Description
Even if nearly all of libraries within the state of Kentucky didn’t offer products and services to African Americans between 1860 and 1960, public libraries did employ them.
The Louisville Public Library, a leader within the development of management and education from 1905 to 1925, started in 1912 to train African American women to be librarians in segregated branches opening within the South. In 1925, an academic program used to be developed for African Americans on the Hampton Institute in Virginia to continue the work that started in Kentucky. This movement culminated with Helen F. Frye’s becoming in 1963 the first African American to graduate with a master of library science degree from the University of Kentucky Library School.
This work moves from the provision by Berea College of the first library products and services to a completely integrated student body in 1866, during the integration of the state’s only accredited library science program on the University of Kentucky in 1949, to the civil rights initiatives of the 1960s.
Also addressed are the interconnectedness of libraries and societal events and how one affected the other.