Latest / Stuff Mom Never Told You / SMNTY Classics: Librarians, Part 2
Transcript
- 0:05Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha.
- 0:06Speaker 2: I'm welcome to stuff I've Never told you, a production
- 0:08Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio, and we're back with part two of our classic.
- 0:20Speaker 1: On a librarians Now.
- 0:23Speaker 2: If you're wondering, if you haven't heard the previous classic,
- 0:27Speaker 2: most librarians are women. There is a history of why
- 0:32Speaker 2: that is, and that's what was broken down in these
- 0:36Speaker 2: I will say, looking back for me, almost all the
- 0:39Speaker 2: librarianes I've interacted with were women. Me too, Yeah, and
- 0:46Speaker 2: they were great. They were always so like knowledgeable and
- 0:50Speaker 2: welcoming and excited. They had recommendations, which I love. I'm
- 0:56Speaker 2: just a really big fan. But part of why we're
- 1:01Speaker 2: bringing this back is because book banning has really gotten
- 1:04Speaker 2: much worse since we last talked about it, which was
- 1:06Speaker 2: a year ago twenty twenty three, and librarians are in
- 1:11Speaker 2: many ways bearing the brunt of it. They're having to
- 1:13Speaker 2: speak it like council meetings, government council meetings and having
- 1:17Speaker 2: their funding slashed and having people say these really horrible
- 1:23Speaker 2: things about them that are unfounded and just based in
- 1:28Speaker 2: a lot of like hate groups saying attack the librarians,
- 1:33Speaker 2: which I think should say something. That's always a bad
- 1:36Speaker 2: sign when like your public information and knowledge and people
- 1:40Speaker 2: who are helping Stewart that are being attacked, so we
- 1:43Speaker 2: should pay attention to that in that vein. Please enjoy
- 1:47Speaker 2: this classic episode.
- 1:53Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from houstuff works
- 1:56Speaker 3: dot com.
- 2:02Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline.
- 2:05Speaker 4: And welcome back to our conversation about librarians.
- 2:09Speaker 5: Yes, pour yourself a library beverage, which you won't get
- 2:13Speaker 5: that joke if you missed our first.
- 2:15Speaker 4: Episode, but in case you're wondering, it is lime, BlackBerry.
- 2:19Speaker 1: And gin and maybe a little bit of fizzy water.
- 2:22Speaker 6: Totally fizzywater ever ice.
- 2:25Speaker 1: It's our new summer cocktail. That's right.
- 2:27Speaker 4: So in our last episode, we talked about the original
- 2:31Speaker 4: librarians in the original librarian stereotype, which was a white, fusty,
- 2:37Speaker 4: curmudgeonly fellow.
- 2:38Speaker 6: Right picture Giles from Buffy, but not as cool.
- 2:43Speaker 1: Yeah, totally not as cool.
- 2:45Speaker 4: If Melville Dewey had been Buffy's watcher, ooh, it would
- 2:49Speaker 4: have gotten real creepy or real fat.
- 2:51Speaker 6: It would have been the worst. I'm putting that image
- 2:54Speaker 6: out of my brain immediately.
- 2:55Speaker 1: He would have been like literally like watching her all
- 2:57Speaker 1: the time outside her windows.
- 2:59Speaker 6: Just like hugging, like no, I'm friendly, I'm friendly. This
- 3:02Speaker 6: isn't creepy.
- 3:02Speaker 1: Maybe that was such a rough fight.
- 3:04Speaker 6: Let me just don't tell anyone I did this.
- 3:07Speaker 1: So in case you're completely lost right now, don't worry.
- 3:10Speaker 4: It's all explained in the previous episode because Melville Dewey
- 3:15Speaker 4: of the Dewey decimal system is a big reason why
- 3:21Speaker 4: librarianship became so quickly feminized and remains feminized.
- 3:27Speaker 1: Like we said in our last.
- 3:28Speaker 4: Episode, today, more than eighty percent of all librarians are women.
- 3:33Speaker 1: It's mostly white women.
- 3:36Speaker 4: Women of color comprise less than sixteen percent of all librarians.
- 3:40Speaker 4: And we're going to get into diversity later on in
- 3:44Speaker 4: the podcast, but in this episode, we want to focus
- 3:49Speaker 4: on what was happening with the women as Dewey and
- 3:54Speaker 4: his cohorts were standardizing this profession and quotes, and I
- 4:00Speaker 4: say in quotes because there was this whole debate and
- 4:04Speaker 4: kind of remains a debate as to whether or not
- 4:07Speaker 4: librarianship is a profession.
- 4:09Speaker 6: Yeah, like a profession like a lawyer versus a service
- 4:13Speaker 6: oriented job exactly. Yeah, And a lot of this information
- 4:17Speaker 6: is coming from this fabulous paper we read called The
- 4:21Speaker 6: Tender Technicians, not Tender the Tender, The Tender Technicians, the
- 4:27Speaker 6: feminization of public librarianship.
- 4:29Speaker 1: It's basically sminty in a paper.
- 4:33Speaker 6: It's so fascinating and full of really incredible detail about
- 4:40Speaker 6: gender dynamics and anxieties about gender in librarianship.
- 4:45Speaker 4: Yeah, there's so many intersections of gender, class, raise, sexuality
- 4:50Speaker 4: going on.
- 4:51Speaker 1: In the development of librarianship.
- 4:53Speaker 4: And now I will think of that every time a
- 4:56Speaker 4: I smell that book smell love it, which is one
- 4:58Speaker 4: of my favorite smells. Wish then instead of the new
- 5:01Speaker 4: car smell, I could get a car that just smells
- 5:04Speaker 4: like a library.
- 5:06Speaker 1: It's that old, that old book smell.
- 5:08Speaker 6: And you just had a book in your car at
- 5:11Speaker 6: all times that you could rest your face on.
- 5:13Speaker 1: Am I the only one who likes to snuggle a book?
- 5:16Speaker 1: It's pages? Never mind?
- 5:17Speaker 6: Anyway, what I was going to say is that.
- 5:22Speaker 5: We we move after after the Civil War, we move
- 5:27Speaker 5: from the stereotypical librarian being a curmudgeonly upper class white.
