1961 US Commission on Civil Rights Report Book 2 - University of ...

9. Southern Libraries
Sixteen years ago the United States Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit
had occasion to consider the function of a public library in modern
society. 1
It is generally recognized that the maintenance of a public library
is a proper function of the State; and nowhere has the thought
been better expressed than in Johnson v. Baltimore, 158 Md. 93,
103, 104, I48A., 209, 213 ... where the court said: ... At
the present time it is generally recognized and conceded by all
thoughtful people that such institutions form an integral part of a
system of free public education and are among its most efficient and
valuable adjuncts. An enlightened and educated public has come
to be regarded as the surest safeguard for the maintenance and
advancement of the progress of civilized nations. More particularly
is this true in republican forms of government, wherein all
citizens have a voice. It is also true that education of the people
ought not to and does not stop upon their leaving school, but must
be kept abreast of the time by almost constant reading and studying.
It would therefore seem that no more important duty or higher
purpose is incumbent upon a State or municipality than to provide
free public libraries for the benefit of its inhabitants.
In this chapter the <strong>Commission</strong> will report the information it has
obtained on denial of equal protection of the laws by libraries receiving
financial aid from the Federal Government under the Library Services
Act of I956. 2
For years public library services in the 17 Southern States have
followed the traditional pattern of racial segregation, but practices often
went beyond the "separate but equal". According to a 1955 estimate
"two-thirds of the Negro population of ... 13 Southern States were
entirely without library services in I953-" 3 Recently Rice Estes, a
southerner (now librarian at the Pratt Institute Library, Brooklyn,
New York), observed that in most southern towns not only were Negroes
denied admission to the white branches of libraries, but also to the main
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