 quite serendipitous. My husband and I decided that we would eventually retire to the D.C. area. And so I was doing research on surrounding communities of the District of Columbia. And we'd been to Alexandria on our visit several times and liked it. So I kind of put the others aside and started focusing on Alexandria as a community. And I was reading about demographics and I was reading about social history and all sorts of things. And I learned from the Alexandria Black History Museum's website that there was a sit-in protest in 1939 on August 21st. And in fact, my dissertation found me. So that's how I really fell into this situation. And I was fascinated by the story and didn't understand why it wasn't addressed in Black history books, on the history of protests. And I didn't understand why it wasn't taught in library school being the monumental event that it was. So I was determined to tell a thorough scholarly history that would also appeal to general audiences. History, more often than not, is recounted by those who are empowered to preserve it. And those same people frequently dismiss the voices of the less empowered and those they feel are subordinate. I was determined to tell a full story of the sit-in and to correct the missing accounts of the sit-in even in my research in the Alexandria Library. So I continued to do research at the Alexandria Black History Museum. And I did research in several other library schools and universities here in Virginia and was determined that this was going to be a story with national implications. Well, I spoke with the director of the Alexandria History Museum, Audrey Davis, who was a wealth of information. And she gave me a couple of leads. Those leads led to other indirect or direct witnesses. And on my own, I found relatives of the sit-in protesters and, most importantly, of Samuel Wilbert Tucker, who was the architect of the demonstration. And including those interviews meant that the voices that had been silenced because they were missing in the authoritative accounts would now be told. Absolutely. I hit a dead end when I was trying to get information on the lives and careers of the sit-in protesters after the sit-in demonstration. There is much written about Samuel Tucker because he spent the balance of his career in efforts to integrate Virginia school systems. But I ran it to dead ends with the protesters. I got leads for my interviewees. I searched historical newspapers, both black and white. I researched in databases for the people. And even the obituaries that I found were very sparse and essentially gave only name, date, place information. So I eventually turned to the Alexandria City directories, which gave me limited information. But it did provide some information for me to include in the book. I didn't want the protesters to simply drop from the scene since they were such a central part of the story. They were all unfortunately deceased by the time I was conducting my research. From the beginning of library creation, blacks, however, as a rule, were excluded from access to these libraries just as they had been excluded from the educational systems in Virginia. Alexandria, Virginia, like many southern communities, until 1932 only provided black students with an elementary school education. It was only because of parents beseeching the city that they added an eighth grade, which was their accommodation. And then in 1932, the segregated Parker Gray School was built for black students. Before that time, students had to travel to Manassas, which is 30 miles away, which means it's really out of reach for most people. Or they essentially bootlegged an education at the District of Columbia school system by use appropriating addresses of relatives, family, friends, colleagues, people like that. Parents were determined that their children would get a complete education and they were undaunted by the fact that educational equity did not exist in the community. That's true. And the segregated black library, which operated as a branch of the Alexandria library exclusively for blacks, was constructed as the city's response to the effort to desegregate the white library. They absolutely were adamant in their refusal to integrate the library. So they constructed this black library, this separate and very much unequal library to serve blacks, because even the library's meeting notes acknowledge that blacks had a need for a library. They weren't willing to provide one, but they acknowledged that the need existed. One of the things that I think is so important is that there were racialized differences in the two libraries. The white library, when it was constructed in 1937, contained, for example, 10,000 books. 3,000 of these were rare, valuable additions, a mass from the origins of the city's library. 7,000 books were new. In 1940, just four months after a judge's ruling, the city built a library for blacks, but it was very, very much inferior to the Alexandria library. It, for example, only contained about 1,500 books, and the vast majority of those books were cast-offs from the Alexandria library, books that were either well used or outdated, that the library felt were no longer suitable for the white patrons. So they shipped them over to the Robert H. Robinson library, the black library. The distinctions in the way the facilities were maintained is also an example of these racialized distinctions. The white library, from its inception, was well maintained and well established in the totality of the community. When the black library was built, it was reluctantly by the city officials and library board members, and not at all maintained. For example, in 1956, less than 20 years after the construction of the white library, it was dramatically renovated. In 1964, another thorough renovation occurred. By contrast, the black library was not renovated at all until 1988. In 1956, the black library underwent cosmetic improvements, interior improvements, but, for example, even then, the shrubbery that was very pronounced and very beautiful at the Alexandria library, the white library, was nonexistent at the black library. The city felt that the fact that they had even built a library for black residents was sufficient support for the community, and it essentially advocated them of any further responsibilities for supporting the black community. Black parents were always concerned with educational equity. As far back as the days of enslavement, they were denied this opportunity, but secretly learned to read and write some of them and taught other enslaved blacks to read and write. After so-called freedom came and more blacks began to move to the northern parts of the country, southern libraries continued their quest for state's rights, which meant they supported individual states making decisions about educational equity and library equity. I think the fact that black parents pursued educational equity for their children and the fact that the sit-in undertook library access efforts proved