Making books available: the role of early libraries, librarians, and booksellers in the promotion of African American children's literature.

Librarians still have the chance to grow with their libraries, and Negro youth come in closer touch with teachers and librarians who may guide their reading. For the book which has meant something to its reader is never allowed to moulder on the shelves, and the smaller library, well-used, may serve to light a chain of torches. (Curtis 95)

Literature can be used as one of the tools to build images and concepts in the minds of children. Literature written for and about African American children can today be found on many bookstore shelves and in public and school libraries throughout the United States. The characters in these books can be historical figures who reach back to the arrival of the African in America and to the continuous struggle and development that is evident even today; other books reach further back - to the continent of Africa before there was an America. The characters also display the different regions, class levels, and family structures of African Americans.

African American children's literature enables the African American child to feel a sense of value and self-pride, and this literature also helps white children to understand and appreciate the rich culture, history, and tradition of the African American. As Mary McLeod Bethune stated in an address to the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, "It is important to give to all children a true picture of [the] races" (9).

African American children's writer Walter Dean Myers has discussed the importance of telling African American children stories that recount their historical past, inform them about their culture, and display images from their own African American family values and traditions. "Is it not logical," asks Myers,

for the child to assume that if the books denote who is significant, and that if people of color are not represented, then they don't count? It is this idea, this defining of value precepts, that should concern all parents. Children need books, in and out of school, that depict people who look like them because they are being told on a daily basis that these books are indicators of importance. (30)

Approximately seventy years ago, African American children were routinely exposed to negative images of African Americans and African American culture in children's books which African American parents, librarians, and educators realized were detrimental to both African American and white children, and which therefore needed to be removed from library shelves. Mary McLeod Bethune's concern for children and history led her to argue that "the ideals, character and attitudes of races are born within the minds of children; most prejudices are born with youth and it is our duty to see that the great researches of Negro History are placed in the language and story of the child. Not only the Negro child but [the children] of all races should read and know of the achievements, accomplishments and deeds of the Negro" (10). It was time to examine carefully the books that were being used to educate children, and for African American writers to create works that could be more useful and much more truthful. The Associated Publishers, an African American publishing company founded in 1927 and backed by African American authors, educators, and historical scholars such as Carter G. Woodson and Charles Wesley, began publishing informative books that taught the history and culture of African Americans, but the company and its efforts were not large enough to remove the negative depictions of the African American from the minds of many children throughout the United States.

African American librarians realized that African American children who came to their branch libraries needed to see images that were appropriately reflective of themselves in the books they read, but few books addressed this need. Augusta Baker, an African American librarian in the Children's Department at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library, observed in 1975 that,

by the late thirties, some parents and other adults realized that black boys and girls were reading about the heroes and history of every country without being told the truth about the contributions of their own African and slave ancestors to the progress of this country. They should have been able to read about Crispus Attucks, the Revolutionary War hero; Dr. Charles Drew, whose experiments resulted in the first blood plasma bank; and Phillis Wheatley, the black poet. Never mind the plantation stories! ("Changing" 79)

Baker kept alive the spirit of her heritage as she helped to remove the negative images of the African American in children's books from the minds of both African American and white children that entered her library.

Between 1920 and 1942, the 135th Street Branch was administered by Ernestine Rose (Bontemps 187). Rose, a white woman, was "chosen because of her experience in developing library service among racial groups" and "was made librarian for the express[ed] purpose of adapting the staff, service, and book stock of the branch to its altered public" (Jenkins 216). She believed that the 135th Street Branch Library should be fully equipped with African American material to accommodate the patrons who lived in the surrounding area of Harlem. Because Harlem was one of the country's largest African American-populated communities during the early 1900s, the 135th Street Branch developed a large collection of materials written by, about, and for African descendants. The entire third floor was devoted to the "Division of Negro Literature, History and Prints," which Rose, along with a group of scholars and community leaders known collectively as the Citizens' Committee, established in 1925. The Division came to include Arthur Schomburg's privately developed collection of African descendant literature and artifacts, including more than 5,000 rare and unique editions, 3,000 autographed manuscripts, 2,000 etchings, and several thousand pamphlets (Biddle 331-32). But even though this library had many items dedicated to African American history, the supply of high-quality material for African American children remained very low.

