Black and white library photo

Timeline in Library Development for African Americans

By jweidner
  • The Athenaeum Library is founded in Boston

    The Athenaeum Library is founded in Boston

    The Athenaeum Library is founded in Boston. Founded in 1807, the Boston Athenæum is one of the oldest and most distinguished independent libraries and cultural institutions in the United States

  • Wilmington, Delaware.

    A school and library are established for African Americans

  • The Reading Room Society Philadelphia

    First social library for African Americans

  • The Philadelphia Library Company of Colored Persons

    Is organized as a literary society.

  • The main library and the first four branches of the Enoch Pratt Free Library open in Baltimore

    Provides service to users of all races.

  • The U.S. Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson

    This established the “separate but equal” law that legalizes segregated libraries.
  • A Carnegie library is built at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

    A Carnegie library is built at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

    Tuskegee University is a private, historically black university

  • In Henderson, Kentucky

    One-room annex opens August 1 at the rear of the Eighth Street Colored School to serve as a library—the first structure built specifically to offer public library service to African Americans.
  • The Western Colored Branch Library of the Louisville (Ky.) Free Public Library

    The Western Colored Branch Library of the Louisville (Ky.) Free Public Library

    First branch of a public library system to offer service exclusively to African Americans, opens September 1 in three rooms of a private residence. In 1908 Louisville’s Western Colored Branch Library relocates to a new building paid for by Carnegie.
  • The Eastern Colored Branch of the Louisville Free Library opens

    The Eastern Colored Branch of the Louisville Free Library opens

    Louisville is the first city to have two branch libraries that offer service to African Americans.

  • The first meeting of ALA’s Work with Negroes Round Table is held.

  • The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture begins

    The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture begins

    when the personal collection of black scholar Arturo Alfonso Schomburg is added to NYPL’s Division of Negro Literature.

  • The West Virginia Supreme Court

    Rules that Charleston libraries cannot exclude black patrons since, as taxpayers, they are equally entitled to library service.

  • ALA holds its first integrated annual conference

    In Miami Beach after years of avoiding the South as a meeting place due to racial segregation.

  • ALA amends the Library Bill of Rights

    To support “the rights 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.”

  • The Cooperative College Library Center

    The first consortium of black academic libraries, opens in Atlanta.
  • The Martin Luther King Memorial Library

    The Martin Luther King Memorial Library

    Opens in Washington, replacing the old District of Columbia Central Public Library.
  • Clara Stanton Jones

    Clara Stanton Jones

    Inaugurated as ALA’s first African-American president and the Association adopts a “Resolution on Racism and Sexism Awareness.”

  • The Auburn Avenue Research Library on African-American Culture and History

    Opens as a special branch of the Atlanta-Fulton County Public Library System.

  • The Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library opens as part of the Denver Public Library system.

  • Carla Hayden was sworn in as the 14th Librarian of Congress on September 14, 2016

    Carla Hayden was sworn in as the 14th Librarian of Congress on September 14, 2016

    Hayden, the first woman and the first African American to lead the national library, was nominated to the position by President Barack Obama on February 24, 2016, and her nomination was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on July 13.