The Legacy of Black Women in Librarianship: When They Dared to Be Powerful

The Legacy of Black Women in Librarianship: When They Dared to Be Powerful, edited by Nicole A. Cooke with an afterword by Aisha Johnson, profiles the lives and works of sixteen Black women librarians. Cooke (PhD, Communication, Information, and Library Studies, Rutgers University) serves as professor and Augusta Baker Endowed Chair at the University of South Carolina’s School of Information Science. Johnson (PhD, Information Studies, Florida State University) is the associate dean for Academic Affairs and Outreach at the Georgia Tech Library. The collection of essays is impressive, as it provides new insights into well-known Black women librarians and unites them with noteworthy but lesser-known colleagues.With this book, Cooke continues the work begun by Libraries: Culture, History, and Society’s 2022 special issue on Black women librarians, this time presenting a monograph collecting biographies of Black women librarians. Like the journal issue that preceded it, this book fills a void in the literature of library history, a subject in which the lives of Black librarians, particularly Black women librarians, have been largely underexplored. Thankfully, the profession has benefited from recent book-length biographies of Black librarians, such as Erica Ciallea and Philip Palmer’s edited collection on Belle da Costa Greene and Renate Chancellor’s biographies of E. J. Josey and Clara Stanton Jones. While the sixteen chapters featured in this book are strong and can stand individually, collecting so many powerful tributes into a single title makes this offering distinct.The intentionality of the structure of the book speaks to the obvious care and reverence for Black women held by the editor. Fittingly, Cooke’s introduction opens with a quote from librarian and author Audre Lorde, a tribute of sorts; Lorde’s famous quote from the 1979 Second Sex Conference is also acknowledged in the book’s title. The prologue sets the stage for what is to come, featuring a poem by the poet laureate of Columbia, South Carolina, Jennifer Bartell Boykin, who pays tribute to Augusta Baker and the foundation she laid for those who came after her. Although the chapters do not appear to be arranged in any order, as the reader progresses through the book, the significance of Black women’s contributions to the library field is magnified, chapter by chapter. The themes are subtle, yet clear. Slowly but surely, a pattern of service, sacrifice, and quiet but always persistent activism is revealed across profiles. One by one, we see how, to paraphrase Boykin, the good we do impacts others long after we are gone.Seasoned students of Black library history will recognize familiar subjects, such as Augusta Baker, Eliza Atkins Gleason, and Charlemae Hill Rollins. Still, the essays are a reintroduction of sorts, as they highlight little-known aspects of their subjects’ work or reframe existing information through new lenses. For example, LaVerne Gray’s profile of Rollins and her book, Christmas Gif’, allows the reader to see her as not only a librarian but also an author and “content creator,” decades before the role became popularized through social media. Likewise, chapters on Mayme A. Clayton, an early proponent of what has become known today as community archives, and Sadie Marie Peterson Delaney, a pioneer of bibliotherapy, provide much-deserved acknowledgment and recognition.Wisely, the book also introduces the reader to Black women librarians who have been largely overlooked outside of their regions, such as Mattie Herd Roland and Ethel Bolden. Similarly, Cooke’s book exposes the library work of civil rights activist Ella Baker and poet Anne Bethel Spencer, whose forays into librarianship have been overshadowed by other aspects of their careers. Like the prologue, the poetic epilogue, also by Boykin, makes a nice endcap to the book, as it envisions the long-term impact of Rollins’s work.The assemblage of so many seemingly disparate individual biographical essays into a single book would likely have challenged another editor, but Cooke’s wise curation, along with a strong introduction and powerful afterword by Jones, strengthens the collection. By bringing together the known, the little-known, and the overlooked, the book amplifies each woman’s contributions to the field. Black library history, biographical or otherwise, tends to highlight the experiences of those living, learning, and working in the Southern United States; the inclusion of Black women librarians from other areas, such as Miriam Matthews, of Los Angeles, and Alice Roberts, initially of Baltimore, helps to expand our understanding, teasing out geographical nuances while also identifying ties, such as racism, segregation, and perseverance, that bind these women across time, location, and space.The writing style across the essays is refreshing, and telling the stories of these women is a labor of love for most of the authors. The tone is almost conversational at times, drawing the reader directly into the challenges and triumphs of the subject. Jahala Simuel and Bethany McGowan’s interview with Jessie Carney Smith is a delight, allowing readers to hear from such a well-respected leader in her own voice. The book is inspiring in that it illustrates the challenges these women had to overcome, several of which have reemerged in the present day.This book should be a staple for anyone serious about understanding the contributions of Black women to the library profession. As I read through it, I noted connections among the women profiled. For example, several passed through the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library. Many attended historically Black colleges and universities. Others rubbed shoulders with author and librarian Arna Bontemps. To some extent, a fictive kinship within Black librarianship manifests as we see how intertwined the lives of these women were. Gray, in her essay, fittingly describes that phenomenon as “collectivity and mutuality” (190). Through this book, we see clearly how the contributions of early Black women librarians paved the way for successive generations. The only constructive criticism that I can offer is that it left me longing for more information about interconnectedness among these women. Overall, Cooke’s book makes an important and necessary contribution to the field of library history. I highly recommend this book for all library and information science collections. I would also recommend it for undergraduate and graduate collections, as it is relevant for women’s studies and Black studies.