Augusta Baker took the initiative to remove from the shelves the books that negatively depicted African American characters as poverty-stricken, lazy but happy, living on a plantation with largely distorted body features, and speaking with the thick, difficult-to-interpret dialect commonly encountered in children's books. This was not the image that Baker wanted the children that visited her library to absorb. These children's books, she wrote in 1975, "seemed to foster prejudice by planting false images in the minds of children" ("Changing" 79). The positive African American images that Baker wanted the children to encounter were not possible because few children's books portrayed African Americans respectfully. White writers were basically the only creators of children's books, and they tended to perceive African Americans as submissive. Bette Banner Preer noted in 1948 that "the number of juvenile books about minority groups, particularly about the Negro boy and girl," written prior to World War II "was relatively small, and there was little effort on the part of authors to write stories that would help to tear down the traditional prejudices. A close examination of these stories reveals clearly that many writers based their knowledge of a racial group on their association with a few individuals who needed to be helped rather than to be exploited in writing" (79).

Few publishers gave African American writers the opportunity to write books for children during the 1930s. Only four of the twenty-seven books about "The American Negro" suggested "for inclusion in all school libraries" in a 1933 article in the Wilson Bulletin for Libraries were written for children: Arthur Fauset's For Freedom, Arna Bontemps and Langston Hughes's Popo and Fifina, M. T. Pritchard's Upward Path, and Carter G. Woodson's African Myths (Young 563). Bontemps and Hughes, both successful writers, collaborated to create Popo and Fifina for Macmillan in 1932, and Bontemps continued to dedicate his writing to children with You Can't Pet a Possum in 1934 and in 1937, with assistance from a Julius Rosenwald Fund grant, The Sad-Faced Boy.

Bontemps, being both an educator and the father of six children, knew the importance of writing books that would reflect positive African American images; this meant, among other things, freeing his African American characters from the heavy dialect that most other authors had imposed upon them. In a 1939 article, Ione Morrison Rider praises Bontemps for his determination to create books for children and his ability to free "the natural rhythms of colloquial speech from the tyranny of traditional renderings that prevent its enjoyment by children" (13).

The creation of a suggested reading list, then, represented only a small step in getting appropriate books for African American children on library shelves. Augusta Baker made it her mission to reach the children of Harlem, who had very limited opportunities to hear stories and poems written by and/or about African Americans. Not only did Baker read African American stories and poems to the children, but she introduced the children of Harlem to such writers as Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Claude McKay, who recited their works at the library. Additionally, Baker brought the children into contact with political figures, anthropologists, and even African American actors, who played at the American Negro Theatre, which was housed in the library's basement.

Since there were very few books for and about African Americans available for children, Arthur Schomburg, along with James Weldon Johnson and a group of Harlem women who called themselves The James Weldon Johnson Literary Guild, worked together very closely with the children's section of the 135th Street Branch Library to make a difference. Augusta Baker recalls that Schomburg "was intensely interested in children and aware of their ignorance in the area of black history. 'These books must be published,' he would say, 'and it is the responsibility of you and other children's librarians to get them written and published'" (qtd. in Josey, Black 118). The group gave the library the money to purchase forty books that, through their "language, theme, and illustration," would give children "an unbiased, accurate, well[-]rounded picture of Negro life in all parts of the world" (Baker, "Guidelines" 131).

The most important of these criteria was that the illustrations could not offer insulting caricatures of African Americans: "An artist can portray a Negro child - black skin, crinkly hair, and short nose - and make him attractive and appealing" (Baker, "Reading" 140). The language could not be dialect-laden, nor could it include derogatory terms such as darkie, nigger, or pickaninny. According to Augusta Baker,

There were plantation stories then, with all these children playing together, born and raised on the same plantation. A great deal was made in the beginning of the book of the fact that both the black children and the white children were born on and never left the plantation, and were raised together by "Mammy." Then you'd come to the dialog. The white children would speak as if they had Ph.D's from Oxford, but you couldn't understand one word the little black children were trying to say because you were bogged down in the "deses" and "doses." ("Reading" 141)

Thematically, an African American character could not be presented as "a clown or a buffoon whose only object in life [wa]s to serve his master faithfully and without question"; rather, he or she had to be "a character who [wa]s making some worth-while contribution to the progress of society. There are Negro doctors, lawyers, judges, soldiers, sailors, teachers," observed Baker; "in fact Negroes are found in every walk of life" ("Changing" 82).

