Fight for the Right to Read

Book — Non-fiction. By Mike Selby. 2019. 208 pages.
This book reveals the histories of grassroots “freedom libraries” that were at the heart of the Civil Rights Movement in the Deep South and tells the stories of courageous people who operated and used them.

Picture book. By Carole Boston Weatherford and Eric Velasquez. 2017. 48 pages.
This picture book is a tribute to Arturo Schomburg, the Afro Puerto Rican historian collector and activist who chronicled the Black history of the Diaspora.

Article. By Mariame Kaba, design by Cindy Lau, artwork by Erik Ruin, and research support by Noah Berlatsky. 2025. 12 pages.
Walks readers through the history of assaults on librarians and examples of library workers pushing back.

Five Black men were arrested for staging a peaceful sit-in at the Alexandria “public” library that denied access to African Americans, making this the anniversary of one of the earliest instances of this form of non-violent protest that became popular in the mid-20th century.

In attempt to end segregation at the William R. McKenney Central Library in Petersburg, Virginia, a group of African American students held a sit-in.

In an act of civil disobedience against the whites-only Greenville County Public Library, eight young Black people entered the library, began reading, and were subsequently arrested. They became known as the Greenville Eight, and the library finally desegregated months later after many legal battles.

Nine Tougaloo College students and members of the Jackson Youth Council of the NAACP staged a sit-in to protest segregation at the Jackson Public Library in 1961 and were subsequently arrested.

Four Black teenagers tried to enter the whites-only St. Helena branch of the Audubon Regional Library in Greensburg, Louisiana. Instead, the library closed. Undeterred, the St. Helena Four continued to try to desegregate the local library and other segregated facilities.