Proceedings of the First National Joint Conference of Librarians of Color - 8

.Librarians and Social Movements Elaine Harger Mount Si High School Snoqualmie, Washington Kathleen de la Peña McCook Distinguished University Professor University of South Florida Isabel Espinal W.E.B. Du Bois Library University of Massachusetts Amherst Abstract. Throughout all of human history there have been individuals and groups of people whose commitment to human justice has allowed them to transcend superficial differences that have often divided people. In our own troubled history in the United States, this has been true. Some Euro-Americans organized the abolitionist movement to fight against white privileges embodied in custom and law. Some men joined forces with women for voting rights. Leftists of various persuasions helped black brothers and sisters in the Civil Rights Movement. Members of all races and ethnicities supported gay rights. Librarians and other book people have been a vital part of all these transcendent movements. Where do we go now? What future do lovers of all humanity envision? How can we join forces to build that future? What obstacles do we face? A panel of librarians from the Progressive Librarians Guild and the American Library Association’s (ALA) Social Responsibility Round Table will address these and other questions. ELAINE HARGER On behalf of the Social Responsibilities Round Table (SRRT) of ALA, I want to thank program organizers of this first Joint Conference of Librarians of Color for accepting the proposal for this panel exploring the topic of librarians and social movements. SRRT has its roots in the great social movements leading up to, and away from, that tumultuous and transformative decade of the 1960s. During this time, librarianship was shaken to its core and out of its social and political complacency by librarians imbued with the spirit – and the activism – of the civil rights movement – librarians like E. J. Josey, Jim Welbourne, Binnie Tate, Vivian Hewitt, Major Owens, Miriam Braverman and so many others. These librarians were not afraid to recognize and question the many ways in which our profession 8 operated on a daily basis to perpetuate racism and social injustice. In his introduction to the book What Black Librarians are Saying, published in 1972 by Scarecrow Press, E. J. Josey quoted a statement, issued in 1966 by the National Committee of Negro Church-men that addressed the slogan “black power” which, at that time, was a contentious phrase both within and between black and white communities. I want to read the entire quote, as it reveals a fundamental understanding that is needed so very much in our own times. “The fundamental distortion facing us in the controversy about black power is rooted in a gross imbalance of power and conscience between Negroes and White Americans. It is this distortion, mainly, which is responsible for the widespread,

Proceedings of the First National Joint Conference of Librarians of Color

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