E J Josey

This work provides a comprehensive examination of the life and professional career of E.J Josey within the broader historical and political landscape of the civil rights movement. In the era of Jim Crow, Josey rose to prominence in the library profession by challenging the American Library Association (ALA) to live up to its creed of equality for all. This was not easy during the 1950s and 1960s, during segregation. Using interviews with Josey and his contemporaries, as well as several archival sources, library educator Renate Chancellor analyzes Josey’s leadership, particularly within modern day racial currents. During his professional career, spanning over fifty years (1952-2002), Josey worked as a librarian (1953-1966), an administrator of library services (1966-1986), and as a professor of library science (1986-1995). He also served as President of the American Library Association and perhaps his most notable achievement, he successfully drafted a resolution that prevented state library associations from discriminating against African American librarians. This essentially ended segregation in the ALA. Josey’s transformative leadership provides a model to tackle today’s civil rights challenges both in and outside the library profession. This authoritative work copublished by the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) documents for the historical record a significant period of history that is underexplored in the scholarly literature. The target audience for this book are researchers, historians, LIS educators and students interested in understanding the complex struggle for civil and human rights in professional organizations.

E. J. Josey and Marva DeLoach have compiled a treasure trove of information about black librarianship. This volume includes history, statistics, and documentation of contemporary issues related both to African American participation in librarianship and to the organizations that they built to provide information resources for their people. Of interest to all librarians, bibliophiles, bibliographers, and students of American culture, this handbook fills a niche in American cultural history. Like the first edition, published in 1977, this new edition chronicles the history and achievements of black librarians in their chosen profession. Chapters documenting pioneering individuals and events are juxtaposed with historical descriptions of early professional organizations. Other sections provide important information related to diversity, including the language of diversity and salient statistical facts about African American librarians. New or revised chapters treat issues related to information technology and electronic resources, library services to African Americans, and library education. Of special interest is the section on African American resources, which covers archival and fugitive literature, library holdings, literature, oral history programs, and museums, with several chapters on awards. A complete section is devoted to the important issue of health sciences libraries and blacks. Another new section covers libraries, library education, and publishing in Africa. The final section highlights the role of African Americans in selected areas of the knowledge industry.

The 1970 and 1994 editions of The Black Librarian in America by E.J. Josey singled out racism as an important issue to be addressed within the library profession. Although much has changed since then, this latest collection of 48 essays by Black librarians and library supporters again identifies racism as one of many challenges of the new century. Essays are written by library educators, library graduate students, retired librarians, public library trustees, veteran librarians, and new librarians fresh out of school with great ideas and wholesome energies. They cover such topics as poorly equipped school libraries and the need to preserve the school library, a call to action to all librarians to make the shift to new and innovative models of public education, the advancement in information technology and library operations, special libraries, recruitment and the Indiana State Library program, racism in the history of library and information science, and challenges that have plagued librarianship for decades. This collection of poignant essays covers a multiplicity of concerns for the 21st-century Black librarian and embodies compassion and respect for the provision of information, an act that defines librarianship. The essays are personable, inspiring, and thought provoking for all library professionals, regardless of race, class, or gender.

This book will contribute to the discourse on ways of increasing anti-racism, empowerment, and representation in the LIS field and beyond. It continues in the civil rights legacy of African American librarian pioneers including Dr. E.J. Josey, Dr. Virginia Lacy Jones, Dr. Carla Hayden, and Dr. Eliza Atkins Gleason.

This book contains essays reflecting on the role of the black librarian at the beginning of the 1970s. It looks at the librarian's profile; why he or she chose librarianship; the opportunities and obstacles faced; and projections for the future for black librarians.

Long before e-mail, Internet, talking computers and jolly jargon, Sandy Berman was out there doing his best to link the world with old-fashioned letters to more friends than the Library of Congress has headings. His hard-hitting polemics, whether they be for political, racial, sexual or ethnic causes, have enforced the idea of librarian as activist. It all adds up to an exhilarating intellectual who has profoundly shaken our ideas of what libraries and librarians are all about--From Bill Katz's Foreword. For nearly four decades Sandy Berman has been the embodiment of the activist librarian, championing the causes of intellectual and personal freedom with a seemingly boundless supply of energy. His work to rid the Library of Congress subject headings of bias is legendary, but it is perhaps his encouragement and prodding of fellow librarians to broaden their vision of the profession that most counts. Here many of his friends and associates (Fay M. Blake, Martha Cornog, Elaine Harger, Zoia Horn, E.J. Josey, Will Manley, Noel Peattie, Norman Stevens and 24 others) reflect on what Sandy has meant to them and the profession.

In The Desegregation of Public Libraries in the Jim Crow South, Wayne A. and Shirley A. Wiegand tell the comprehensive story of the integration of southern public libraries. As in other efforts to integrate civic institutions in the 1950s and 1960s, the determination of local activists won the battle against segregation in libraries. In particular, the willingness of young black community members to take part in organized protests and direct actions ensured that local libraries would become genuinely free to all citizens. The Wiegands trace the struggle for equal access to the years before the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, when black activists in the South focused their efforts on equalizing accommodations, rather than on the more daunting—and dangerous—task of undoing segregation. After the ruling, momentum for vigorously pursuing equality grew, and black organizations shifted to more direct challenges to the system, including public library sit-ins and lawsuits against library systems. Although local groups often took direction from larger civil rights organizations, the energy, courage, and determination of younger black community members ensured the eventual desegregation of Jim Crow public libraries. The Wiegands examine the library desegregation movement in several southern cities and states, revealing the ways that individual communities negotiated—mostly peacefully, sometimes violently—the integration of local public libraries. This study adds a new chapter to the history of civil rights activism in the mid-twentieth century and celebrates the resolve of community activists as it weaves the account of racial discrimination in public libraries through the national narrative of the civil rights movement.