Dissociative States

Some Historical Precedents of State Library Groups Leaving the American Library Association

Durham Colored Library; image courtesy of North Carolina Digital Collections

I.

Earlier this month the Alabama Public Library Agency joined library groups in five other states — Florida, Missouri, Montana, Texas, and Wyoming — in formally disaffiliating from the American Library Association. Since its founding in 1876, ALA has been the umbrella organization for the profession. When a state library group chooses to disaffiliate, it is an astounding rejection of leadership. However, each time I encounter one of these reports, I can’t help thinking “It’s like déjà vu all over again.” As students of American library history know, this is not the first time that state library groups have been at odds with ALA — an important detail that has yet to be mentioned in the coverage of these events. Therefore, instead of chronicling the recent instances of state library groups leaving ALA, I think it would be useful to explore their historical precedents. And, given that these precedents are inextricably bound with the history of the American Civil Rights Movement, it is especially fitting to do so during Black History Month. Finally, past and present relationships between ALA and state library groups gives us an entrée to consider how, as a membership and advocacy organization, ALA might respond to internal and external conflicts.

II.

To fully appreciate the precedents of state library groups in conflict with ALA, we have to roll back the clock to the early twentieth century before the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement. In its 1896 decision on Plessy v. Ferguson, the US Supreme Court ruled 7-1 that separate but equal was constitutional. Well into the first half of the twentieth century, legal segregation was enforced in a variety of settings throughout the Southern United States. There were colored sections of buses, colored entrances to food establishments, colored water fountains, colored hospitals, colored schools, and colored libraries. All aspects of public life were governed by de jure requirements and de facto expectations, ensuring not only that whites and “coloreds” wouldn’t mix, but that the latter would never truly enjoy access to services equal to whites.

A powerful illustration of unequal library services during this period can be found in Richard Wright’s memoir Black Boy. Wright recounts his determination to read the works of HL Mencken, which he knew he could access at the “huge library near the riverfront.” The problem: as a black person in 1920s Memphis, he is forbidden from using the library. His only sanctioned access to library materials occurs if he requests them on behalf of a white person for whom he is an authorized proxy. Wright eventually decides to ask a white Catholic man (a “Pope lover” and therefore also despised by white Southerners) if Wright could request Mencken titles under the pretense of doing so on the man’s behalf. It remains a stirring account of unequal access to libraries under segregation, while also serving as a testament to the lengths someone will go to circumvent an unjust system.

Another signature contribution to our understanding of library services under segregation is Eliza Atkins Gleason’s University of Chicago doctoral dissertation from 1940, published as a monograph in 1941 as The Southern Negro and the Public Library. Replete with tables and statistical analyses, Gleason’s work is comprehensive in scope and method in enumerating the many factors that shaped the provision of segregated library services in the early twentieth century. While Gleason conceded that a segregated library was better than none at all, she marshaled a wealth of evidence to demonstrate how segregated library services were inherently unequal.

Given the obvious injustice of segregated libraries, one naturally begins to wonder: where was ALA during this period? Its motto, after all, has been “the best reading for the greatest number at the least cost” since 1892 (emphasis mine). The organization generally eschewed any discussion of race. Wayne Wiegand’s research shows that when planning the 1899 annual conference, ALA considered but ultimately rejected “the Negro in Relation in Libraries” as a discussion topic. At its 1921 conference, ALA created the Work With Negroes Round Table, with an aim to survey the state of library services to “Negroes” throughout the United States. When results were presented at the 1922 conference, members were split as to whether to continue or dissolve. The Work With Negroes Round Table convened just once more, this time at the 1923 conference, where discussion was reportedly so contentious that ALA “permanently suspended” it. A Northern organization was reluctant to inflame tensions with its Southern members.

