American Experience

I was the first black to graduate from the University of Mississippi in library science. I was born in a small town called Byhalia. My people were farmers. On that farm where I lived, there was a little one-room school. There were no books. Teachers were not particularly qualified, and when it was really time for me to go to school, my mother sent me to live with an aunt in Alton, Illinois, because that one-room school was not giving me what my parents thought I should have. It was not my sole purpose to become a librarian. My major was math and minoring in English and I was teaching English in the public schools and one day the principal walked in and asked me, "Would you like to be our librarian?" I said, "Well, I don't have any library science, but I think I would love that!" So I went to school to be a librarian. When I started working at Henry High School as a librarian, this was a new school and they call those schools that were built during that time, "separate but equal." Our school did not have the same resources as our white counterparts. There were no books on the shelves by or about blacks. There were only a few novels like Moby Dick, Jane Eyre, and Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and books like that. So, I thought, I said, "Well, let's put some black books on the shelf." That was a black school. It was not integrated at all. So I got a catalog of black books and I ordered over 200 or 300. Several days later, Mr. Autry, who was principal, came down to the library with the superintendent. The look on his face said it wasn't a favorable visit. So Mr. Autry said, "Ms. Moore, did you put this order in?" He said, "I see I signed it, but did you?" I said, "Yes, I put the order in." And he said, "Well, Mr. Appleton here "says that it's nothing but books about black and controversial books." I said, "Well, it is." And Mr. Appleton spoke up and said, "Well, we don't order these kind of books around here." I was knocked out for words. "I see you have To Kill a Mockingbird on here, and everybody know what that book is about." He said,"Well, we won't be ordering this." So they turned and left. My husband and I went to register to vote. They gave us this question. Mine was on the abolishment of slavery. I thought my question was very easy and my husband said, "I know I passed this test because that was like taking candy from a baby." We got a letter a week later saying we all had failed the test. Several other folk went up behind us. They failed the test. Everybody who went, teachers, most of them had master's-- they all failed the test. The whites would walk in and sign their names, and we had to sit at a table and take a test. After I got my degree in library science, I got a job at Rust College. We always say that the library is the center of the institution. You cannot destroy history. You have to keep it so that students who were not here during that time can have access. We're looking at books used by the students who were involved with the Freedom Summer schools in 1964. And these particular books are from Benton County Freedom School. On the spot where the library now stands is where they would gather the books, stamp them, catalog them and take them out to the various schools where they had no books. We have at least something that's tangible from the Freedom School years. All of those "white only" signs have been removed. We no longer have separate waiting rooms and separate bathroom facilities. We don't have that anymore. Our children don't know anything about that. That's why we have to keep teaching them what happened in 1964. We knew that we were working to do better, and that one day it would be better. We moved forward. I was moving forward when I made that book order. I knew that when I finished, there would be books on the shelves.