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Lecture: Alexandria’s 1939 Library Sit-in

Title:Lecture: Alexandria’s 1939 Library Sit-in
Date & Time:Wed May 25, 2016 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM
Location:Lyceum
201 S. Washington St.
Event Details:African-Americans in Alexandria have long been out-spoken advocates for their own civil rights. In 1865, just two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, and days after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, a local delegation of black residents met with President Andrew Johnson to push for Federal protection from restrictive state laws. Not quite seventy-five years later, black Alexandrians would take an early step in the 20th-century Civil Rights Movement by staging one of the first sit-ins in American history.

In 1939, Alexandria’s 33,000 residents were served by just a single library, named in memory of Kate Waller Barrett, in the 700 block of Queen Street. As was common at the time among public facilities in the South, the library was segregated. While blacks voted and paid taxes to support these services, they were barred from using the library. During the summer of 1939, Howard University graduate and local attorney Samuel Wilbert Tucker decided to take action.

Dr. Brenda Mitchell-Powell will recount this landmark episode and assess its impacts in her talk. Dr. Mitchell-Powell earned her doctoral degree from the Simmons College School of Library and Information Science in May, 2015, as an American Library Association Spectrum Fellow. She previously worked as a freelance editor and was the founding and creative Editor-in-Chief of MultiCultural Review and the Editor-in-Chief of Small Press magazine. She has served on four panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, has served as Senior International Correspondent for African Link, and as the Children’s Literature Editor for Social Studies & the Young Learner. She worked as Senior Library Assistant at Gibbs College in Norwalk, CT and as a Librarian at the Norwalk Public Library. Dr. Mitchell-Powell is currently at work on a book version of her dissertation on the 1939 Alexandria sit-in.

Offered by The Alexandria Historical Society, the talk is open to the public, and doors open at 7:00 PM.
Contact Person:Audrey Davis
Contact Phone No.:703.746.4706
Contact Email:Audrey.davis@alexandriava.gov
Fees:The program is free for members, and there is a nominal charge of $5 for non-members; a membership table on-site will allow people to join the Society that night.
Audience:Anyone may attend
Tags:Black History Museum, Lyceum, Museums, Old & Historic Alexandria


For event details visit http://www.alexandriava.gov/c/13850
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