Patterson Toby Graham

A detailed examination of the history of public libraries in Alabama as seen through the lens of segregation. The author follows public libraries through their advent, to the civil rights movement, to their eventual integration. It uses a number of libraries as separate case studies and delves into the complex and dangerous political environment which fought bitterly to maintain the status quo.

The author is specifically interested in librarianship as a profession and the way librarians show more reckoned with their professional ethics and the inherent conflict with the policy of segregation. He focuses in on the professional organizations, both state and national and the way they approached this thorny issue.

For me as a librarian, this was an important reminder that the librarian profession, despite its self-perception as a noble public good has often been complicit with societal evils. I found this book extremely disturbing and enlightening. show less