and Dain 1999). Such theories ignore an important part of the public library’s past, a period lasting more than 50 years when many public libraries refused service to African Americans or provided ser- vice in segregated buildings even as librarians were proclaiming their institutions ‘free to all’.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Select bibliography
Anderson, James (1988) The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Atkins, Eliza (1940) ‘The Government and Administration of Public Library Service to Negroes in the South’. PhD dissertation, University of Chicago. Reproduced courtesy of Dr. Joy Gleason Carew.
Baiker, Tommie Dora (1942) ‘Library Progress in the South, 1936–1942’. The Library Quarterly, 12 (January-October): 353–62.
Barrett, Kayla and Barbara A. Bishop (1998) ‘Integration and the Alabama Library Association: Not So Black and White’. Libraries & Culture, 33(2): 141–61.
Bobinski, George (1969) Carnegie Libraries: Their History and Impact on American Public Library Development. Chicago: American Library Association.
Carmichael, Jr., James Vinson (1988) ‘Tommie Dora Barker and Southern Librarianship’. PhD dissertation, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Chapman, Edward A. (1941). Typed memorandum to James A. Atkins, November 6. Records of the Work Projects Administration, RG-69, Records of the Library Services Project, 1935–1942, General Correspondence, Box 3, National Archives.
Cossu-Beaumont, Laurence and Claire Parfait (2009) ‘Book History and African American Studies’. Transatlantica, 1. http://transatlantica.revues.org/4280.
Couch, W. T. (1943) ‘The Southern Negro and the Public Library: A Study of the Government and Administration of Public Library Service to Negroes in the South’ [book review]. The Library Quarterly (April), clipping, University of Chicago Press. Records.
Ditzion, Sidney (1947) Arsenals of a Democratic Culture: A Social History of the American Public Library Movement in New England and the Middle States from 1850 to 1900. Chicago: American Library Association.
Dustjacket copy in the University of Chicago Press. Records. 1892–1965. Box 194. University of Chicago Department of Special Collections.
Elson, Mary (1983) ‘Tempo: Chicago Publisher is Proud to Be King of the Least Sellers’. Chicago Tribune, January 20, Dl.
Fairclough, Adam (2007) A Class of Their Own: Black Teachers in the Segregated South. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Fultz, Michael (2006) ‘Black Public Libraries in the South in the Era of De Jure Segregation’. Libraries & the Cultural Record, 41 (Summer): 337–59.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. (1993) Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
‘Gleason, Eliza Veleria Atkins, PhD’ (2007) Who’s Who Among African Americans, 20th edition, ed. Rristen B. Mallegg. Detroit: Gale Research.
Harris, Steven R. (2003) ‘Civil Rights and the Louisiana Library Association: Stumbling toward Integration’. Libraries & Culture, 38(4): 322–50.
Hemens, Rollin D. (1941) Typed memorandum to Miss Alexander, March 7, University of Chicago Press. Records.
Holton, Felicia A. et al. (1984) ‘The University of Chicago Press: The King of the Least-Sellers’. Change (October): 38–48.
Jackson, Leon (2010) ‘The Talking Book and the Talking Book Historian’. Book History, 13:251–308.
Janken, Kenneth Robert (1944) ‘Introduction to Rayford W. Logan’s What the Negro Wants’. In Rayford W. Logan (ed.), What the Negro Wants. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, pp. vii–xxx. Reprint edition with new introduction: Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2001.
Joeckel, Carleton B. (1935) The Government of the American Public Library. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Jordan, W. K. Signed typed letter to Louis R. Wilson, March 4, 1941, University of Chicago Press. Records.
Josey E. J. (1993) ‘Gleason, Eliza Atkins’. In World Encyclopedia of Library and Information Services, ed. Robert Wedgeworth. Chicago: American Library Association.
Kelley DeWitt M. (1942) ‘Library Facilities for Negroes’. The Elementary School, 42 (March): 555–6.
Kranich, Nancy (ed.) (2001) Libraries & Democracy: The Cornerstones of Liberty. Chicago: American Library Association.
Leatherman, Carolyn H. (1988) ‘Richmond Considers a Free Public Library: Andrew Carnegie’s Offer of 1901’. Virginia Magazine of History & Biography, 96: 181–92.
Lee, Mollie Huston (1942) ‘Negro and the Public Library’. Phylon (4th quarter): 437–8.
Logan, Rayford W. ‘Introduction to the 1969 Reprint’. In Rayford W. Logan (ed.), What the Negro Wants. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1944, pp. xxxi–xxxv. Reprint edition with new introduction: Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2001.
