 people I kind of fell into librarianship. I was at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill studying for a BA in education and I had to take this kiddie lit course and I love children and so I was enjoying the course an awful lot and Dr. Mary Kingsbury said to me at the end of the course I think you'd be great as a librarian and so if things don't work out for you I hope you'll consider that come back and see me and I'll be more than happy to write a reference and so I remembered what Dr. Kingsbury said and touched base with her and successfully got accepted in their library school program and got a fellowship and so I ended up being a children's librarian. I managed to get a children's position in the D.C. Public Library and the interesting thing about that was the branch I was assigned to was the Palisades Library branch which is off of 49th and V. Street Northwest so it's on the other side of Georgetown and they had never had an African-American as a children's librarian there and it was very interesting to find myself in that particular position and so I ended up staying with D.C. longer than the three years because every time I got homesick it was ready to go back home to North Carolina. D.C. is such a large system that you're able to then be transferred or be promoted to a position and it felt like a totally new job and a new experience and so D.C. was a great training ground for me. One of the things that was interesting was the fact that I was the first person in children's room of color they'd ever had and so initially the parents would come in and they would ask for the person I had replaced and when they found out she wasn't there they'd actually leave. Then they may come in and they would ask for the other librarian but she was part-time and so Erica Stokes who was a really good mentor to me they wanted Erica what's Erica's schedule but you find that it is with children and you know the whole adage of out of the mouths of the children did not care and as a matter of fact I think the fact that I was young and I was giving them a different type of attention then they responded very positively to that but specifically I had this one parent and she's the one of the few who would come in and if she had asked and then she left and then she asked for the other one when she said her daughter apparently had a learning disability and I was unaware of that and she had a project to do and I had pulled the stuff I talked to her about considering how she could go about doing the project it was the mother who came back and let me know that the child had made an A and she let me know that she had learning disabilities and that she had never had an A before and I think that that was one of the I don't know that she physically went and told others you know that it was cool or I was okay or whatever but that fact that she came to me and she shared and then it seemed like after that it just kind of went away I didn't have any others in leadership positions I did have some African-American staff working for me there were a couple who were I had a librarian who was part-time over at the special collections and I had a couple of other staff throughout the system but but no there were no other no others in leadership position and truthfully I wasn't looking for a job I was pretty happy in DC and so I did realize that in order to affect change the way I wanted it to happen for the kids I needed to be in that room so I needed to work to be in a higher level position and so when Patrick O'Brien called to offer me the job I was a little surprised and I knew who Patrick O'Brien was Patrick was a major player in the ALA world in the American Library Association world I thought that I could learn a lot by working with him and so I accepted the job when I came on board he said to me he said I think you have what it takes to be my successor and I my interview was based on trying to do some succession planning and so I'll do I'll try to help you with any and all things that that you need because I hope you'll be interested in and filling my shoes and so I was acting for a minute I was the acting director for a little while and then I got the job so Howard Smith jr. I understand was the library board chair before Louise Forstall and he was the chair in which he held that position the entire time that Patrick O'Brien was the library director and so after being hired maybe a month or so we were having a meeting and after the meeting Patrick and Louise were had gone to the side I had made some I had made some presentation and they were very pleased with the presentation and so they were complimentary and Louise said you know can you imagine if Howard Smith were here he's probably turning over in his grave and they chuckled and I was like really and they were saying yeah he would not have gotten this he wouldn't have understood so that was what that was based on that they felt very good that they did not let something like that stand in the way of them as they stated you are our highest qualified candidate so you know one of the things that I've done once I became aware of the story of the city and so which is a fabulous story from 1939 but over the years I started to wonder okay so from 39 to 2009 what in the world you know took place and there are still a few individuals who worked for the library system who were African-American and so capturing or getting a chance to hear their stories of what it was like to work here has been fascinating for me so it's very interesting you know one of the first African-Americans from Alexandria that the library system hired was Mrs. Gladys Davis and I had an opportunity to my career to overlap with Mrs. Davis she was instrumental in making sure that others were hired within the the library so when I became deputy director and I was doing the tour of the branches I went over to the Barrett library and within the Barrett library is the special collections local history special collections branch and one of the staff there Mr. George Cones says to me oh you're the first you know African-American service deputy director you know we had the one of the first sit-ins occur in 1939 to tell you the truth I thought I misheard it I thought that he had made a mistake and I said excuse me and so did you say and he repeated the time for me now remember I grew up in North Carolina so I grew up with the whole thing of the Greensboro sitting A&T going down students