- 5:33Speaker 6: Guy to it being a spinster woman. And so what
- 5:39Speaker 6: was going on. Basically, libraries were opening very quickly, as
- 5:44Speaker 6: we discussed in our last episode. They needed workers, and
- 5:49Speaker 6: they needed them cheaply, and as happens with so many
- 5:53Speaker 6: fields and industries in the world, in this country, they
- 6:00Speaker 6: looked at women as a bargain.
- 6:01Speaker 4: Yeah, women were absolutely a bargain because there were very
- 6:05Speaker 4: few job opportunities for women at the time. And at
- 6:09Speaker 4: the time we're talking about is the late eighteen seventies
- 6:14Speaker 4: into the turn of the century.
- 6:16Speaker 1: So this is the period when the guys at.
- 6:20Speaker 4: The top, Dewey at all, are really trying to professionalize things.
- 6:24Speaker 4: But parallel to the development of the public school system,
- 6:29Speaker 4: they can't get teachers or librarians fast enough. Because of
- 6:33Speaker 4: industrialization and urbanization, men are being attracted to different kinds
- 6:38Speaker 4: of jobs and entrepreneurialism. So who's a bargain. Women are
- 6:44Speaker 4: a bargain. And by eighteen seventy eight, two thirds of
- 6:50Speaker 4: library workers in terms of the clerks and assistants, were women.
- 6:54Speaker 4: And it's no surprise because libraries tended to have pretty
- 6:59Speaker 4: small budgets. They had to be thrifty with what they
- 7:03Speaker 4: had from taxes and endowments. And in an eighteen seventy
- 7:08Speaker 4: six article titled how to make Town Libraries Successful, one
- 7:14Speaker 4: of the tips was quote, women should be employed as
- 7:17Speaker 4: librarians and assistants as far as possible, essentially as far
- 7:22Speaker 4: up the ranks as possible.
- 7:25Speaker 6: Yeah, it's crazy to me to read about women as.
- 7:31Speaker 1: Objects.
- 7:32Speaker 6: I mean, I know I'm saying that as a co
- 7:35Speaker 6: host of Sminty and so I should be used to that.
- 7:37Speaker 6: But like, literally, women aren't discussed as, oh, they're a
- 7:40Speaker 6: great investment because they're hard workers, or they're so smart,
- 7:43Speaker 6: or like they go to a fabulous all women library schools.
- 7:48Speaker 6: It's literally like, get those women bodied people in here
- 7:52Speaker 6: because they are so cheap.
- 7:54Speaker 4: Yeah, and you'll get a lot of bang for your buck,
- 7:56Speaker 4: whereas if you hire a man cheaply. And this is
- 7:59Speaker 4: a according to this eighteen seventy six article, this is
- 8:02Speaker 4: me not just going off the mouth.
- 8:04Speaker 1: If you hire a.
- 8:05Speaker 4: Man at the same rate, you're not going to get
- 8:07Speaker 4: as much work out of him because these are as
- 8:12Speaker 4: the title of the paper says, they have a tender technicians. Again,
- 8:16Speaker 4: not to be confused with the tender technicians, because that's
- 8:20Speaker 4: another podcast. And this kind of work, like being a secretary,
- 8:26Speaker 4: like being a teacher, but even more so, was considered
- 8:30Speaker 4: respectable and very women appropriate because books equaled culture, and
- 8:37Speaker 4: thus it was within women's separate sphere during this Victorian.
- 8:42Speaker 6: Era, right because, as we discussed in our last episode,
- 8:45Speaker 6: we had moved away from the masculine ideal being the elite, genteel,
- 8:51Speaker 6: non working man, the man who sat around with his
- 8:54Speaker 6: bubble pipe at home. Now we have the ideal masculinity
- 8:58Speaker 6: being the self made hardware man. And so you have
- 9:03Speaker 6: a job where, yes you have to leave the house,
- 9:06Speaker 6: but it's now so much better suited to complimenting what
- 9:12Speaker 6: masculinity was perceived to be at the time. So you
- 9:15Speaker 6: have women being the overseers of culture, working in quiet libraries,
- 9:21Speaker 6: and it was perceived to be this great position, even
- 9:24Speaker 6: more so than teaching, because you didn't have to breathe
- 9:27Speaker 6: that bad air of those stifled classrooms. And again not
- 9:31Speaker 6: my words words of the time, you didn't have to
- 9:34Speaker 6: be around dirty children all day, and you didn't have
- 9:36Speaker 6: to put in.
- 9:37Speaker 1: All of that hard mental and physical work.
- 9:39Speaker 4: Well, and as we talk about in our episode for
- 9:42Speaker 4: a while back on the feminization of teaching, like ye
- 9:46Speaker 4: oldie public schools were kind of intense sometimes, like because
- 9:51Speaker 4: you would have these untrained women teachers coming in with
- 9:56Speaker 4: students of all ages, sometimes who were a larger and
- 10:00Speaker 4: taller than them, and it could be physically exacting to
- 10:06Speaker 4: manage a classroom. Oh yeah, because you have, of course,
- 10:09Speaker 4: like all different grades smushed together, but not so in
- 10:14Speaker 4: a library.
- 10:15Speaker 1: And the way that.
- 10:17Speaker 4: Libraries were even advertised was as domestic spaces, because these
- 10:23Speaker 4: were public facing roles where people would come in and
- 10:28Speaker 4: you would be, you know, obviously like guiding them to
- 10:31Speaker 4: the kinds of books and learning. There was the benevolent
- 10:36Speaker 4: feminine mission of libraries. So on the one hand, it's
- 10:44Speaker 4: good that libraries were so welcoming to women because it
- 10:50Speaker 4: gave them job opportunities, but on the other hand, because
- 10:53Speaker 4: it's so neatly fit into that Victorian womanhood idea that
- 11:00Speaker 4: it really handicapped them from asserting equal status with men
- 11:05Speaker 4: since they were essentially conforming in this role.
- 11:09Speaker 6: Yeah, and it's no surprise that the first children's libraries
- 11:12Speaker 6: and reading rooms that this country saw were overseen by women.
