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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]

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.

Dr Lillian Herald South   Born:  January 31, 1879 Died:  September 13, 1966  A native of Warren County, KY, Lillian South exerted a powerful influence on Kentucky’s public health. She was born the daughter of a doctor, JF South and his wife Martha (nee Moore).  Lillian went to public school in Bowling Green and graduated with a BA degree from Potter College (at the present location of WKU) when she was only 18 years old.  She then traveled to Patterson, NJ, where she studied for two years for her RN degree in nursing. Having “aced” every course in nursing school, she decided to pursue a doctoral degree in medicine. After 5 years, she earned her MD degree  from the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania (1904). She returned to practice in Bowling Green, joining the successful practice of Dr J N McCormack and Dr A T McCormack. Two years later the three doctors established St Joseph Hospital in the South family home on (what is now) 12th Avenue. The home was re-built to accommodate 42 beds.  Just a few years later, in 1910, Dr South was appointed as state bacteriologist at the State Board of Health in Louisville, a position that she held for 40 years. In this capacity, she gained national recognition for her many years of research on hookworms, rabies, and leprosy in Kentucky. She is credited for virtually eradicating the once widely prevalent hookworm from the state, through public health campaigns to exterminate houseflies which are the vector. She also led the movement to ban the use of the public drinking cup.  Dr South was also very active in state and national organizations, and was the first woman to be elected vice president of the AMA (1914). She was an active member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Kentucky Medical Association, the Jefferson County Medical Society, and the Tri-County Medical Society.     [Note: the Warren County Medical Society was formerly called the Tri-County Medical Society].  She was president of the Association of Southern Medical Women, and councilor of the American Association of Medical Women.  Dr South traveled extensively to learn as much as she could about the science of medicine. She studied at Johns Hopkins, Mayo Clinic, the Pasteur Lab in Paris, as well as the Madame Curie Radium Institute. She was a delegate to the International Hygiene Congress in Dresden, Germany, and to the Public Health Division of the League of Nations in Geneva, Switz.

Instead, women formed missionary societies to address all manner of local and international needs, from the support of job training in their communities to funding for African American missionaries to Africa. They worked on urban ills, established reading groups, and advocated for better living conditions. They also wrote for religious periodicals, promoting quite traditional ideals of Victorian womanhood, respectability, and racial uplift. Women also continued work among their less fortunate counterparts in the rural South, in what continued to be an uneasy alliance. Like male religious leaders, too, they protested the creeping effects of Jim Crow laws and the systematic violence of lynching.

Visible, but unsung But scan historic

Visible, but unsung But scan historical images of the most dramatic moments of the civil rights movement — protesters blasted by fire hoses and dogs lunging at blacks — and women and girls are everywhere.

There is a 1964 image of Mississippi beautician Vera Piggy styling hair and educating her customers on voter registration.