Bettina Love kicked off the second day of the Public Library Association’s (PLA) 2024 Conference with a quote from her “Uncle Jimmy.”
“And by Uncle Jimmy, I mean the James Baldwin,” Love, a bestselling author and education activist, said April 4 during her Big Ideas session at the Greater Columbus (Ohio) Convention Center.
In 1963, the novelist and civil rights activist said to a group of New York City educators, “To any citizen of this country who figures himself as responsible—and particularly those of you who deal with the minds and hearts of young people—must be prepared to go for broke.”
Baldwin’s sentiment, Love said, is just as relevant today as it was more than six decades ago.
“We’re at a moment right now where we must be prepared to go for broke for young people,” she said.
Love is a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York City and cofounder and board member of the Abolitionist Teaching Network, an organization that supports teachers and parents seeking racial justice in the classroom and beyond. Her latest book, Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal (St. Martin’s Press, 2023), is a New York Times bestseller.
Told through real-life narratives of 25 Black people and their families, Punished for Dreaming addresses decades of US schooling initiatives in the post–Civil Rights era, like the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act and the proliferation of standardized testing and charter schools. Her book largely covers what she refers to as the “dream generation,” children of the 1980s and 1990s. This is also a time, Love added, when education reform and crime reform began to merge, particularly for Black and Brown youth.
“We’re a generation that was young and rambunctious, and by the time we hit middle school, they had new labels for us,” she said. “We were called crack babies, thugs, superpredators.”
The effects are still felt today, Love said, and other harmful efforts continue, especially amid the rise of book bans and, in some states, laws that limit classroom discussions and curricula about the experiences of people of color and the LGBTQ+ community.
Love emphasized opportunities for a path toward equity, like reparations and, more generally, society atoning for these generations of policies. Right now, she said, moving forward requires educators to tell the truth about the harm inequitable policies cause and to not be deterred by the opposition. She also commended librarians for their role in this work.
“Without books, there is no democracy,” Love said. “Without books, there’s no way to see what’s possible for our future. The work you do every single day is about future-building, it’s about world-making. And that work cannot just be shoved to the side because some folks don’t understand what you do.”
‘We are the equalizers’
At the session “Cornerstones in a Culture War: The Role of Urban Libraries in Defending Democracy,” panelists echoed Love’s sentiment. They discussed best practices for interacting with policymakers and protecting programs and services for diverse populations and those that touch on sociopolitical issues.
Panelist Brigitte Blanton, director of Greensboro (N.C.) Public Library, said that particularly during an election year, this passage of Urban Libraries Council’s 2022 Declaration of Democracy feels more relevant than ever: “To meaningfully participate in society, people need access to a broad range of information and ideas, as well as opportunities for open, uncensored discourse to hear, read, debate, and learn from each other’s perspectives.”
This, the panelists said, includes creating space for timely conversations relevant to communities, like intellectual freedom and racial injustice.
To truly be a “library for all,” staff members must be equipped to address these topics, said Roosevelt Weeks, director of Austin (Tex.) Public Library (APL). But he said that for some colleagues—noting the small percentage of Black and Hispanic librarians in the US—discussions arounds race are challenging or elicit guilt. To combat that, APL hired an equity and inclusion program manager in 2021, and staffers receive ongoing training.
“Libraries have not always been for everybody,” Weeks said. “Still today, we have challenges where people who walk in our doors don’t feel comfortable.”
To get ahead of political opposition or backlash, speakers underscored the importance of building lines of communication with local elected officials.
When Allison Grubbs, division director at Broward County (Fla.) Libraries, was challenged by a state legislator last year for launching a Banned Books Week–themed library card, Grubbs leaned on the support of her county commissioner, with whom she had shared plans for the card far in advance.
Karl Dean, immediate past board chair of Urban Libraries Council and former mayor of Nashville–Davidson County, Tennessee, recommended inviting local candidates to the library to help educate them about details like budget and operations, as well as to help eliminate any preconceived notions.
“That gives you an opportunity to show them there’s not a lot of subversive behavior going on,” Dean said.
But many also acknowledged that smaller libraries, particularly those in conservative areas, may not have that level of support from local and state policymakers. In those cases, representatives from larger libraries, who may be on more solid political ground, can speak up for others, the panelists suggested.
“Make sure you’re helping and assisting and still promoting and pushing the agenda and purpose of libraries,” Blanton said. “Don’t attack [the opposition]. We’re being attacked; the answer isn’t to attack back. The answer is to educate.”
She continued: “We are the equalizers. I am, as far as being a librarian, the most proud in this time and this season, because we aren’t these quiet, mousy folks that people said we were. We are truly the people standing in the gap.”
Prioritizing trust
In the small and rural library sphere, a group of librarians are striving to bring big ideas about equity to their spaces through a new professional tool, “Path to Belonging: Creating Healthy, Vibrant, and Resilient Communities.”
The tool, still a work in progress, originated from a Libraries Transforming Communities: Focus on Small and Rural Libraries grant, distributed by the American Library Association’s Public Programs Office in 2021.
At the round table discussion “Path to Belonging: Creating EDISJ Small, Rural Libraries,” Erica Freudenberger, outreach, engagement, and marketing consultant at Southern Adirondack Library System in Saratoga Springs, New York, said that many diversity, equity, and inclusion resources are geared toward urban and suburban libraries with dedicated departments and budgets.
“This framework supports under-resourced and understaffed libraries working with their communities,” Freudenberger said. The good news, she said, is that small and rural libraries have “tremendous advantages in doing this work due to established social networks, connections, and the ability to move really quickly in trying new things.” But she also noted that these libraries come with unique challenges, like geographical isolation, economic fragility, and limited public services.
Maria Estrella, public services manager at the Garden Valley and Woodland branches of Cleveland Public Library and owner of professional development consulting business Young Diverse Readers, assisted libraries on the Path to Belonging project. During the discussion, she led attendees through an exercise called “My Library Trusted 10.” Participants wrote the names of 10 colleagues they trust and were asked to fill out demographic information about them. Most reported back that those on their list overwhelmingly looked like or were similar to them.
“Your closest advisors, those who you rely on for insight, they’re often unconscious mirrors of ourselves…. We want to make sure we have everyone seated at the table. Unless we address it, everyone will stand to lose,” Estrella said.
The framework has four points of entry, depending on the capacity and needs of library workers seeking to implement the tool:
- Personal promotes self-awareness and internal improvements.
- Professional includes embracing these ideals in one’s career, through efforts like continuing education and peer learning circles.
- Organizational involves removing systemic barriers to a diverse workplace and fostering a welcoming culture.
- Community ensures libraries reflect residents through diverse programming and increased participation and external partnerships.
But these changes don’t happen through a checklist or via one-off programs during Black History Month or Hispanic Heritage Month, Estrella said. She emphasized that establishing trust in a community takes years of consistency.
“A lot of the time we go to these communities and want something—presenters, dancers, all sorts of things—to bring into the library,” she said. “And then it’s one and done, and we don’t necessarily think of those communities anymore.
“If you don’t build trust, you definitely won’t have patrons coming in, and you won’t have employees apply.”