Most white authors of children's books were not interested in motivating African American children; their goal was to entertain fellow whites, sometimes by ridiculing African Americans. Author Carole A. Parks has pointed out that "white publishers were not interested in accepting books by black authors. They thought there was no market for such books and were not interested in points of views held by those authors" (67). Publishers did not believe that most African Americans could read, and they assumed that those who could were financially incapable of purchasing books. E. J. Josey contends that, because "publishers of the past, like authors, had little or no contact with black people and knew absolutely nothing about their way of life," those publishers were perfectly willing "to continue to depict black people in the stereotypical way of the day" (What 278). Thus, the responsibility for changing the images of African Americans in children's books fell upon African Americans who had the power to make a difference in the publishing market.

Two of the main supporters of the children's book collection, Arthur Schomburg and James Weldon Johnson, died in June of 1938, several months prior to the Collection's completion. In 1939, it became the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection for Children. The Collection came very close in meeting all the criteria established earlier for children's books, even though very few books could fully meet those three requirements in the late 1930s, or even the early 1940s. Subsequently, the Negro Division on the third floor of the 135th Street Branch Library was renamed The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

By 1940, voices were being raised in favor of the production and publishing of books about black life - in spite of an economic boycott by most Southern booksellers and schools. Organizations such as the Child Study Association and the Bureau for Intercultural Education joined with the NAACP and the Urban League to protest the scarcity of good books about African Americans. Baker petitioned publishers, presenting them with the criteria so that publishers would know what African Americans wanted to see in children's books. At the same time Baker was not certain how African American children would react to such books if they were published. "Will they want to read more of them?" she wondered. And would "these books offset the distorted picture of black life in other children's books?" ("Changing" 82).

Baker's first bibliography, in 1938, established criteria that other librarians would be able to use in assisting young readers wishing to locate better books, including those with African American characters and with positive images and themes. Through the act of informing others about the dearth of appropriate books for African American children, Baker soon discovered that there were persons outside the 135th Street Branch Library who would listen to her and would be able to help fill the literary void:

One of my first allies in the fight for better children's books about black life was Frederick Melcher of the R. R. Bowker Company, the donor of the Newberry and Caldecott medals. It was he who literally took me before a gathering of children's editors and told me to "say my piece." Some listened, others resented my presence. (qtd. in Josey, Black 121)

About the same time, Charlemae Rollins, an African American librarian in charge of the Children's Department at the George C. Hall Branch of the Chicago Public Library from 1932 to 1963, was dealing with the same issues:

In the early forties there were very few books about Negroes for children that anybody could actually recommend or give to them, particularly Negro children, without having them feel embarrassed or insulted. As more and more mediocre books kept pouring off the press into the library and more and more parents came in indignant and more and more children came in and tossed them aside, I felt that something ought to be done. (71)

In 1941, as a result of a letter-writing campaign in which Rollins complained to various publishers about the lack of books appropriate for African American children, she was stimulated to write her first book, We Build Together. The National Council of Teachers of English responded to Rollins's letter of complaint by encouraging her to write about the problem. If she would include a list of appropriate books for the reading pleasure of African American children, they would publish her book. Rollins recalled in 1968 that, "at that time[,] there were only thirty books that we could recommend wholeheartedly without some little explanation and a long list of others that we couldn't" (71).

Yet some white librarians of the 1940s would maintain that the publication of books with positive images of African American children could prove detrimental to Black children. Eleanor Weakley Nolen, for example, reported this incident in 1942:

To one nine-year-old boy, an ardent reader of the Nicodemus books, I gave Evan's Jerome Anthony. It would seem incredible that this book could offend any colored child, yet he, usually talkative, returned it in disapproving silence and made instantly for the door. I stopped him and asked his opinion of the book, and I shall never forget the look of deep humiliation which came over his face. "That Jerome Anthony, he's ashamed he's colored," he muttered. I protested, and he burst out, "He talk like white folks, he acts like white folks, he go riding to the dentist in a car!" The library has lost a patron, for that child has not been back. (353)

To justify writing about the incident and, presumably, to prove the importance of maintaining negative depictions, Nolen concludes that "... the incident seems worth stressing, for undoubtedly the poverty-stricken and insecure colored child under some circumstances will resent, even more quickly than the white child, reading of the more fortunately situated members of his race" (353-54).

