| Summary: | A series of Florence Herald and Florence Times articles reporting on the open house of the WC Handy Library on Monday night, March 22, 1948. Originally simply the Florence Negro Library, the facility, a branch library of the Muscle Shoals Regional Library System, was located in the parsonage of the Tennessee Valley Community Church (originally the parsonage of the old First Congregational Church) at 113 N Pine St. and situated between the two-story, red-brick Lauderdale County Jail and Tennessee Valley Community Church. Intended to serve the Black community of Florence-Lauderdale the library would also serve the Black community of Colbert County until the Negro library in Sheffield was completed. One thousand volumes were available for check-out and Josephine Kimber served as librarian.
The board members for the new library were, Dr. Leonard Jerry Hicks, MD, who served as chairman, Prof. WH Lewis of Burrell High School, and Mrs. Eva Simpson.
At the Monday night, March 22, 1948 open house, over 100 guests, including board members of the Regional and Negro branch boards, attended the open house between 7 and 9 pm. Refreshments were served by the Women's Council of Florence and the Y-Teens of Burrell High School.
In April of 1948 a contest was sponsored by the board of directors of the new library, with Florence-Lauderdale Public Library board member AL Thomlinson offering a $10 cash reward to the African-American student who could write the best essay on naming the library; the contest resulted in a tie between Burrell students Wesley Carr Lewis, who wrote his essay on WC Handy, and Bettie Jo Cherry, who selected Prof. George N. White. Florence Times editor Louis Eckl was asked to break the tie, and Eckl selected Lewis' essay as the winner, thus the Negro branch of the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library was named after WC Handy.
According to local historian Alvin Rosenbaum, on p. xviii of the introduction to his book "The Muscle Shoals: First Frontier of These United States," his father Stanley, a Florence State English professor and chairman of the Southern Regional Council's Alabama Council on Human Relations for the Muscle Shoals Area, was also the treasurer of the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Board in the 1940s and 1950s. Rosenbaum writes:
"The Negro library [WC Handy Library], part of the library system, was at the corner of Mobile and Pine Streets, a small building with a tin roof next to the red-brick Lauderdale County Jail. In the 1950s, the part-time librarian submitted an estimate for a new roof (the books were getting wet from the rain), which was more than the building was worth, according to Stanley. With board approval he directed the Negro library be closed, the books to be transferred to the main library facility [on North Wood Avenue], and the water fountain to be shut off and the restrooms locked (to meet Alabama's Jim Crow laws). The facility was integrated without public comment or incident (and was perhaps the first *public* facility in Alabama to integrate, c. 1956)."
Actually, the integration of the library occurred in November of 1952. We can say say this because copies of the Muscle Shoals Regional Library Board Minutes, October, 1947 - May, 1958 were recently discovered and specifically reference the integration.
At a Muscle Shoals Regional Library Board meeting held at the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library on September 26, 1952:
"Mr. [Harold] May [editor of the Florence Herald and a member of Jewish Temple B'Nai Israel] made a motion that as of November 1, 1952, the W. C. Handy Library be discontinued, that the Negro population of Florence be allowed to borrow books from the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library, and that the Handy Library Board be notified of this action immediately, since the attendance and circulation of the Handy Library does not seem to warrant the expense of keeping it open. Mr. Rosenbaum seconded the motion, and it passed."
At an earlier meeting of the Regional Board on January 18, 1952, "the problem of the Handy Library was brought up" by board member Stanley Rosenbaum. It was noted that "the circulation reports from this library have been extremely low" and that the WC Handy Library Board currently owed three years' rent on the building. Could the "problem" of the Handy Library include a leaky roof? Regardless, at a board meeting of February 6, 1953:
"It was reported that a number of Negro readers have started using the Florence Library since the Handy Library was closed. When reference work had to be done they were allowed to use the county room. It was decided to continue this policy in regard to their reading in the library, and to regulate their use of periodicals to those magazines which can be checked out of the library, inasmuch as the library is supported by public funds and cannot afford too much criticism."
So far no newspaper reports of the library's integration have been found.
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