ALA has outsourced its 150th anniversary to an outside vendor. This is a concern of members of the Library History Round Table. If their members don't believe that our organization's history will be well represented or truthfully remembered, we as SRRT members should be doubly concerned that our work, since 1969, will most likely be overlooked entirely. As far as I know, Martin Garnar and Courtney Young, who were appointed to direct the 150th celebration, have been altogether silent about this. Dr. Wiegand has permitted me to repost his letter here. I would love to participate in a vigorous, perhaps action-oriented discussion about this. The following is his letter, to Martin, Courtney, Sam Helmick, several past presidents of ALA, and many others.
Dear All:
I was absolutely shocked to see the roll-out for the 150th anniversary celebration planned for the American Library Association for 2026. Of course the 150th anniversary should celebrate the Association's history, and there is much to celebrate. But please, please, please, not blindly.
For years now I have been reminding ALA officials that statements like "For more than 140 years, the ALA has been the trusted voice for academic, public, school, government, and special libraries, advocating for the profession and the library's role in enhancing learning and ensuring access to information for all" are factually untrue. Nevertheless, for years this particular statement accompanied multiple ALA press releases. On September 27, 2024, I published an op-ed entitled "Even Librarians Live in Information Silos" in Library Journal. It was sandwiched between two letters to the editor of American Libraries (see November/December, 2021, and June, 2025). All of these missives proved the historical inaccuracy of that statement. Apparently I finally got through to ALA with that second letter. In February, ALA finally dropped that statement from its press releases.
Now comes the 150th anniversary statement, "Since 1876 the American Library Association has championed access to information, defended free speech, & upheld the power of libraries to transform lives & strengthen democracy." This is also factually untrue, and I can prove it with hundreds of examples that demonstrate otherwise which are peppered throughout books I've published. For example:
Politics of an Emerging Profession: The American Library Association, 1876-1917 (1987). In 1891 ALA expunged Klas August Linderfelt from its official list of presidents when he was caught stealing from Milwaukee Public Library fines fund.
`An Active Instrument for Propaganda:' American Public Libraries During World War I (1989). During WWI many libraries withdrew German language books from circulation; some publicly burned them. ALA said and did nothing.
Irrepressible Reformer: A Biography of Melvil Dewey (1996). Fourth biography of Dewey published in 20th century; only one to address his racism, anti-Semitism, and the fact that he was kicked out of ALA in 1906 for sexually harassing women. At the time the book was published ALA was marketing a polished image of Dewey; not until 2016 did it drop Dewey's name from one of its most prestigious awards, and only after pressure brought by the #MeToo movement.
Main Street Public Library: Community Places and Reading Spaces in the Rural Heartland, 1865-1956 (2011). Demonstrates how ALA published acquisition guides small Midwest public libraries used (like Booklist and ALA Catalog) that favored white male literature and avoided many controversial titles.
"Right Here I See My Own Books:" The Woman's Library at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair (2012). Coauthored with Sarah Wadsworth. Demonstrates how much the ALA Catalog (1893) favored male over female authors in the late 19th century.
'Part of Our Lives:' A People's History of the American Public Library. (2015). Among the many examples I cite, one discusses the time ALA's OIF sanctioned the publication of a list of Lebanon (IN) public library patrons with overdue books.
The Desegregation of Public Libraries in the Jim Crow South: Civil Rights and Local Activism (2018). Coauthored with Shirley A. Wiegand. ALA filed no amicus briefs in any case brought by protesting Black patrons. Not until 2018 did ALA apologize for its lack of support of the Black protesters (mostly teenagers) who desegregated Jim Crow libraries.
American Public School Librarianship: A History (2021). Demonstrates the historically consistent unwillingness of the profession's largest sector to publicly engage controversial issues.
In Silence or Indifference: Racism and Jim Crow Segregated Public School Libraries (2024). Demonstrates that between 1954 and 1974 ALA refused to engage the issue of racism in Jim Crow segregated public school libraries, and said and did nothing while Black school librarians were used as pawns in the the white Jim Crow educational establishment's efforts to resist integration.
I also notice in the roll-out the section entitled "Fighting Censors and Book Bans: Establishing the ALA Office of Intellectual Freedom," which reprints a June 24, 2024, article. The Library Bill of Rights and the Office of Intellectual Freedom are a central focus in my "Sanitizing American Library History: Reflections of a Library Historian," Library Quarterly 90 (April, 2020):108-120. In it I show how Judith Krug happily engaged the cause of a white Missouri librarian fired for distributing underground literature on the University of Missouri campus, but at the same time refused to assist Black ALA Councillor Carrie Coleman Robinson in her suit against the State of Alabama for racist treatment in its Education Department. Krug also refused to investigate accusations that public libraries in the South were using federal LSCA funds to provide services to the hundreds of segregation academies white people had started to avoid integrating public schools.
Has anyone on the 150th anniversary committee read any of these publications? Was anyone appointed to the committee who possesses a deep understanding of library history, including its haloes and warts? Or was loyalty to the ALA's public image rather than an accurate analysis of its history the guiding criterion (thoughts of Trump's cabinet come to mind here)?
I take no pleasure in composing this rather long email, but at the same time I cannot be silent if I'm an honest historian. As I see it, because ALA has over the years remained silent or indifferent to the darker parts of its history, it has effectively crafted a professional ethos that makes it possible to issue historically inaccurate statements like those I quote above. I vividly remember eminent Black historian John Hope Franklin telling an ALA audience at its 100th anniversary conference in 1976 that the library profession had until that time a very poor record of serving non-white people. I now know that because of ALA's silence or indifference on issues regarding race between 1954 and 1974 that at that time members of that audience had no idea of the story I tell in my latest book.
I encourage all of you to share this message widely with friends and fellow professionals. These kinds of facts, unpleasant though they may be, have got to become part of our profession's collective memory, else our blindness to them will continue. I am pleading with ALA not to this happen on the occasion of its 150th anniversary.
I stand ready to help in this effort in any way I can.
Wayne A. Wiegand
wwiegandfsu@gmail.com
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Katharine Phenix
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