Malone, Cheryl Knott (1995) ‘Louisville Free Public Library’s Racially Segregated Branches, 1905–35’. Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, 93(2) (Spring): 159–79.
Malone, Cheryl Knott (1996) ‘Accommodating Access: “Colored” Carnegie Libraries, 1905–1925’. PhD dissertation, University of Texas, Austin.
Malone, Cheryl Knott (1999) ‘Autonomy and Accommodation: Houston’s Colored Carnegie Library, 1907–1922’. Libraries Sc Culture, 34 (Spring): 95–112.
Malone, Cheryl Knott (2007) ‘Unannounced and Unexpected: The Desegregation of Houston Public Library in the Early 1950s’. LibraryTrends, 55 (Winter): 665–74.
Martin, Robert Sidney (1986) ‘Louis Round Wilson’s Geography of Reading: An Inquiry into Its Origins, Development, and Impact’, journal of Library History, 21: 425–44.
McHenry Elizabeth (2002) Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of Forgotten African American Literary Societies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Meisel, Joseph S. (2010) ‘American University Presses, 1929–1979: Adaptation and Evolution’. Book History, 13: 122–53.
Molz, Redmond Kathleen and Phyllis Dain (1999) Civic Space/Cyberspace: The American Public Library in the Information Age. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Parfait, Claire (2009) ‘Rewriting History: The Publication of W. E. B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction in America (1935)’. Book History, 12: 266–94.
Porter, Dorothy B. (1942) ‘The Southern Negro and the Public Library’ [book review]. Social Forces, May clipping, University of Chicago Press. Records.
Powers, Mary Louella (1993) ‘Joeckel, Carleton B.’. In World Encyclopedia of Library and Information Services, ed. Robert Wedgeworth. Chicago: American Library Association.
Radway, Janice (2008) ‘What’s the Matter with Reception Study? Some Thoughts on the Disciplinary Origins, Conceptual Constraints, and Persistent Viability of a Paradigm’. In Philip Goldstein and James L. Machor (eds.), New Directions in American Reception Study. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 327–51.
Richardson, Jr., John V. (1982) The Spirit of Inquiry: The Graduate Library School at Chicago, 1921–51. Chicago: American Library Association.
Seabrook, J. W. (1942) ‘The Southern Negro and the Public Library’ [book review]. journal of Negro History, January, clipping. University of Chicago Press. Records.
Simon, Bryant (1997) ‘Introduction to the 1997 Edition’. In Howard WOdum, Race and Rumors of Race: The American South in the Early Forties. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. vii-xxxii.
Sitton, Thad, James H. Conrad and Richard Orton (2005) Freedom Colonies: Independent Black Texans in the Time of Jim Crow. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Smith, Jessica Carney (2009) ‘From Andrew Carnegie to John Hope Franklin: Library Development at Fisk University’. Tennessee Libraries, 59: 2.
Staff of the School of Library Service, Atlanta University (1944) Libraries, Librarians and the Negro. Atlanta: The School.
University of Chicago Press (1967) Catalogue of Books and Journals, 1891–1965. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Valentine, Patrick (1998) ‘Mollie Huston Lee: Founder of Raleigh’s Public Black Library’. North Carolina Libraries, 56 (Spring): 23–6.
Wairen, C. J., Opinion of the Court (1954) Brown vs. Board of Education ofTopeka, Kansas, 347 U.S. 483, May 17. http://www.law.coraell.edu/supct/html/historics/ USSC_CR_0347_0483_ZO.html#347_US_483nllref, viewed December 10, 2011.
Wilson, Louis Round (1938) The Geography of Reading. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wilson, Louis Round (1941) Signed typed letter to W. K. Jordan, February 20. University of Chicago Press. Records
Wilson, Louis Round and Edward A. Wight (1935) County Library Service in the South: A Study of the Rosenwald County Library Demonstration. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Winston-Salem State University. ‘Dr. Simon G. Atkins’, http://www.wssu.edu/cg-okelly-libr ar y/s er vi ces /archive s/c or e /pr esi dent s-chancellors/simon-g-atkins. aspx, viewed March 7, 2014.
Wright, Richard (2003 [1945]) Black Boy, a Record of Childhood and Youth. New York: Harper & Bros.; reprint, Harper Perennial.
Yocom, Frances L. (1942) Review of The Southern Negro and the Public Library. Southern Economic Journal, 8 (April): 521–2.
Young, John K. (2006) Black Writers, White Publishers. Oxford, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2006.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2014 Cheryl Knott
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Knott, C. (2014). The Publication and Reception of The Southern Negro and the Public Library. In: Cottenet, C. (eds) Race, Ethnicity and Publishing in America. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137390523_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137390523_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-48265-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-39052-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)