Methodist church, started about ten years ago. We’re proud to have it, but it ain’t much. Now, at the time, all the highfalutin’ ladies in town, the wives of the bankers and the doctors and such, have what they call the Ladies New Century Club and their project is to build a bigger library…for the white folks. But guess what?”
She bends forward in a dramatic pause, and the kids lean over their desks, their mouths hanging slack in concentration.
“That is not the library you children passed by on the school bus today, in nineteen and eighty-seven. No, sir. I’m going to tell you about the time a handful of ordinary women, who worked hard for their living, baked pies and took in extra wash and canned peaches and sold everything else they could get their hands on and fooled everybody and built the fanciest library in town.”
Reaching into her cart, she extracts a framed photo and holds it up for the kids. “And this is them on the steps of that beautiful library the day it was opened. These ladies here, they are the reason it happened.”
She gives the students several framed photographs to circulate as she goes on to tell them about the town’s New Century Club unanimously rejecting the notion of using one of the highly touted Carnegie grants to construct a new library, fearing that money came with a free use for all citizens stipulation, which could mean regardless of color. The ladies of their church applied for the grant instead, the black Methodist church donated land, and the Colored Carnegie Library eventually opened in a newly created building much grander than that of the other library in town. Thereafter, the Carnegie library’s founders took the liberty of naming themselves the Carnegie Colored Ladies New Century Club.
“Oh, mercy!” Granny T finishes, “All those women of the original Ladies New Century Club, they were pea-green jealous, I’ll tell you. That was back during segregation, you know, and the black folks never got the better part of anything, so for us to have a place so fine and finer than the town library, that was a blot on Augustine, they said. Wasn’t much they could do about it, except they did get the city to rule against the permit for the library to have a sign. That way, nobody coming through would know what it was. And so we put a statue of a saint on top of the marble base that was made to hold the sign, and for years, the building stood there that way, but it couldn’t stop the magic. In those hard times, it was a symbol of hope.”
She has barely stopped talking when the kids begin asking questions. “How come it’s just called ‘Augustine Carnegie Library’ now?” one of the country kids wants to know.
Granny T points the lecture finger at him and nods. “Well, now, that is a good question. Y’all been passing around the pictures. Why do you think the old saint had to move on, so a new sign saying only ‘Augustine Library’ could go up on that marble base?”
The kids try out a few wrong answers. I’m momentarily distracted, thinking about Councilman Walker’s visit to my front porch with his dog, Sunshine. The library saint lives in my oleander bush, thanks to Miss Retta. Now I appreciate him more than ever. He’s a book lover, like me. Library history runs in his veins.
“Who’s got the picture from 1961?” Granny T asks. “I bet you can say why it’s just the Augustine Carnegie Library now.”
“Segregation got over, Granny T,” Laura Gill, one of my townie girls, answers shyly. Laura has never, absolutely never, spoken to me in class or in the hall. She’s clearly quite comfortable with Granny T—a relative or former Sunday school teacher, maybe?
“That’s right, honey. And hooo-ee! Augustine might’ve fought other things as long as it could, but the city was sure happy to take over control of that library!” Memories dance behind Granny T’s thick glasses. “It was the end of something and the beginning of another something. Now, black kids and white kids could sit together in the same room and read the same books. It was another chapter in the library’s history. Another part