that blacks were determined not only to get a school education, but also to enhance their opportunities for self-directed learning opportunities and recreational reading. Samuel Tucker realized that it wasn't enough just to have access to a library. What was also necessary was a library having a full complement of resources so that patrons could also explore recreational books that enabled them to advance personal agency, and that personal agency contributes significantly to the development of individuals and communities' collective growth and development, and also to the establishment of the library as an important institution that was actually a complement to the educational system's infrastructure. Tucker realized at the beginning of the process of organizing the sit-in demonstration that his self-directed law education had been gained at the integrated Library of Congress and he wanted local opportunities for blacks who could not afford the time or the financial resources to travel to the District of Columbia to get that kind of a learning experience. He also realized the importance of agency in individuals' lives. As far as national implications are concerned, from their onset, libraries were understood to be important community centers, but they were not necessarily recognized and acknowledged as critical compliments to the educational infrastructure of the community, and he wanted that for black citizens, and black citizens, although they were disappointed, greatly disappointed with the construction of the black library, still patronized it very well because they were grateful to have a library of any sort. I think the reason there isn't a more general national conversation about libraries as part of the educational infrastructures is that libraries, though they've begun increasingly to add special programs that target certain audiences as a common factor in their operations, they have not embraced the fact that the library itself is a learning space and an important one to supplement the education of those who were not able to get an education through traditional resources. The significance of the library sit-in is contained in a very few a handful of influences from the sit-in demonstration. First of all, it was the first recorded direct action sit-in protest for black access to a library. Sit-ins had occurred as early as the 19th century, so this was not a new phenomenon, but it was the first time an effort was made to integrate libraries, recognizing their importance as learning instruments. Another is the fact that the sit-in protest prompted a challenge to authority of the running of the library, the operation of the library, and to the functioning of the city by its white residents. Whites to that point, remember now we're in the Jim Crow era when virtually everything is segregated and blacks have very few rights because segregation is codified as is Jim Crow legislation. The whites at that time believed that they were the exclusive receivers of literacy, education, culture, and power, that blacks were disempowered and subordinated because they were inferior and essentially didn't need much education at all. Another reason is that the library protest, as I mentioned, I think a little earlier, was not only the first sit-in for library access, but it was also the first instance in which protests were lodged directly against the issue of segregation. Prior to that time there were boycotts and pickets for integration of other facilities, movie theaters, recreational parks, spaces like that, spaces belonging to the community, but the provision of library access continued to be denied. The library was an important symbol, as I mentioned before, because it was a challenge to the authoritative perspective that library access was reserved for whites and that blacks did not deserve admission. They could not learn, they would always remain ignorant, and so there was no need to provide them with library access. I think the involvement of a larger number of individuals in social equity has led to greater interest in equity and public library access. I think there's motivation coming from black communities now. Libraries are officially integrated, but de facto segregation continues because of de facto housing. So those communities, for example, receive the short end of the stick in terms of library resources, library access, and community funding. I think part of the implication is that public libraries, just as the American Library Association has not done, have not developed a national conversation on why libraries are essential to the community and why they tie in to the city's educational infrastructure, but they truly are. People turn now to libraries more than ever for newspapers where they find jobs, where they find houses for sale, homes for rent, services to hire. They also take an important part of developing recreational reading skills because recreational reading empowers individuals through their personal agency to construct communities and to grow and develop intellectual and communal development for underserved communities. But I don't think this has translated yet into a national conversation for the powers that be. I think in many instances local communities are still reluctant to provide sufficient funding to libraries. What strikes me is that there was still so much resistance to education equity and that includes equity of library access until after the turn of the middle of the 20th century. Although Brown versus Board of Education was passed in 1954, Southern libraries, for example, didn't really embrace library access equity until the late 1960s. Protests were still being conducted and protesters were still being jailed for protesting for their rights to use the public library. I came away from that saddened. In Virginia, particularly, Harry Bird Sr. established the concept of massive resistance by which he meant decisions about education should be left to the schools, not to national communities. Virginia refused to support many educational systems in Virginia refused to support integration because Bird swore that their educational funding for schools would be cut if they integrated. And so people went along. Now, of course, this meant white parents who had resourced to send their children to private schools were fine. And private schools were still supported. White private schools were still supported. There were black makeshift schools that were supported by the black community, but not necessarily by the city as a whole. That too appalled and shocked me. In the late 1960s, Petersburg, Virginia, and Danville, Virginia, for example, were still having protests about integrating their public libraries. Now, we're talking just a little more than 50 years ago, so that's not so far in the past. History repeats itself, and change only comes, as Frederick Douglass said, when it's demanded. And so protests continue to this day for consistent and sufficient support of libraries for all members of the community.