- 11:15Speaker 6: And you know, we read stories too about women in
- 11:19Speaker 6: the progressive era who ran reading rooms in like tenement
- 11:24Speaker 6: housing and settlement housing, who really dedicated themselves to the
- 11:29Speaker 6: moral and social uplift of either the lower classes or immigrants.
- 11:34Speaker 1: Or both through reading.
- 11:37Speaker 6: There was one woman in I wish I could remember
- 11:40Speaker 6: her story, but there was one woman in Boston who
- 11:43Speaker 6: established the Saturday what was it called the Saturday Evening
- 11:46Speaker 6: Girls Club. Yes, and I mean it was as cool
- 11:51Speaker 6: as it sounds. I'm gonna say that it sounded cool
- 11:54Speaker 6: to me. And it literally brought poorer young women together
- 12:01Speaker 6: of all different backgrounds, Jewish girls, Italian girls, you know
- 12:05Speaker 6: who might Irish girls who might not meet at church
- 12:09Speaker 6: or at school because they are so separated by neighborhood.
- 12:12Speaker 6: They were able to come together in these library clubs
- 12:16Speaker 6: that started popping up in Boston. And they were I mean,
- 12:20Speaker 6: they took dance lessons, they obviously focused a lot on
- 12:23Speaker 6: reading and literature and literacy, and it gave so many
- 12:28Speaker 6: girls an opportunity to be out of the house learning
- 12:32Speaker 6: rather than holding down a job at fourteen.
- 12:34Speaker 4: Well, and that's the catch twenty two of this whole thing,
- 12:38Speaker 4: because yes, you have like the restriction of all of
- 12:44Speaker 4: the gender norms that were kind of heaped upon this
- 12:47Speaker 4: particular occupation, but like the importance of their work, like
- 12:53Speaker 4: can't be emphasized enough.
- 12:55Speaker 6: Well, and it's also the fact that you know, we
- 13:00Speaker 6: don't have to tell you this, fair, listeners, but masculine
- 13:03Speaker 6: is the norm in our society. And so even with
- 13:06Speaker 6: the important roles that these librarians were playing, because they
- 13:11Speaker 6: were pursuing a quote unquote more feminine way of doing things,
- 13:16Speaker 6: it was easier to dismiss.
- 13:18Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, and they didn't really have any power
- 13:21Speaker 4: within the profession either, which leads us to how some
- 13:25Speaker 4: women were totally aware that the system was rigged. In
- 13:31Speaker 4: eighteen ninety one, we have Caroline Hwans raising the quote
- 13:36Speaker 4: unquote woman question at a meeting of the American Library Association,
- 13:41Speaker 4: which means that she was essentially getting up to a
- 13:43Speaker 4: room mostly filled with men, saying, Okay, I'm a little
- 13:50Speaker 4: concerned because women make between three hundred and nine hundred
- 13:55Speaker 4: dollars per year. That's not a lot in case you
- 13:59Speaker 4: were wondering, And she said, librarians, you know, we aren't
- 14:04Speaker 4: considered like that valuable. Yet we write for six to
- 14:09Speaker 4: seven hours a day. We have to know multiple language
- 14:12Speaker 4: and quote understand the relation of all arts and sciences
- 14:16Speaker 4: to each other, and must have a minute acquaintance with geography, history, art,
- 14:21Speaker 4: and literature. And she said, in order to avoid just
- 14:25Speaker 4: exhaustion and break down humans, says, I mean, we just
- 14:30Speaker 4: have to make sure we sleep and we eat well.
- 14:32Speaker 4: And I also recommend a two to three mile walk every.
- 14:35Speaker 6: Day, which, hey, listeners, Kristen, if you can figure out
- 14:38Speaker 6: how to do all of this stuff in a day,
- 14:41Speaker 6: let me know, because I don't see how you can
- 14:44Speaker 6: have all of these things.
- 14:45Speaker 1: Yeah, we do a lot. This is more than that.
- 14:48Speaker 4: And one thing that came to mind when I was
- 14:51Speaker 4: reading Hwans's account of having to understand the interrelatedness of
- 14:55Speaker 4: all those different subject matters knowing all these languages is
- 15:01Speaker 4: the comedy from the nineteen fifties called Desk Set, which
- 15:04Speaker 4: is on Netflix listeners, and it's fantastic if you haven't
- 15:07Speaker 4: seen it. It stars Katherine Hepburn and she is the
- 15:11Speaker 4: head of this team of reference librarians and they were
- 15:14Speaker 4: essentially human Googles because computers did not exist. And these
- 15:20Speaker 4: women are brilliant because essentially their job is to answer
- 15:24Speaker 4: telephones of you know, people in the building needing to
- 15:29Speaker 4: know answers to their questions and like really esoteric kind
- 15:32Speaker 4: of stuff, and these women would just.
- 15:35Speaker 1: Rattle it off immediately because.
- 15:37Speaker 4: They knew all of these subject matters they're brilliant. So
- 15:43Speaker 4: going back to eighteen ninety one, I mean humans and
- 15:47Speaker 4: her cohorts were in a way like human computers.
- 15:50Speaker 6: Yeah, and so you know, it sounds like with Hwans's
- 15:55Speaker 6: argument saying we're not paid enough and yet we do
- 15:58Speaker 6: all of this stuff, which is clearly being I have
- 16:01Speaker 6: to be brilliant, I have to work really hard, I
- 16:03Speaker 6: have to be on all the time I'm.
- 16:05Speaker 1: Doing all of this work.
- 16:06Speaker 6: That sounds like an argument for a professional field. It
- 16:11Speaker 6: does not sound like an argument for a service oriented occupation.
- 16:15Speaker 6: And I'm not in any way disparaging service industry work.
- 16:19Speaker 6: But what I'm saying is that librarianship is strange and
- 16:22Speaker 6: that it exists in that sort of weird twilight area,
- 16:26Speaker 6: that gray area between professionalism and well in perception at least,
- 16:31Speaker 6: and in pay, between professionalism and service industry.
- 16:36Speaker 4: And it's understandable that if those overworked and underpaid women
- 16:42Speaker 4: at that time wanted to climb the very limited ranks,
- 16:48Speaker 4: they would remain unmarried. It was really only the spinsters
- 16:52Speaker 4: who could succeed.
- 16:54Speaker 1: So by nineteen hundred to nineteen oh.