Before the advent of the Civil Rights Movement, challenging segregation simply did not appear to be top of mind for American librarians. For example, the members of ALA’s Work With Negroes Round Table were more focused on determining the extent to which Negroes enjoyed access to library services, not questioning the fairness of segregation. In fact, segregated libraries providing “special privileges” to Negroes were commended for their generosity. This is understandably shocking to many a contemporary reader. What the contemporary reader must endeavor to comprehend is that while there were those who were incensed by and organized against segregation in the early twentieth century, and there were likewise those who fervently believed it was a just social order and employed terror to maintain it, there were also those who merely understood segregation as an unfortunate fact of life in the South. This tacit acceptance of segregation cannot be neatly divided along racial lines, as such attitudes were also found among African Americans. In the conclusion of her dissertation-turned-book, Eliza Atkins Gleason’s recommendations include the possibility of integrated library services, while also acknowledging that some library services to African Americans might have to continue being delivered on a segregated basis:

Where communities insist on complete separation, of course, a different approach must be followed. Between the extreme of complete separation and the ideal of one good public library in a community for all races, many varying approaches may be possible. The time, place, attitudes, and circumstances of each community must be weighed carefully in deciding upon the proper approach.

Still, ALA’s reluctance to address segregation in libraries and librarianship more vigorously is ironic given that its leadership and allies spent most of the 1930s campaigning for library expansion, citing the 45 million Americans without access to library services. The 45 million Americans they cited lacked access to libraries because they had no such local institution. But what about the many African Americans who did not lack library service because of their geographic distance from a library, but because they were legally denied the right to use its services? Library historians have upbraided ALA for its reluctance to condemn library segregation directly and unequivocally. When a new form of activist librarianship began emerging in the 1960s, it grew out of frustrations precisely like this one. Here, it is often charged, is the fundamental weakness of an ethic of neutrality.

ALA took a tentative step toward disavowing segregation after the 1936 annual conference, though the circumstances were hardly ideal. That year the conference was held in Richmond, Virginia. As a segregated city, African American conference attendees would not be allowed to visit the exhibits hall, dine in the conference hotel, or sleep in the conference hotel rooms. At first, they were also expected to sit in segregated areas during conference sessions. All of this was known prior to the conference itself, and members registered their indignation that ALA would knowingly compel its membership to accept these conditions. Yet the conference went on, with plans to discuss federal aid for libraries, the latest advances in technology, and Works Progress Administration projects. However, subsequent backlash to the segregated conference became the focal point, and to this day the 1936 conference is synonymous with the segregation scandal. Afterward, ALA Council resolved never to hold a conference in a segregated city again.

Although ALA would no longer ask conference attendees to endure segregated settings, there was not much appetite for addressing segregation more broadly. For example, ALA did not comment at first on state library associations in the Southern United States refusing membership to African Americans. In response, African American librarians started their own state library associations and joined ALA as separate chapters. Not until Brown v. Board of Education overturned separate but equal did ALA discourage segregated library associations. In the mid-1950s, ALA began limiting state library association affiliation to one per state, and further stipulated that the affiliated association could not refuse membership based on race. As a result, some Southern library associations complied (or claimed to); however, other Southern states refused full compliance and disaffiliated from ALA.

By the late 1950s, organized acts of civil disobedience had become prominent features of the Civil Rights Movement, with public libraries among the sites of these actions. To some members, ALA’s seeming unwillingness by this point to adopt a clear stance opposing segregation was tantamount to endorsing it. Librarian EJ Josey, who would go on to found the Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA) in 1969, and Eric Moon, the editor-in-chief of Library Journal from 1959-1968, were some of the foremost critics of ALA’s inaction. Yet the membership was not strictly divided between integrationists and segregationists, with integrationists demanding action from ALA on one side and segregationists wanting the organization to mind its business on the other. There were also integrationists such as Lura Cook who objected to even the limited strategy used by ALA, believing that any exclusionary tactics used against Southern library groups would hurt the cause, not help it. For Cook, taking a stand was important, but it needed to be part of a long-term strategy, one that would incentivize broader support for desegregation. Southern state library associations were otherwise deeply immersed in heated discussions about segregation and libraries.

