Louisville Magazine

MAR 2013

Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.

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Illustration by Carrie Neumayer JUST SAYIN��� www.womensdiagnosticcenter.com/lou While doing online historical research for this month���s special package on west Louisville, I came across a 1917 report written for the Bulletin of the American Library Association on the city���s two fedgling ���colored��� branches ��� the Western Branch at 604 S. 10th St., which opened in 1908 and remains active, and the Eastern Branch at 600 Lampton St. in Smoketown, which opened in 1914 and closed in 1975 for budgetary reasons. Tey were the frst two Carnegie-funded library buildings reserved exclusively for the African-American population during the post-Plessy v. Ferguson days of ���separate but equal.��� Written by the head of the children���s department of the Louisville Free Public Library system, the report addresses ���our experiment and the value of the Colored Branch libraries as laboratories for the study of the colored race.��� Wow. Did the walls have one-way mirrors with white anthropologists taking notes behind them? It really was a prime example of the kind of controlled benevolence that could also be called, to quote historian George C. Wright, ���polite racism.��� And yet, how else was the writer supposed to look at this novel adventure? Up until 40 years before, the white city fathers hadn���t even felt the necessity to open a public school that African-Americans could attend. It either hadn���t dawned on them that blacks might be worth the public investment (there were numerous churchafliated black schools struggling to stay open by the 1870s) or they felt somehow threatened by the thought of aiding black education. Te 1917 writer went on to comment that ���in this atmosphere of ���service and freedom��� there has been a growing interest on the (AfricanAmerican community���s) part, which is very gratifying.��� OK, now I���m feeling guilty. I mean, here I am, questioning the intentions of a library system that was not, by state Jim Crow law, able to admit blacks in its white branches, while this writer ��� culpable only of refecting the rhetorical tenor of her time ��� fnds joy in what she perceives to be terrifc progress. Ninety-fve years of hindsight. It can���t be worth more than a nickel. ��� Jack Welch www.facebook.com/louisvillemagazine 3.13 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 1 9

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