Lexington Books
Pages: 186
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9½
978-1-4985-8628-3 • Hardback • December 2019 • $105.00 • (£81.00)
978-1-4985-8630-6 • Paperback • April 2023 • $39.99 • (£30.00)
978-1-4985-8629-0 • eBook • December 2019 • $99.50 • (£77.00)
Dallas Hanbury received his PhD in public history from Middle Tennessee State University.
Chapter I: Reconstruction, Redemption, And Rebirth: Southern Public Library Development During The New South Era
Chapter II: A New Vision, A New South: Southern Public Library
Development, 1890-1950
Chapter III: “Library Users Are Seekers Of Knowledge”: Developing African American Library Service And Educating Black Librarians
Chapter IV: “It Is Simply Out Of The Question To Eliminate The Colorline”: The Development Of Black Library Service In Atlanta And The Integration Of The Atlanta Public Library
Chapter V: “The Library Cannot Be Opened Indiscriminately To White People And Negroes”: Nashville And The Quest For Integrated Library Service
Chapter VI: “This We Believe”: Local Black Activism, The National Civil Rights Movement, And The Integration Of The Birmingham Public Library
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.
— Libraries: Culture, History, and Society
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— James V. Carmichael Jr., The University of North Carolina at Greensboro