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Carnegie and Bertram never insisted on desegregated libraries or that communities accept and maintain separate branches for blacks, but they did attempt to make communities clearly set their own policies, so they could act accordingly"(Carnegie 36).  "Carnegie and Betram tried to compute grant amounts according to the number of people permitted to use them"(Carnegie 32).  This created a complication in southern communities where libraries were segregated.  If the number of likely library users included blacks in the community, Carnegie wanted the assurance that blacks would be allowed to use the library.

At the ALA midwinter meeting of 1961 an amendment was made to the library bill of rights.  "The right of an individual to the use of a library should not be denied or abridged because of his race, religion national origins, or political views."  Although the ALA officially supported integration, many felt the ALA was too complicit in library segregation. 

Public libraries were sometimes battleground sites in the civil rights movement.

Many southerners did not believe that African Americans should have been allowed to know how to read. When dealing with the racism of southern America and the required segregation, Andrew Carnegie went as far as to build separate Carnegie libraries specifically for African Americans.

Beginning in the late 19th century, women's clubs organized in the United States, and were critical in identifying the need for libraries, as well as organizing for their construction and long-term financial support through fundraising and lobbying government bodies.[1] Women's clubs were instrumental in the founding of 75-80 percent of the libraries in the United States.[2] Carnegie's grants were catalysts for library construction based on organizing by women's clubs.

Under segregation black people were generally denied access to public libraries in the Southern United States. Rather than insisting on his libraries being racially integrated, he funded separate libraries for African Americans. For example, at Houston he funded a separate Colored Carnegie Library because black people were prohibited from using the "white" Carnegie Library there.[4]

This coincided with the rise of women's clubs in the post-Civil War period, which were most responsible for organizing efforts to establish libraries, including long-term fundraising and lobbying within their communities to support operations and collections.[6] They led the establishment of 75-80 percent of the libraries in communities across the country.[7]

 Kentucky required separate schools, and also that no textbook would be issued to a black would ever be reissued or redistributed, they also prohibited interracial marriage.

une was a pioneering American educator and civil rights leader. Born Mary Jane McLeod on July 10, 1875, in Mayesville, South Carolina, the daughter of former slaves, Bethune won scholarships to attend Scotia Seminary in Concord, North Carolina (now Barber-Scotia College), and the Institute for Home and Foreign Missions in Chicago (now the Moody Bible Institute). In 1904, she moved to Daytona Beach, Florida, to found her own school. Her one-room school house became the Daytona Normal and Industrial School for Negro Girls before merging with Cookman Institute for Boys in 1923. The merged school later affiliated with the United Methodist Church and became the historically-black college named in her honor, Bethune-Cookman College (now Bethune-Cookman University). In 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Bethune the director of the National Youth Administration's Division of Negro Affairs, making her the first black woman to head a federal agency. She also founded the National Council of Negro Women and was an active member of the National Association of Colored Women until her death in May 1955. Date Created Around 1905 Place North America > United States of America > Florida > Daytona Beach Time 1900 AD - 1949 AD Topic Social sciences > Political science > Civil & political rights Social sciences > Education > Schools & their activities; special education Additional Subjects African American girls ; African Americans--Segregation ; Bethune, Mary McLeod, 1875-1955 ; Women ; Women's history Type of Item Prints, Photographs Physical Description 1 negative: black and white; 4 x 5 inches Institution State Library and Archives of Florida External Resource http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.wdl/ftasa.4013

Mary McLeod Bethune was a pioneering American educator and civil rights leader.

In 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Bethune the director of the National Youth Administration's Division of Negro Affairs, making her the first black woman to head a federal agency.

Women'S Clubs are voluntary organizations that were originally formed by women who had been denied access to the major institutions of America's democratic civil society.

Working women formed working girls' clubs and small-town women formed civic improvement associations. In bigger cities, women organized citywide and neighborhood women's clubs and women's educational and industrial unions. Ethnic, church-based, African American, and settlement house women's clubs were founded across the country.

Although women continued to belong to literary, social, and charitable clubs, the majority of women's clubs organized after the Civil War had specific civic and political agendas. The specific purposes of each club differed according to the type of club and its stated purpose.