The W. L. D. Johnson Neighborhood Library is a

Houston Public Library Houston Public Library is the public library system serving Houston, Texas, United States. History Houston Lyceum and the Carnegie Library The Houston Public Library system traces its founding to the creation of the second Houston Lyceum in ...

branch in

Houston, Texas Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...

. It replaced the Carnegie Colored Library, a Carnegie Library established by Houston's African American community in the Fourth Ward that was demolished for Interstate Highway 45 construction in 1962. The current branch is located at 3517 Reed Road. The library is named after W.L.D. Johnson, Sr., a man who raised funds for the purchase of the Carnegie Colored Library and served on the board of directors of that library. The new library building was dedicated on June 16, 1964 and replaced the original Carnegie Colored Library.

Carnegie Colored Library

African Americans were prohibited from accessing the Houston Lyceum and Carnegie Library, so African American leaders organized their own public library in Houston's Booker T. Washington High School in 1909. Native Houstonian Emmett J. Scott and his boss

Booker T. Washington Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856November 14, 1915) was an American educator, author, and orator. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the primary leader in the African-American community and of the contemporary Black elite#United S ...

secured a Carnegie Library grant to help pay for a new building. It was designed by

William Sidney Pittman William Sidney Pittman (April 21, 1875 – March 14, 1958) was an American architect who designed several notable buildings, such as the Zion Baptist Church and the nearby Deanwood Chess House in the Deanwood neighborhood of Washington, D.C. He w ...

, a prominent African American architect and the son-in-law of Booker T. WashingtonHouston Lost and Unbuilt page 23 (includes a photo of the building during its dedication ceremony in 1912) and was constructed in 1913. It faced Frederick Street. The board overseeing the institution was composed entirely of African Americans. In 1921 the city of Houston disbanded the library board and made the library a branch of the

system. Charles Norton Love, an African American civil rights activist and publisher of the '' Texas Freeman'' helped advocate for construction and funding of the library. Houston's public library system was desegregated in 1953. The neoclassical library building was demolished in 1962 to make way for Interstate 45 that cut through Houston's Fourth Ward. Page 23 of Houston Lost and Unbuilt includes photos of the Carnegie Colored Library during its dedication in 1912, architectural plans, and a photo of city leaders and African American officials during demolition.

Legacy

The Carnegie Colored Library was a turning point for library services in the segregated South. Through the work of librarian Julia Ideson and an all-black committee made up of Houston leaders, African Americans were active participants in planning and governing their own library. The Carnegie Colored Library, though it provided services that were nonexistent before, still existed and operated in a segregationist structure that provided unequal services and collections. However, the Carnegie Colored Library model "moved beyond the lobbying of local white librarians and city officials" to a national strategy in which black leaders could proclaim themselves "actors in the civic and cultural politics that influenced their city, the services it provided, and its built environment."

References

{{Authority control Libraries in Houston

Carnegie Colored Library

Legacy

See also

References