Ugly Side of Librarianship

This week I found many of the topics in the readings  quite interesting.  I was enthralled with Musmann’s article “The Ugly Side of Librarianship.”  It was interesting to see the history of libraries dating back all the way to the 1900s, and the restrictions that were placed on the patrons coming into libraries.  I was not at all surprised when it mentioned how many libraries followed segregation laws and would not allow African Americans inside their doors.  History reveals many flaws of the past, this being one of them.  But then all of a sudden it dawned on me… of course African Americans were not allowed in libraries- they were seen as inferior and uneducated!  Where do people go to educate themselves?  The library.  And if we want to restrain people from educating themselves… naturally they are not allowed in libraries.  Thinking back to days of slavery, African Americans saw literacy as freedom.  Sadly, according to the article, in 1870, only 20% of African Americans were literate.  If a population is only 20% literate, chances are they are not spending much time in a library. 

In my profession today, we deal with an achievement gap between African American students and students of other races in our school.  Our school is not unique; it is a prominent national trend.  One of the areas in which African American students struggle the most is reading. We continually talk about how we need strong African American role models for these students in the school.   After this article it got me thinking, how many African American librarians are there?  Sure, our school library is decorated with READ posters with African American basketball players and movie stars telling kids to read… but the effectiveness of an African American librarian would be huge.  The lack of these librarians is not surprising; African Americans were not universally invited into libraries for many formative years of the history of libraries.  I found this article to be one of the most interesting we have read in the class so far.  I would be interested to see a piece written on the segregation of library services from 1950-2000.