going over to the Woolworth um lunch counter and sitting down and being arrested and so I'm like wow how did I miss this I've been in the library business for a minute and you're trying to tell me that there is a story there was a city so I still had some doubts to tell you the truth I had some doubts I just couldn't believe I didn't know about this story so when the eyes was scheduled to go over there and work the desk I got the I got to George and he was showing me and he went and he pulled out all you know all of this stuff to show me that yes indeed this event did occur in Alexandria and I was just flowing I pride myself on on African-American history very interested in it you know took a number of classes in Chapel Hill they were a little ahead of their time at the time they had an African-American studies department when I went there so I had had the course I had never heard this story so I made it my business to every weekend after that I tended to come down and I would work on I would come on Sundays because the Sunday staff had not met me and they only worked on Sundays and so that they could meet me I would come down and I would visit a branch on the weekends I do that branch for a couple of hours and then I would leave and I'd go over to the special collections library and they pull stuff out for me and I just started taking notes and I created this notebook and so I have this real fat you know initially I thought you know two inches was going to be enough um but over the years so I've crammed stuff and it's kind of falling all out there we think that was wonderful notebook that has all this information in about the city now that's what was interesting because in 2009 you know I'm director and I'm thinking okay how are we going to celebrate this and the staff informed me well we tend to let the black history museum celebrated and and I'm like why well you know because the Robinson library which is the end result so the the Robinson library is the location that is the current black history museum and so it's part of their history I said yes but it's a part of our history and it's the events that occurred here that make that happen so we need to also be celebrating and I will say um George who was very good about making sure that the the story was told me every he said to me says well boss I feel a little funny this you know that white Jewish guy trying to tell and celebrate this story and so I said well look I'm the first African American library director and I don't see how we can't tell the story they did feel a little awkward because we were on the wrong side of the argument and but because I was who I was and they were very supportive of me then they were like okay Rose you tell us what you want this to look like and we'll do it and so we did so we had that five-year period to plan and as we prepared for the 75th then we decided that we would celebrate it as a system just as we would celebrate the library's anniversary when we celebrated the 75th it was not just the special collections branch over in the Barrett library every single library branch in Alexandria celebrated the sit-in anniversary so we've done a really good job but where we didn't hit the mark and fell short was we did not involve the families we did not manage to get make contact with the families the descendants of the participants so for the 80th that was the focus the focus was that we would work very hard to try and reach out and to get the families involved and we would only do the programming at a level in which they were happy and so we really struggled to make contact with the families and then when we managed to get some names and and everything convinced a few of them to come and meet with me over at the Barrett library in special collections and just basically let them know first of all I apologize that we had celebrated this event five years previously and did not include them and one of the things that was what we wanted to to fix so shared with them how important the story was didn't know to what degree and how much information they knew and so just had a an awful lot of documentation and information on the table for them to look at they heard me out and I shared that at this point in time that I was hoping to do a descendants panel so that folks could see them and I would you know function as the interviewer and just ask them some questions I'd give them the information in advance and they were on board and so I'm happy to say that the their support and their willingness to participate not just out for that interview they attended some of the other events that we had so their presence was very much appreciated people would ask them questions we so we received a lot of press from that and so was really proud of involving them and then one of the really nice things that occurred was the fact that in our research while there was a newspaper article that said the charges had been dismissed we could not find any proof that that did indeed happen and so through the commonwealth attorney brian porter he was successful in petitioning the court to dismiss all charges against those gentlemen and we were able to give that document to those family members that evening and it was just you know a very touching and gratifying experience during the 75th we created an exhibit we are hoping to expand it into a traveling exhibit and that's where it has a dual purpose so if we're able to have it travel to another public library for example in virginia then that will have the students come to using that public library it will also challenge that public library to question when did they make their services available when did they integrate and i think that as librarians that's one of the things that we can do to help do this with the to spread the story and to help with this the opening up of our history one of the things about history is um it's it's shapes based on what one is taught and as i explained i only knew about the sit-in in um greensboro and subsequently as an adult i have learned about the sit-in that occurred in petersburg the four that i i greenville south carolina had a library sit-in in which um reverend jesse jackson was a major player and so it's all about who's telling the story and so since the story is has the opportunity to grow and change based on the different people who tell it then i need for our children to recognize that the history i learned actually is still being told