- 16:56Speaker 4: Five, the prudish, withdrawn life lady librarian stereotype was firmly entrenched.
- 17:03Speaker 1: It took no time at all.
- 17:05Speaker 6: Well yeah, and I mean keep in mind this earrow
- 17:08Speaker 6: burrows that's happening right here, because women, socially and a
- 17:13Speaker 6: lot of times according to the rules of the company,
- 17:16Speaker 6: granted retirement libraries.
- 17:18Speaker 1: But once you got.
- 17:19Speaker 6: Married, you typically couldn't hold a job anymore. You were
- 17:22Speaker 6: expected to return to your home and cook for your
- 17:25Speaker 6: husband and whatever whatever, be a housewife, exactly like it
- 17:28Speaker 6: was with teaching, exactly. And so the women who remained
- 17:34Speaker 6: in the profession and wanted to stay dedicated, wanted to
- 17:37Speaker 6: rise through the ranks, didn't want to leave having a
- 17:41Speaker 6: job that they loved, presumably. Well, of course, they were
- 17:46Speaker 6: then considered spinsters because they weren't married. And so it's
- 17:48Speaker 6: just like a cycle of like, well, wait, that society
- 17:51Speaker 6: is creating this trap, and then you're.
- 17:52Speaker 1: Punishing women for it.
- 17:54Speaker 6: You're punishing women for being the undesirable, crotchety spinsters, when
- 17:58Speaker 6: in reality, if they had wanted to keep their job,
- 18:02Speaker 6: they can't get married.
- 18:04Speaker 4: Yeah, and hence we fast forward to It's a wonderful life.
- 18:08Speaker 4: And if George Bailey hadn't married Mary, she would have
- 18:12Speaker 4: become that spinster librarian. That was her punishment. I remember
- 18:17Speaker 4: watching that as a kid and being like, but I
- 18:19Speaker 4: like librarians. Huh, she's so scary. Why she's so scary.
- 18:24Speaker 1: I'm gonna knit something.
- 18:26Speaker 6: It's the table's returning conger.
- 18:28Speaker 1: You've never seen. It's a wonderful life. I've never seen.
- 18:30Speaker 1: It's a wonderful life.
- 18:32Speaker 4: Okay, listeners, and case you're relatively new to the podcast,
- 18:35Speaker 4: my pop cultural knowledge spans from about like nineteen forty
- 18:39Speaker 4: to nineteen sixty.
- 18:41Speaker 1: I almost just inhaled my water.
- 18:47Speaker 4: You've still got a lot on me.
- 18:50Speaker 6: Yeah, well yeah, my nineties witch comedies or dramas whatever.
- 18:57Speaker 4: Although I'm finally watching Buffy the Vampires lare, I feel
- 19:00Speaker 4: like I'm really.
- 19:01Speaker 1: Reclaiming my youth, my lost youth.
- 19:04Speaker 6: Good.
- 19:05Speaker 4: So, by the nineteen thirties, librarianship was ninety percent female
- 19:09Speaker 4: and second only to public school teaching as the most
- 19:14Speaker 4: feminized job in America.
- 19:17Speaker 6: Yes, basically, women could be teachers, librarians, or nurses.
- 19:19Speaker 4: Or secretaries or secretaries until they got married, in which
- 19:23Speaker 4: case sometimes by law, they had to quit their jobs.
- 19:26Speaker 1: Yeah. So womaning is great.
- 19:29Speaker 4: Yeah, but well, next up we're going to talk about
- 19:32Speaker 4: some amazing women who are like, Okay, I see you
- 19:35Speaker 4: cultural confines, and I will raise you my brain, my
- 19:39Speaker 4: library code.
- 19:50Speaker 6: So in our last episode, which we're not going to
- 19:53Speaker 6: rehash every reason why Dewey is super creepy, Melville Dewey
- 19:57Speaker 6: the father of modern librarianship. But despite the fact that
- 20:01Speaker 6: he was a creep, he did draw so many women
- 20:06Speaker 6: into the profession. He was the one who really sparked
- 20:09Speaker 6: the feminization of librarianship. And again, despite his general shadiness,
- 20:16Speaker 6: because he trained so many women and he expected such
- 20:20Speaker 6: brilliance and hard work and efficiency, robotic efficiency, he did
- 20:26Speaker 6: have some pretty brilliant women emerge from his teaching.
- 20:30Speaker 4: So we wanted to highlight three of them, starting with
- 20:34Speaker 4: Mary Salome Cutler, who became a head cataloger at the
- 20:39Speaker 4: Columbia Library in eighteen eighty nine. And that's a pretty
- 20:42Speaker 4: big deal considering how Columbia University was all men at
- 20:48Speaker 4: the time. Now, eighteen eighty nine was also the year
- 20:52Speaker 4: that Dewey resigned from Columbia University because they were like Dewey.
- 20:57Speaker 1: We don't want all these women around.
- 20:59Speaker 4: So Cutler had to leave her job, and she followed
- 21:03Speaker 4: Dewey actually too his newly established New York State Library School,
- 21:08Speaker 4: and I want to say that she was actually in
- 21:11Speaker 4: his very first class. And in eighteen ninety three she
- 21:16Speaker 4: chaired the American Library Association's committee to build the model
- 21:22Speaker 4: library for the World's Columbian Exposition. And that doesn't sound
- 21:25Speaker 4: like a big deal, perhaps to modern ears.
- 21:28Speaker 1: But it was quite a big deal. It was a
- 21:31Speaker 1: big deal.
- 21:32Speaker 6: The exposition was where you showed off new advancements and
- 21:36Speaker 6: innovations and peered into what might be in the future.
- 21:41Speaker 1: Shelves of books look at it.
- 21:43Speaker 4: But it was a pretty controversial move because Dewey was like, dudes,
- 21:49Speaker 4: I want Cutler to had this committee, and they were.
- 21:52Speaker 1: Like, d Dewey, but we hate girls. Look at the
- 21:56Speaker 1: sign it says no girls allowed. And Due was like,
- 21:59Speaker 1: I only likes I'm leaving this treehouse.
- 22:02Speaker 6: And then the second woman we wanted to highlight is
- 22:04Speaker 6: Mary Wright Plumber.
