Autonomy and Accommodation: Houston's Colored Carnegie Library, 1907-1922

Denied the use of the Houston Lyceum and Carnegie Library, African American leaders organized their own public library in a high school in 1909. Working through native Houstonian Emmett J. Scott and his boss Booker T. Washington, local black Houstonians secured a construction grant from the Carnegie Corporation. By the time the Colored Carnegie Library building was completed in 1913, they had negotiated with the City of Houston for the right of an all-black board of trustees to govern the library. Eight years later, the city disbanded the board and downgraded the library to a branch of the Houston Public Library system. The experience of founding and administering the institution nevertheless represented an act of resistance on the part of Houston's African American activists, who turned a Jim Crow library into an opportunity for autonomy.