Others shared Nolen's views. While many persons applauded the fact that a new image of African Americans was being projected in children's books and expressed their belief that it was a great progressive gesture to project African American characters positively, critics such as Bette Banner Preer felt that a positive image of African American children should not be the only image that an African American child was exposed to, since children varied. In 1948 Preer asserted that "it is not natural ... for Negro children to want to read only of children of their own race, and those who guide children's reading - the teacher, the librarian, in particular - should not single out a Negro boy or girl to whom she may recommend a book about a Negro child. Ten to one, that child will not read the book at all, and both he and the teacher or librarian will suffer undue embarrassment." According to Preer, "This fact does not hold true for books of history, biography, poetry, and music for people are usually vitally interested in the achievements of their own race, while their desire for knowledge of the achievements of another race springs first from unsatisfied curiosity" (680).

Sometimes it is hard for those accustomed to old, familiar modes to adopt new ones. But once people are properly trained in the new mode and realize how much easier it is to handle and how much more accurate a structure can be built around it, the more willing they will be to accept it. Eventually, they will put the old away, displaying it only when documenting progress. For this reason, it should be mandatory to evaluate existing modes on a regular basis.

In a 1942 study, Evalene P. Jackson set out to prove how important the library was in promoting positive imagery in books about African Americans: "Reading might serve to change ... [negative] stereotype[s] through its provision of a vicarious experience of Negro life - an experience difficult to come by in actual living. This reading should, of course, emphasize the humanity of the Negro rather than the ways in which the white man supposes that he differs from himself" (48). Jackson realized that measuring the attitudes presented in books could be beneficial for librarians, who could help remove harsh stereotypes and prejudice from children:

Attitudes are measurable by scales designed to indicate the degree of their prejudice in favor of or against an object, such as a race or a country. The use of such a device makes it possible for an investigator to measure attitudes toward certain objects before and after the reading of material dealing with those objects and, under properly controlled conditions, to detect the influence of this reading upon them.

Much of the hostility toward the Negro is a result of the failure of the southern white to perceive that the Negro is essentially a creature like himself. The conditions of southern culture give him few opportunities of seeing the Negro in roles other than those conforming to his stereotype of the Negro as a servant. (47)

Jackson, along with many other librarians throughout the United States, appealed to other librarians to open their libraries' doors to African Americans and allow them complete access to all services. Eliza Atkins Gleason, for example, remarked in a 1945 essay that "it is especially fitting at this time ... that American public librar[ies] in certain sections of the country be up for review. The specific sections under discussion in this paper are those where no service, or only segregated service, is afforded that segment of the population known as the 'Negro minority'" (339). Many public libraries had recently opened their doors to African Americans, either through segregated library facilities or through separate rooms in majority libraries designated for African Americans only. According to the 1940 Census, the South provided very few African Americans with library services. More than 6 million African Americans were Without public library services, 2 million of whom lived in areas where public library facilities were provided for whites (Gleason 341).

Some areas that were heavily populated by African Americans were given separate branches, which were referred to as "colored branches." Some large Northern cities such as New York, Chicago, and Cleveland had "branches located in neighborhoods predominantly populated by Negroes, but these branches [we]re not specifically designated as 'colored' and all other libraries [we]re open on an equal basis" (Shores 313). But even with the growth of libraries throughout the United States, the quantity of books available for and about African Americans in most libraries remained very small, and the number of books suitable for African American children which displayed positive African American images was even smaller.

There was much civil unrest in the 1940s; the smallest conflict between African Americans and whites could cause a riot. And more than 70 percent of the nearly 13 million African Americans in the United States lived in the rural South (Bergman 486). Libraries tried to reduce the racial tension. Lucretia C. Matthews contended in 1945 that "in this period of increased racial tension the public library must seize every opportunity through its services to promote sympathy and understanding. By its very nature as a democratic institution the library should be ready and willing to assume a part of the immense task of reducing the prejudice and bitterness which exist between Negro and white" (145).

By the end of the 1940s, the majority of public libraries serviced African Americans, and publishers were starting to publish more children's books that contained positive images of African American characters. The Julius Rosenwald Fund produced a 48-page pamphlet entitled The Negro: A Selected List for Schools and Libraries of Books by or about the Negro in Africa and America and distributed it free of charge to schools and to children's and young people's departments of public libraries. The list consisted of 191 titles, and identified authors as "Negro" (N) or white (W). The criteria for this compilation were "readability, subject interest, and usefulness in supplying the initial needs for reference material in school libraries" (Lyells 516).

During this era, biographies of Blacks were written that displayed the talents of Shirley Graham, Arna Bontemps, and Carter G. Woodson, to name just a few, although publishers seemed to shy away from fiction, perhaps because of the seriousness of the World War II era. This situation "showed, too, the turmoil of the entire country as the newly awakened whites, who had come to know the Negro as a partner in defending their country, returned to communities confused and bewildered. They were confused because they found much of what they had been taught conflicted with what they had learned first hand by contact with the Negro as a loyal and dedicated defender of his country" (Milender 32).