- 22:05Speaker 1: She helped establish the Pratt Institute's.
- 22:08Speaker 6: Free Library and pioneered library children's rooms, among of course
- 22:13Speaker 6: a lot of other amazing stuff, and became the American
- 22:17Speaker 6: Library Association president in nineteen fifteen.
- 22:20Speaker 4: And even though she was one of Dewey's earliest students, plumber,
- 22:25Speaker 4: as we talked about in the previous episode.
- 22:27Speaker 1: When she became ALA President, she was.
- 22:30Speaker 4: Like, Okay, well, now that I'm in a position of power,
- 22:33Speaker 4: guess what, Dewey.
- 22:36Speaker 1: I'm not gonna I'm not gonna meet with you. Yeah no,
- 22:38Speaker 1: be it out of here.
- 22:39Speaker 6: Yeah, you guys goes in another episode if you haven't.
- 22:43Speaker 6: And then we have to talk about Katherine Sharp, Catherine L. Sharp,
- 22:47Speaker 6: who was such a whiz. When Dewey was asked for
- 22:50Speaker 6: the best man to start a library program at Chicago's
- 22:53Speaker 6: Armor Institute, Dewey said that the best man is a woman,
- 22:56Speaker 6: which to me sounds like such a romantic comedy line,
- 23:00Speaker 6: except that Dewey is super creepy and I would not
- 23:03Speaker 6: want to see a character based on him in a
- 23:05Speaker 6: rom comm And Sharp actually became director of the University
- 23:09Speaker 6: of Illinois's library program and the university's library And you
- 23:14Speaker 6: know that doesn't sound like, oh okay, university librarian great,
- 23:18Speaker 6: but no, like, there were cast systems in place almost
- 23:21Speaker 6: for librarians, and university or academic libraries were seen as
- 23:25Speaker 6: such a big deal compared to your smaller local libraries.
- 23:28Speaker 4: Well in, University of Illinois apparently still has one of
- 23:32Speaker 4: the most renowned library science programs in the US. So, oh,
- 23:37Speaker 4: catherinell Sharp did a good job because she was their
- 23:40Speaker 4: first director and she set up everything being a dual
- 23:44Speaker 4: director of an academic program and a library.
- 23:48Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 23:49Speaker 6: Well, she did such a good job that she actually
- 23:51Speaker 6: retired in nineteen oh seven because quote, it was crushing
- 23:54Speaker 6: the human element.
- 23:55Speaker 1: Out of her life. Yeah, so she wrote that in
- 23:59Speaker 1: her resignation Life Our Lord.
- 24:00Speaker 6: Yeah, so that's burnout. So then I recommend you go
- 24:03Speaker 6: listen to our episode with Emily Airis of bost Up
- 24:06Speaker 6: on Burnout.
- 24:07Speaker 4: Well, I mean, but that just goes to show what
- 24:11Speaker 4: Caroline Hewans was talking about in eighteen ninety one, like,
- 24:15Speaker 4: we are doing so much and catherinell Sharp surely didn't
- 24:20Speaker 4: have time for a two to three mile walk every day.
- 24:22Speaker 6: No, who does.
- 24:24Speaker 4: So there were these women who were so dedicated to
- 24:29Speaker 4: the job and really passionate about this work and obviously innovative,
- 24:35Speaker 4: just as innovative.
- 24:36Speaker 1: As Dewey was. And all of our.
- 24:41Speaker 4: Librarian history that we've talked about, even in the last
- 24:44Speaker 4: episode and up till now, has been exclusively about white folks. Yeah,
- 24:50Speaker 4: and even today the profession is largely white. But you
- 24:56Speaker 4: know who else was trailblazing as all of this was
- 24:59Speaker 4: going on, even though they were very much shoved to
- 25:03Speaker 4: the side.
- 25:04Speaker 1: Or African Americans.
- 25:06Speaker 6: Yeah, that's right. There is such a rich history around
- 25:08Speaker 6: African American library culture in this country, but it tends to,
- 25:14Speaker 6: like so many things around diversity in this country, just
- 25:17Speaker 6: not be discussed as much.
- 25:19Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 25:19Speaker 4: So Philadelphia is home to both the Reading Room Society,
- 25:24Speaker 4: which was the first social library for African Americans, which
- 25:29Speaker 4: was established in eighteen twenty eight, and the Female Literary Society,
- 25:35Speaker 4: which was established in eighteen thirty one, which was the
- 25:37Speaker 4: first social library for black women.
- 25:40Speaker 1: So Philadelphia got it going on right.
- 25:44Speaker 6: Which just Philadelphia just makes me want to start singing
- 25:47Speaker 6: the fresh Print song.
- 25:48Speaker 1: Me too, I got to start it, I know, I
- 25:50Speaker 1: held back. I did too.
- 25:51Speaker 6: I did two conger where I feel like we're growing up, although.
- 25:55Speaker 4: I really want to grown up from our fresh Prince,
- 25:57Speaker 4: Fresh Prince days.
- 26:00Speaker 6: But it wasn't until nineteen oh four that in Hnderson, Kentucky,
- 26:04Speaker 6: we get a one room annex opening at the rear
- 26:07Speaker 6: of the eighth Street.
- 26:08Speaker 1: Colored School to serve as a library.
- 26:11Speaker 6: This is the first structure built specifically to offer public
- 26:15Speaker 6: library services to African.
- 26:17Speaker 4: Americans, whereas the first white essentially public library tax supported
- 26:24Speaker 4: library had been established all the way back in eighteen
- 26:28Speaker 4: thirty three, and you would have little kind of blacks
- 26:33Speaker 4: only library rooms popping up here and there that would
- 26:36Speaker 4: have been privately funded or funded through churches, but this
- 26:40Speaker 4: was the first one supported by public tax dollars. And
- 26:45Speaker 4: the thing is as lofty as public libraries original goals
- 26:50Speaker 4: were in terms of enriching the entire community, what they
- 26:54Speaker 4: really meant at the time was the white community.
- 26:57Speaker 1: Because libraries were segregated.
- 27:00Speaker 6: Yeah, and so what do you do when you're unwelcome
- 27:03Speaker 6: in essentially a public facility that says we don't want
- 27:06Speaker 6: you or won't serve you.
