A Greenville Library for All

This gleaming modern building, finished on October 7, 2002, hides a nationally significant history for the Greenville Public Library.

Throughout the early-to-mid-20th century, "separate but equal" facilities dominated the American South. Segregation meant white children and black children could not use the same libraries, and often, the rhetoric of "separate but equal" hid major inequalities. That was the case of the Greenville library, which made it a perfect location for civil disobedience.

This isn't to say the white library was as nice as it is today, either. Greenville gained a public library because of donors on May 21, 1921, and moved its location multiple times into unused buildings downtown. By 1940, it had moved into a more permanent building, an abandoned school building on North Main Street (at the same site that Municipal Courts are housed today).

A decade later in 1950, civic leaders wanted an improvement over even this relatively new location. Still, a portion of county taxes helped fund all the basics: periodicals, fiction and non-fiction.

Meanwhile, at the "Negro" library on McBee Avenue, a much smaller selection occupied the shelves, 1/5th the size. To access the books of the main library, African-Americans had to put in a request and wait several days to receive the book from the main branch. Black students could not access updated encyclopedias, for the latest knowledge and for school projects. (Think of today, if Wikipedia asked for your race before letting you enter the website!)

On March 1, 1960, a group of young students came to use the library, quietly and politely, chaperoned by a local minister. When asked to leave, they left without protest, but this rattled the white librarians and civic leaders.

A week later, seven Sterling High School students famously returned to do the same and this time they did not leave when asked, leading to their imprisonment and release on bail. The community turned against them. The Greenville News represented their conduct as threatening to the community and published their home addresses (with potential mob violence against them and their parents always a concern), and warned the public library would need to close its doors to all, and it would be these young students' fault.

On July 15, another group of eight young black people came to use the library, including an emerging leader of the Civil Rights Movement, Jesse Jackson. Again, they were arrested, and this time the white community made good on their promise to shut down all libraries.

This enraged the entire community, and the newspapers lit up with commentary about the poor choice to close the libraries, the dangerous activists, and the "race mixing" that would surely lead to the downfall of the area.

Fortunately, cooler (and less racist) heads prevailed when the library re-opened on September 19th without restrictions based on race. The "Greenville 7" and "Greenville 8" are still praised as the region's most significant Civil Rights protests and protestors. Similar episodes occurred throughout the U.S. South, as documented in the recent book on the subject by Wayne and Shirley Wiegand. Greenville's protest stands out, both because of its early date and the participation of famous Civil Right activist and Democratic presidential candidate in the 1980s, Jesse Jackson.

The popularity of the integrated library system helped leverage the county to to replace the abandoned schoolhouse in 1970--in the building you just left, presently occupied by the Children's Museum of the Upstate! The building was the first public library in Greenville built for an integrated set of patrons. Heritage Green made history for inclusiveness yet again!

The Hughes Main Branch of the Greenville County Library System is the inheritor of this important history and a vast collection accessible to all. This larger more modern building today holds a South Carolina Room, with archives manuscripts, periodicals, photos, among other valuable records of history. And as you'll see inside, libraries today serve the most diverse people, truly bringing together the entire community.

Sources Used:

Wayne and Shirley Wiegand, The Desegregation of Public Libraries in the Jim Crow South (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2018).

Estellene P. Walker, "So Good and Necessary a Work": The Public Library in South Carolina, 1698-1980 (Columbia, South Carolina State Library, 1981), pp. 29. Online as "The Greenville Public Library." University of South Carolina.

Judith Bainbridge, "Integrating Greenville's Library in 1960." Greenville Online. July 14, 2016.

"Main." The Greenville County Library System. Accessed 10 Oct. 2018.