Slowly, racial attitudes in the country were changing. The 1954 Supreme Court school desegregation decision helped to make a large difference in the world of African American children's literature. As libraries were forced to open their doors to African Americans, publishing companies also began to feel the pressure of the Civil Rights Movement. Eventually, the fear of fiction lessened, and writers such as Lorenz Bell Graham, Jesse Jackson, and Ellen Tarry were allowed to join the cadre of those who helped to construct a path for the many wonderful African American children's writers of today.

African American children's books are in existence today because of the determination and dedication of African Americans who decided more than sixty years ago to remove negative depictions of servile, impoverished African Americans from library shelves. These people were able to establish criteria, petition publishers, and creatively write stories for African American children that reflected positive images at a time when few of these books could get published.

These creators constructed a blueprint that other artisans have followed and built upon. The work that was done in the past in the effort to inspire and educate African American children about their own culture is now evident through the many African American children's books that can be seen in bookstores, on library shelves, and in the homes of children across the country. There is a dedication in this work which beams with love for African American children and a heartfelt obligation to provide them with positive images through the words, the themes, and the images.

Works Cited

Baker, Augusta. "The Changing Image of the Black in Children's Literature." Horn Book 51 (Feb. 1975): 79-88.

-----. "Guidelines for Black Books: An Open Letter to Juvenile Editors." Publishers' Weekly 14 July 1969: 131-33.

-----. "Reading for Democracy." Wilson Library Bulletin 18 (Oct. 1943): 140-44.

Bergman, Peter M. The Chronological History of the Negro in America. New York: Harper, 1969.

Bethune, Mary McLeod. "The Adaption of the History of the Negro to the Capacity of the Child." Journal of Negro History 24 (Jan. 1939): 9-13.

Biddle, Stanton F. "A Partnership in Progress: The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture." Crisis Dec. 1978: 331-37.

Bontemps, Arna. "Special Collections of Negroana." Library Quarterly 14 (July 1944): 187-206.

Curtis, Florence Rising. "Librarianship as a Field for Negroes." Journal of Negro Education 3 (Jan. 1935): 94-98.

Gleason, Eliza Atkins. "Facing the Dilemma of Public Library Service for Negroes." Library Quarterly 15 (Oct. 1945): 339-44.

Jackson, Evalene P. "Effects of Reading upon Attitudes toward the Negro Race." Library Quarterly 14 (Jan. 1944): 47-48.

Jenkins, Betty L. "A White Librarian in Black Harlem." Library Quarterly 60 (July 1990): 216-31.

Josey, E. J. The Black Librarian in America. Metuchen: Scarecrow, 1970.

-----, ed. What Black Librarians Are Saying. Metuchen: Scarecrow, 1972.

Lyells, Ruby E. "Reviews." Library Quarterly 11 (1941): 516-18.

Matthews, Lucretia C. "A Library's Work with Colored Groups." Wilson Library Bulletin 18.2 (1943): 145-47.

Milender, Dharathula H. "Through a Glass Darkly." School Library Journal 15 Dec. 1967: 29-34.

Myers, Walter Dean. "Telling Our Children the Stories of Their Lives." American Visions Dec. 1991: 30-32.

Nolen, Eleanor Weakley. "The Colored Child in Contemporary Literature." Horn Book 18.5 (1942): 348-55.

Park, Carole A. "Goodbye Black Sambo: Black Writers Forge New Images in Children's Literature." Ebony Nov. 1972: 60-70.

Preer, Bette Banner. "Guidance in Democratic Living through Juvenile Fiction." Wilson Library Bulletin 22.9 (1948): 679-81.

Rider, Ione Morrison. "Ama Bontemps." Horn Book 15 (Jan. 1939): 13-19.

Rollins, Charlemae. "Promoting Racial Understanding through Books." Negro American Literature Forum 2 (1968): 71-76.

Shores, Louis. "Library Services to Negroes." Wilson Library Bulletin 5.5 (1931): 311-15.

Young, Pauline A. "The American Negro: A Bibliography for School Libraries." Wilson Bulletin for Librarians 8.8 (1933): 563.

Nancy Tolson is teaching at Grinnell College as well as the University of Iowa as she completes her doctorate in English Education, with an emphasis on African American children's literature.