- 27:08Speaker 1: You start your own organizations.
- 27:11Speaker 6: And so you have Molly Lee Houston, who established a
- 27:15Speaker 6: library for African Americans in Raleigh, North Carolina.
- 27:18Speaker 4: And this would have been happening around the same time
- 27:21Speaker 4: as women's clubs popping up in African American communities and
- 27:25Speaker 4: progressive era ideals of lifting as you climb and providing
- 27:31Speaker 4: these kinds of services and particularly literacy for this community
- 27:36Speaker 4: that was coming out of the grips of slavery. So
- 27:42Speaker 4: fast forward to nineteen twenty eight, and we have the
- 27:45Speaker 4: West Virginia Supreme Court ruling that Charleston libraries cannot exclude
- 27:51Speaker 4: black patrons since as taxpayers.
- 27:54Speaker 1: They're equally entitled to library service.
- 27:58Speaker 4: But it wasn't until nineteen fifty fo were Supreme Court
- 28:01Speaker 4: ruling in Brown versus Board of Education that across the
- 28:06Speaker 4: country you have separate but equal being outlawed in those
- 28:11Speaker 4: public spaces like schools, but also libraries. We never hear
- 28:14Speaker 4: about civil rights and libraries.
- 28:16Speaker 6: I feel like, yeah, I know, people just think libraries
- 28:19Speaker 6: are nothing but super quiet spaces where nothing ever happens.
- 28:23Speaker 6: But so much happened, right, I mean, they became another
- 28:27Speaker 6: yet another site of civil rights sit ins for integration,
- 28:31Speaker 6: like integration in reality, not just the legal dismantling of segregation,
- 28:36Speaker 6: actually legitimately integrating libraries. In nineteen sixty three, for instance,
- 28:42Speaker 6: a white mob attacked two black men who were just
- 28:44Speaker 6: trying to get library cards in Aniston, Alabama.
- 28:48Speaker 4: I read that and just wanted to throw my laptop
- 28:52Speaker 4: out the window. I mean, because if like that crystallizes
- 28:57Speaker 4: so much like the level of deep sea racist hatred,
- 29:02Speaker 4: that you would want to attack someone for getting a
- 29:05Speaker 4: library card.
- 29:07Speaker 1: Like it's horrifying.
- 29:10Speaker 4: So, not surprisingly these were sites of protests. But to
- 29:15Speaker 4: its credit, the American Library Association was on record as
- 29:19Speaker 4: pro integration. And I think it was actually in the
- 29:23Speaker 4: fifties that they held their first meeting in the South,
- 29:27Speaker 4: because initially they had been kind of nervous about racial
- 29:31Speaker 4: tensions in the South.
- 29:33Speaker 1: But they amended their Library Bill of Rights, which how
- 29:38Speaker 1: cute is that? That's really sweet?
- 29:41Speaker 4: But they amended the Library Bill of Rights in the
- 29:43Speaker 4: early sixties to codify its stance saying like, you cannot
- 29:49Speaker 4: exclude people on the basis of race from entering these
- 29:54Speaker 4: places of public learning.
- 29:56Speaker 6: Yeah, and I mean not everyone was terrible. You have
- 30:00Speaker 6: during the civil rights era, twenty five freedom libraries that
- 30:02Speaker 6: were established in Mississippi by volunteer civil rights advocating librarians.
- 30:08Speaker 4: Talk about some superheroes, and anyone listening who knows more
- 30:12Speaker 4: about these freedom libraries please write to us mom stuff
- 30:17Speaker 4: at houstuffworks dot com. Because this was we found this
- 30:21Speaker 4: information on the American Library Association's website, so to me,
- 30:26Speaker 4: that means it's legit. But when I started doing more
- 30:29Speaker 4: research trying to find out more about freedom libraries, because hello,
- 30:32Speaker 4: how cool? Is that I couldn't find anything else because
- 30:35Speaker 4: so much of our popular civil rights history is focused
- 30:39Speaker 4: on desegregating schools.
- 30:42Speaker 1: And things like that.
- 30:43Speaker 4: So if anyone knows anything, I want to know because
- 30:47Speaker 4: I just want to be able to give those librarians
- 30:50Speaker 4: their druthers.
- 30:51Speaker 6: Yeah, and what is so fabulous about this is that
- 30:54Speaker 6: when we talk about the history of African Americans, when
- 30:58Speaker 6: we talk about the history of black people in this country, so.
- 31:01Speaker 1: Much is lost. We don't have some of the.
- 31:04Speaker 6: Names the amount of names that we do from pioneering
- 31:08Speaker 6: white people, even pioneering white women. But we are so
- 31:12Speaker 6: happy to be able to give you a few names
- 31:14Speaker 6: of some badass black librarians who led the way.
- 31:18Speaker 4: So in nineteen twenty three, you have bibliotherapy pioneer Sadie
- 31:23Speaker 4: Peterson Delaney, who establishes the library in the Veterans' Hospital
- 31:29Speaker 4: in Tuskegee, Alabama, for recuperating black soldiers.
- 31:32Speaker 1: And I had not heard the term.
- 31:34Speaker 4: Bibliotherapy before, Caroline, but it makes total sense. So Delaney
- 31:41Speaker 4: realized that there are therapeutic benefits to reading, and she
- 31:46Speaker 4: specifically sought out African American focused reading material at the time,
- 31:51Speaker 4: which in nineteen twenty.
- 31:52Speaker 1: Three was a bit of a task, but she did
- 31:56Speaker 1: it because.
- 31:57Speaker 4: She knew how important haveing that inspirational literature would be
- 32:04Speaker 4: for these soldiers. Who I mean, they're coming back home,
- 32:08Speaker 4: they're injured, but they're coming back to a prejudice society,
- 32:12Speaker 4: even after they fought for their country.
- 32:16Speaker 5: Yeah.
