Musmann Article

Musmann’s article really highlight’s the poor job that the ALA did in addressing the issue of segregation and racism. At first the ALA was reluctant to get involved because it saw library service to blacks as a regional (southern) problem. It interesting that in the results of the 1922 “Work with Negroes Round Table” survey northern libraries claim to have special services aimed at African Americans but in reality they didn’t. It may have been worse that while northern library’s services that were aimed at blacks were less restrictive librarians were deluded into thinking that they were far better than southern library services. The 1922 and 1923 round tables both seemed useless because while the first conducted the survey they didn’t use any of the information that was gathered from it to do any thing. Furthermore, the speakers that Musmann cited from the second round table were downright racism unlike the first who Musmann implies were drove to inaction by the daunting amount of work to be done.

The treatment of black librarian during this time was poor as well. According to the results of the 1922 round table survey and the 1930 Shores survey very little changed in the attitudes toward African Americans working in the libraries. I was must struck by the Shores survey that reported libraries that fell into his fourth and fifth categories and by comparison allow fairly liberal library use did not have black librarians at the time of the survey. I was as if the level of access the libraries gave to African American patrons was kept in check by denying them access to the library professionally.