Development of Southern Public Libraries and the African American Quest for Library Access, 1898–1963

Using the Atlanta, Birmingham, and Nashville Public Libraries as case studies, The Development of Southern Public Libraries and the African American Quest for Library Access, 1898-1963 argues that public libraries played an integral role in Southern cities’ economic and cultural boosterism efforts during the New South and Progressive Eras. First, Southern public libraries helped institutionalize segregation during the early twentieth century by refusing to serve African Americans, or only to a limited degree. Yet, the Progressive Era’s emphasis on self-improvement and moral uplift influenced Southern public libraries to the extent that not all embraced total segregation. It even caused Southern public libraries to remain open to the idea of slowly expanding library service to African Americans. Later, libraries’ social mission and imperfect commitment to segregation made them prime targets for breaking down the barriers of segregation in the post- World War II era. In this study, Dallas Hanbury concludes that dealing with the complicated and unexpected outcomes of having practiced segregation constituted a difficult and lengthy process for Southern public libraries.

Dallas Hanbury uses case studies of the Atlanta, Nashville, and Birmingham public libraries (APL, NPL, and BPL, respectively) to recount the genesis, evolution, and integration of southern public libraries in the contexts of New South (1865‒1920) and Progressive Era (1897‒1920) agendas and local societal histories. [Hanbury] employs his research interests in African American history, local government records, and institutional histories to present a meticulously researched comparative study of the intersection of public libraries and race as evidenced in the library systems of three distinct urban environments.... Hanbury’s treatise, the only book-length treatment of southern libraries in an exclusively New South and Progressive Era comparative context, makes three significant contributions to the professional literature on southern public libraries and their integration. By investigating the exclusion of Blacks from the APL, NPL, and BPL and the ways in which each institution integrated, the book enables the study of complications ensuing from attempts to rectify a segregated past. It also shows how the contested spaces of the APL, NPL, and BPL illustrate the institutionalization of segregation. Finally, this study demonstrates that race as an important historical, as well as social, construct is a critical element of historical change and public history. Well structured, cogently argued, and written in an engaging and accessible style, this book would appeal not only to audiences of librarians, library historians, and social science and history scholars, but also to general readers., Hanbury’s three closely observed and tightly organized case studies demonstrate once and for all that Southern urban library service to the African American population was at best an ambivalent proposition. The struggle for equal library service, racially integrated or not, lasted far longer than most histories credit, and was from the beginning a cornerstone on which other privileges of citizenship were built. The author’s mastery of his material is gracefully dispensed but undeniably present

Dallas Hanbury received his PhD in public history from Middle Tennessee State University.