- 32:16Speaker 6: And another incredible woman carving out of space for African
- 32:19Speaker 6: American readers is Vivian G. Harsh, who in nineteen thirty
- 32:23Speaker 6: two was Chicago's first black librarian and she established a
- 32:27Speaker 6: world renowned research collection of African American history and literature
- 32:32Speaker 6: that is still at the Chicago Library. It's still in existence,
- 32:36Speaker 6: and according to a biographical source on Vivian Harsh, this
- 32:42Speaker 6: library that she established became quote a mecca for literary
- 32:46Speaker 6: and cultural icons of the period, including Richard Wright, Lanston Hughes, Zorain,
- 32:51Speaker 6: Neil Hirston, and Gwendolyn Brooks, some of whom even contributed
- 32:55Speaker 6: manuscripts to the institution.
- 32:57Speaker 1: And Vivian G.
- 32:58Speaker 4: Harsh is someone who we could go go back and
- 33:00Speaker 4: do an entire podcast on because she's one of the
- 33:05Speaker 4: most important librarians in American history. Because she made it
- 33:10Speaker 4: her mission to essentially preserve African American culture, and is
- 33:17Speaker 4: considered one of the reasons why the uh like Chicago
- 33:22Speaker 4: Black Renaissance happened because there were she essentially like set
- 33:26Speaker 4: up this whole repository, this cultural center, saying look here,
- 33:30Speaker 4: here we are, here is here all of the things
- 33:33Speaker 4: that we've produced, here's our history, all those things that
- 33:36Speaker 4: otherwise would have been marginalized or completely lost.
- 33:40Speaker 1: And not too far away from Vivian G.
- 33:42Speaker 4: Harsh in Detroit, a little bit later, you have Clara
- 33:47Speaker 4: Stanton Jones, who became the first woman and African American
- 33:51Speaker 4: to serve as director of Detroit's Public Library, despite white
- 33:56Speaker 4: public protests. They're like, no, how could I, how gonna
- 34:00Speaker 4: an African American woman be serving in this role? But
- 34:04Speaker 4: thankfully she was able to claim her post and later
- 34:09Speaker 4: went on to become the first African American president of
- 34:12Speaker 4: the American Library Association, And in nineteen seventy eight, she
- 34:17Speaker 4: was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the National Commission
- 34:21Speaker 4: on Libraries and Information Science, where she served until nineteen
- 34:25Speaker 4: eighty two.
- 34:26Speaker 1: So, in other words, she was a big deal.
- 34:30Speaker 6: Yeah, and I love that. When MSS magazine in two
- 34:35Speaker 6: thousand and three was recognizing the contributions of incredible women
- 34:39Speaker 6: to this country. They looked to Carla Diane Hayden, who
- 34:45Speaker 6: was the second African American president of the ALA, and
- 34:49Speaker 6: she basically her reaction was basically like who me? And
- 34:53Speaker 6: she told the magazine, when people ask what's unusual about
- 34:56Speaker 6: me being the ALA's president, the first thing that comes
- 34:58Speaker 6: to mind is that I'm African American. But really what's
- 35:01Speaker 6: more significant is that I'm a woman, Because even though
- 35:04Speaker 6: it's a female dominated field, most library directors are men.
- 35:08Speaker 4: And thus these two episodes have come full circle.
- 35:12Speaker 6: Yeah, and the hierarchy is still in place.
- 35:17Speaker 4: So we have all of these amazing female librarians throughout
- 35:23Speaker 4: the twentieth century, who I mean essentially are to thank
- 35:27Speaker 4: for our public.
- 35:28Speaker 1: Learning and literacy in a lot of ways.
- 35:30Speaker 6: And community building.
- 35:32Speaker 4: Absolutely, and they don't get nearly as much recognition as
- 35:37Speaker 4: they should because I feel like the only name that
- 35:39Speaker 4: we associate with libraries.
- 35:41Speaker 1: Is Melville Dewey.
- 35:42Speaker 4: And so I hope that this raises some awareness of
- 35:48Speaker 4: just what amazing women and men librarians are. But like
- 35:52Speaker 4: the women who really built the libraries from the ground.
- 35:56Speaker 6: Up, yeah, and who had so few positive expectations put
- 36:01Speaker 6: on them.
- 36:02Speaker 4: Yeah, and exceeded them to the moon and back. So
- 36:16Speaker 4: now we want to hear from you. Do you have
- 36:19Speaker 4: beloved librarians in your life?
- 36:21Speaker 1: Are you a librarian? We want to know all of
- 36:24Speaker 1: your library thoughts.
- 36:26Speaker 4: Mom Stuff at house stuffworks dot Com is our email address.
- 36:29Speaker 4: You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or
- 36:31Speaker 4: messages on Facebook, and we've got a couple of messages
- 36:34Speaker 4: to share with you right now.
- 36:41Speaker 6: Okay, well, I have a letter here from Joshua in
- 36:43Speaker 6: response to our Queer Fashion episodes.
- 36:47Speaker 1: Joshua says, greetings.
- 36:48Speaker 6: From Sitting Bull College on the Standing Rock Lakota Indian
- 36:51Speaker 6: Reservation in fort Yates, North Dakota. I'm from another planes tribe,
- 36:55Speaker 6: but I'm here for an intensive summer program that trains
- 36:57Speaker 6: teachers and how to teach the Lakota and To languages.
- 37:01Speaker 6: First off, is everyone in Atlanta as cool as you too.
- 37:04Speaker 6: I've been listening to the podcast for years, and I
- 37:06Speaker 6: appreciate the sensitivity with which you address a variety of topics.
- 37:09Speaker 6: I usually can't bring myself to listen to white street
- 37:12Speaker 6: people discuss any of the minority groups I'm part of,
- 37:14Speaker 6: because they almost invariably wind up saying horribly offensive things,
- 37:18Speaker 6: even when they mean well. But I'm always seriously impressed
- 37:21Speaker 6: with what a great job y'all do. Thanks so much
- 37:23Speaker 6: for keeping me company on my recent twenty five hours
- 37:26Speaker 6: of driving from California to North Dakota. One of your
- 37:28Speaker 6: episodes prompted me to write in the Queer Fashion episode,
- 37:31Speaker 6: thanks so much for covering this topic. I've always wondered
- 37:34Speaker 6: why men's Western clothing was so much more boring than
- 37:37Speaker 6: what Western women wear, and I found it fascinating to
- 37:40Speaker 6: learn that it was the result of a deliberate social
- 37:42Speaker 6: movement to tone things down. But also I feel like
- 37:45Speaker 6: it's worth noting that this boring men's wear phenomenon is
- 37:48Speaker 6: not universal in Native American cultures. I see men wearing regalia,
- 37:53Speaker 6: ceremonial clothing, and every day wear that is just as
- 37:55Speaker 6: colorful as.