Gradually, the professional literature began publishing more critical pieces opposing segregation. Upon recommendation from the Intellectual Freedom Committee, ALA Council adopted a change to the Library Bill of Rights, adding race in 1961. Segregation became a frequent topic at ALA convenings. By 1964, when both the Library Services and Construction Act and the Civil Rights Act passed, the state library associations of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi were unaffiliated with ALA. That summer, after ALA honored the Mississippi Library Association for its National Library Week programming, an affronted EJ Josey introduced a resolution at ALA Annual that would compel ALA officers and staff to boycott official events held by segregated library associations. Within the year, all previously segregated library associations became open to members regardless of race.

III.

This piece is not meant to offer a comprehensive account of ALA’s actions, or lack thereof, in support of desegregation. Many such thoughtful contributions have already been made to library history. My intention in the preceding sections was to provide enough detail for grasping how and why state library associations previously forfeited their ALA affiliations for a time. Exploring the circumstances around American library leadership and the Civil Rights Movement gives us many avenues for exploration, though I shall only name two here. First, understanding the previous conflicts between ALA and state library groups offers data for a useful comparison to present day conflicts. Second, examining these conflicts forces the question that was of the utmost urgency in the 1960s, and remains so today: how should ALA and library leaders respond amidst highly charged and turbulent political crises?

There are some obvious differences in the current conflicts with state library organizations when compared with those during segregation. In the recent instances, it is not state library associations, but state library agencies (Alabama, Florida, and Texas) and a state library (Montana) that have disaffiliated from ALA. In Wyoming’s case, it is a county library. These distinctions are important because state library agencies are government entities, making them political in ways that state library associations are not. State libraries and library agencies have different roles and responsibilities from state library associations: the former are parts of government administrations; the latter are membership and advocacy organizations.

In addition, the previous conflicts saw ALA enacting membership requirements that essentially forced the Southern library associations to either integrate or lose their affiliation. In the current case, ALA has enforced no mandate. The state library groups have offered a variety of reasons for disaffiliating: they claim “the Constitution forbids association with an organization led by a Marxist”, that ALA has no limits on youth access to sexual content in libraries, or that ALA’s values do not reflect those of more conservative states. But in none of these cases has ALA required state library groups to comply with an updated membership policy. And where in earlier conflicts it was membership that expressed frustration over ALA’s lack of a clear position, it is the state library groups that are frustrated over ALA’s seeming indifference to their concerns.

Meanwhile, library history literature on the Civil Rights Movement has not looked kindly on the role of ALA, with the organization indicted as tepid at best and craven at worst. Critics at the time leveled the same charges, so it is not just a matter of hindsight being 20/20. Still, I think it is fair to say that from a contemporary standpoint, it is easier to judge clearly how ALA should or should not have acted. I also think it is fair to judge ALA leadership as having moved haltingly and reluctantly with respect to desegregation and libraries. However, we limit ourselves when we reduce ALA’s choices to either taking a decisive stance on a controversial issue or doing nothing. There is another option: bringing opposing sides of the membership together to address their concerns as a group. Wyoming library officials petitioned for this type of engagement in an August 2023 letter to ALA. This third option is the responsibility of any membership organization with a diverse constituent base. This is not to say ALA does not try to engage members; rather, it needs to strategically engage more of its membership.

ALA’s relative inaction on segregation was lamentable, yet taking an uncompromising stance without sufficient consultation with the membership would not have necessarily served ALA either. For what we cannot lose sight of is that ALA is a membership organization, comprised of tens of thousands of individual members, and among those members are tens of thousands of perspectives. ALA’s role in navigating controversial issues then is not a matter of either taking a decisive stance or staying silent, but to facilitate broader member discussion and engagement. ALA could have acted earlier in the twentieth century to facilitate this sort of deliberation around segregation in libraries, but for various reasons it didn’t. What ALA can do now is address contemporary controversies openly and pluralistically.

ALA leadership of recent decades seems determined not to repeat the mistakes of the organization’s past. Today’s ALA creates working groups and issues statements on various timely topics, lest the historical record judge it torpid or ineffective. But in adopting explicitly partisan positions on certain political issues, ALA is also alienating some members and allies. The really difficult yet necessary task is providing a means for people with different beliefs to work together toward a common goal.

