“Could my dark hands break through the dark shadow?”: Gender, Jim Crow, and librarianship during the long freedom struggle, 1935–1955

Abstract

This article illuminates the role of southern African American female librarians during the long civil rights movement (1930s through 1960s). Black women faced the “double jeopardy” of race and gender, but college-educated, “Female Talented Tenth” members such as Mollie Huston Lee and other North Carolina librarians committed to personal and community uplift. Institutions such as the North Carolina Negro Library Association (1935–55) and the Richard B. Harrison Library (established in 1935) were incubators of innovative resistance strategies to white racism and were crucial in setting the stage for direct action in the 1960s.