- 37:56Speaker 1: What women wear.
- 37:57Speaker 6: I'm a pow wow dancer and I also sowwer regalia.
- 38:01Speaker 1: There is definitely a pretty.
- 38:02Speaker 6: Strict gender binary enforce and I seriously cringe when outsiders
- 38:05Speaker 6: portray Native American cultures as some magic, gender free utopia.
- 38:09Speaker 6: But you'll see a lot of things that would be
- 38:11Speaker 6: stylistically off limits for Western men, long hair, dangly earrings, sequins,
- 38:16Speaker 6: shiny fabrics, and bright colors as standard styles and attire
- 38:20Speaker 6: in the powow arena. These styles are sometimes misinterpreted by outsiders,
- 38:25Speaker 6: but it's not uncommon for straight, macho powow guys to
- 38:28Speaker 6: wear pink regalia with sequins, for example, and think nothing
- 38:31Speaker 6: of it. Maybe something about different gender standards and different
- 38:35Speaker 6: cultures and what happens when they clash and come together
- 38:37Speaker 6: would be a good future topic. Two of the younger
- 38:40Speaker 6: boys in my powow family have attached pink scarves on
- 38:42Speaker 6: the belts of their powow regalia to support a loved
- 38:45Speaker 6: one who is a breast cancer survivor, which I find
- 38:48Speaker 6: very sweet. The bright colors coming together in the individual
- 38:51Speaker 6: and collective dancers for galia are an integral part of
- 38:54Speaker 6: the powow. So I'm glad we have defied this mainstream trend.
- 38:58Speaker 6: So thank you so much, Joshua.
- 39:00Speaker 1: But for writing in Well, I've.
- 39:01Speaker 4: Got a letter here from Nicole about our episode on
- 39:05Speaker 4: women in political campaigning, and she writes, I love your
- 39:09Speaker 4: podcast about women in politics. It really summed up a
- 39:12Speaker 4: lot of my feelings about where women have been placed
- 39:14Speaker 4: in campaigns in my struggles with that, I started out
- 39:17Speaker 4: wanting to be a media consultant or campaign manager in politics,
- 39:21Speaker 4: but while interning for a media consulting firm, I was
- 39:24Speaker 4: steered toward fundraising by my all male bosses. In the
- 39:28Speaker 4: city I worked in, all of the fundraisers were women,
- 39:31Speaker 4: and my boss has told me that to be a fundraiser,
- 39:33Speaker 4: you must be well dressed, and then they ranked the
- 39:36Speaker 4: fundraisers on their level of bitchiness.
- 39:39Speaker 1: This is one of the hundreds of stories I.
- 39:42Speaker 4: Could share about sexism in the campaign office. Since then,
- 39:46Speaker 4: I entered on a presidential political finance team and now
- 39:49Speaker 4: work full time at a political fundraising firm where I
- 39:52Speaker 4: worked for the governor of my state.
- 39:54Speaker 1: What Nicole impressive.
- 39:56Speaker 4: As you mentioned, in politics, it's important to have a
- 39:59Speaker 4: mentor to add kate for you.
- 40:01Speaker 1: This is really the only way to get the best jobs.
- 40:03Speaker 4: Most campaigns never post a job ad, but instead ask
- 40:06Speaker 4: their friends if they have anyone to recommend. Also, people
- 40:09Speaker 4: normally choose to mentor someone that they think is like them,
- 40:13Speaker 4: so it's a lot harder for women to be recommended
- 40:16Speaker 4: for the best jobs in other fields because they're so
- 40:18Speaker 4: concentrated in finance. Other factors that lead to women being
- 40:23Speaker 4: fundraisers is that they're the most abundant job, since candidates
- 40:27Speaker 4: always need more money. If a person doesn't know the
- 40:30Speaker 4: right people or have a mentor to get their resumes
- 40:32Speaker 4: passed around, then fundraising jobs are normally the only ones
- 40:35Speaker 4: posted on political jobs boards. In regard to why people
- 40:39Speaker 4: assume women are better suited for fundraising, something I've noticed
- 40:42Speaker 4: is that donors are nicer to women. We often spend
- 40:46Speaker 4: a lot of time calling people for money, and people
- 40:48Speaker 4: get irritated when they receive those calls. When you call
- 40:51Speaker 4: very cheerfully and sound as sweetly as possible, donors normally
- 40:55Speaker 4: won't yell at you. My bosses too badass women always
- 40:59Speaker 4: tell me to be as peppy as possible when dealing
- 41:01Speaker 4: with difficult clients. I have mail coworkers, and they get
- 41:04Speaker 4: yelled at more often than the women in my office.
- 41:07Speaker 4: I could go on and on about women and campaigns,
- 41:09Speaker 4: and specifically fundraising.
- 41:11Speaker 1: I hope my email makes sense.
- 41:12Speaker 4: As you mentioned, everyone in campaigns work crazy hours and
- 41:16Speaker 4: I am very sleeper deprived. Thanks for validating all of
- 41:19Speaker 4: my feelings about my industry and for your other episodes.
- 41:22Speaker 4: Get Me through hours of staring at Excel sheets. Well, Nicole,
- 41:27Speaker 4: thank you so much for your insight and more power
- 41:31Speaker 4: to you in that field because I can only imagine
- 41:35Speaker 4: that it is a toughie. So listeners, now, I want
- 41:38Speaker 4: to hear from you Mom. Stuff at HowStuffWorks dot com
- 41:41Speaker 4: is our email address and for links to all of
- 41:43Speaker 4: our social media as well as all of our blogs,
- 41:46Speaker 4: videos and podcasts with our sources so you can learn
- 41:49Speaker 4: so much more about librarians. Head on over to stuff
- 41:53Speaker 4: Mom Never Told You dot com.
- 41:58Speaker 3: For more on this and thousands of other tops, visit
- 42:00Speaker 3: HowStuffWorks dot com.
- 42:09Speaker 2: M