Make no mistake: public libraries are under attack, and public librarians are under severe social pressure. Library workers and supporters are frightened. That’s why effective support and advocacy from a national organization is vital. ALA has the power to unite its members and supporters around a common goal: ensuring the continuation of the free public library in every state, for everyone.

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References and Further Reading

John Berry, “Obituary: Eric Moon, Former ALA President and LJ Editor-in-Chief,” Library Journal, August 02, 2016.

Renate Chancellor, EJ Josey: Transformational Leader of the Modern Library Profession, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2020.

Karen Cook, “Struggles Within: Lura G. Currier, the Mississippi Library Commission, and Library Services to African Americans,” Information and Culture 48 no. 1 (2013): 134-56.

Digital Public Library of America, “A History of US Public Libraries: Segregated Libraries.”

David Firestone, “Red States Are Taking Aim at Librarians,” New York Times, January 30, 2024.

Michael Fultz, “Black Public Libraries in the South in the Era of De Jure Segregation,” Libraries and the Cultural Record 41 no. 3 (Summer 2006): 337-59.

Eric Glasgow, “Eric Moon and the American Library Association,” Library History 20 (March 2004): 65-69.

Eliza Atkins Gleason, The Southern Negro and the Public Library: A Study of the Government and Administration of Public Library Service to Negroes in the South, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1941.

Maya Shimizu Harris, “Gordon, State Library, Call on Library Association to Open Discussion About Group’s Direction,” Casper Star-Tribune, August 18, 2023.

Michael Harris, “The Purpose of the American Public Library in Historical Perspective: A Revisionist Interpretation,” Washington, DC: ERIC Clearinghouse on Library and Information Sciences, 1972.

Steven Harris, “Civil Rights and the Louisiana Library Association: Stumbling Toward Integration,” Libraries and Culture 38 no. 4 (Fall 2003): 322-50.

⸻ , “Strange Career: Reconciling Race and Profession in American Librarianship,” Progressive Librarian 47 (Winter 2019-20): 81-106.

Aisha Johnson-Jones, The African American Struggle for Library Equality: The Untold Story of the Julius Rosenwald Fund Library Program, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2019.

Cheryl Knott, Not Free, Not for All: Public Libraries in the Age of Jim Crow, Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2015.

Carolyn Lipscomb, “Race and Librarianship: Part I,” Journal of the Medical Library Association 92 no. 3 (July 2004): 299-301.

⸻ , “Race and Librarianship: Part II,” Journal of the Medical Library Association 93 no. 3 (July 2005): 308-10.

Notable Kentucky African Americans Database, “Work With Negroes Round Table, American Library Association,” last updated January 31, 2023.

Jean Preer, “‘This Year—Richmond!’: The 1936 Meeting of the American Library Association,” Libraries and Culture 39 no. 2 (Spring 2004): 137-60.

Adolph Reed, The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives, New York: Verso, 2022.

Alex Sakariassen, “Montana State Library Withdraws from National Association,” Montana Free Press, July 11, 2023.

Mike Selby, Freedom Libraries: The Untold Story of Libraries for African Americans in the South, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2019.

Ty Tagami, “Georgia GOP Senators Target American Library Association with New Bill,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, January 25, 2024.

John Mark Tucker, ed., Untold Stories: Civil Rights, Libraries, and Black Librarianship, Urbana, IL: Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois Press, 1998.

Shirley Wiegand and Wayne Wiegand, The Desegregation of Public Libraries in the Jim Crow South: Civil Rights and Local Activism, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2018.

Wayne Wiegand, “‘Any Ideas?’ The American Library Association and the Desegregation of Public Libraries in the American South,” Libraries: Culture, History, and Society 1 no. 1 (2017): 1-22.

Elizabeth Williamson, “Cast as Criminals, America’s Librarians Rally to Their Own Defense,” New York Times, February 03, 2024.

Richard Wright, Black Boy, Sixtieth Anniversary Ed., New York: Harper Collins, 2006.