A Conversation with Brenda Mitchell-Powell, Author of Public in Name Only: The 1939 Alexandria Library Sit-In Demonstration

Author Brenda Mitchell-Powell

As scholar Brenda Mitchell-Powell recalls, one of the proudest moments in her life was acquiring her first library card at the age of 4 or 5. Her recognition of the power of libraries to shape people’s lives eventually led her to a doctoral program in library and information sciences. Meanwhile, she moved to Alexandria where she first heard about the events described below—and realized there was much more to tell. Her book Public in Name Only was published by University of Massachusetts Press in 2022.

Several years ago, I attended a talk that Brenda gave about her research. A few times over the years, we chatted about her progress in turning her research into a dissertation and then a book. (The endnotes alone are amazing!) One of the things that stuck with me was her conscious decision to publish with UMass to underscore that the story is national, not regional.

On April 30, at 3 p.m., she will participate in a reception, reading, and book-signing event sponsored by the Office of Historic Alexandria at Lloyd House, 220 N. Washington Street, which is across the street from the library where the sit-in took place.

[The comments in brackets in a few of her responses & at the end are my additions.]

Q: To extract from your research, what happened at the Alexandria library on August 21, 1939?

 A: On Monday, August 21, 1939, five young, Black, volunteer protesters—Morris Murray, Otto Lee Tucker, Edward Gaddis, Clarence Strange, and William Evans—who had been trained in Gandhian nonviolent civil disobedience by Samuel Wilbert Tucker, entered the Whites-only library and politely requested library cards. When their requests were denied, each in turn took a book from the shelves and sat down at a separate table to read. Neither the library assistants nor the librarian could persuade them to leave the library. The librarian summoned the police, who eventually escorted the protesters from the library and arrested them on the charge of trespassing. As planned, Tucker, who served as the men’s attorney, went to police court where they were held, paid their bail, and escorted them out. They were to return the next day to be arraigned. Despite the fact that the entire episode was peaceful, decorous, and uneventful, the prosecuting attorney changed the charge to disorderly conduct when he realized he could not convict the five young men on a trespassing charge.

The cover of the Book shows the protesters being taken out of the alexandria library after the August 21, 1939, sit-in organized by Samuel Tucker.

An important point to note is that the Alexandria Library sit-in was not a spontaneous event. It was carefully and thoroughly conceived and executed by Tucker, a prescient, 26-year-old Black attorney and native son. He realized that the city’s African American residents paid municipal taxes that helped subsidize the operation of the Alexandria Library, which legally entitled them to use the facility.

Q: We know about the sit-ins in the 1950s and 1960s (that’s what pops up when I google “first Civil Rights sit-in”), yet this happened more than a decade earlier. How did Samuel Tucker come up with the idea?

A: He and his younger brother, Otto Lee Tucker, were traveling by auto back to Alexandria and began discussing a hypothetical scenario. Samuel asked Otto what he would do if he found his stolen bike on the sidewalk. Otto concurred with Samuel that he’d just take it back. That conversation was one of four that inspired the idea of a sit-in protest.

Prior to the incident, Samuel had been inspired by the 1935 meeting of the National Negro Congress to demand economic justice and industrial and political democracy for Black workers, as well as widely reported, successful automotive labor strikes, particularly those that took place in 1936 and 1937. He had also been inspired by Howard University student sit-ins about administration policies toward student activism. (Operation of the university was largely funded by the government, and the university administrators were reluctant to risk losing that financial backing.) Finally, he was inspired by the 1939 NAACP Annual Conference in Richmond, Virginia, during which it was resolved to challenge public institutions subsidized with public as well as private funds that operated with racially discriminatory policies.

Q: In some ways, the sit-in was not successful, given the result was the construction of an underfunded, segregated library. As you show in your book, some people saw it as a win because there was some public space, however deficient, and it also had an impact beyond Alexandria. How did Samuel Tucker himself see the results?

A: The conclusion of the library protests led to the construction of a separate-and-unequal library that some Black Alexandrians regarded as a partial victory in that they at least had a library they could use. Others, however, were angry and frustrated because it represented another form of Jim Crow segregation. Tucker was incensed by the outcome and neither he nor his family members ever used the African American library branch. 

Q: How do you assess the results--based on your research, your broader knowledge of history, and your residence in the city?

A: I have mixed feelings about the outcome. The sit-in protest and George Wilson’s writ of mandamus filing [NOTE: Shortly before the sit-in, Tucker had tried to obtain a library card for his colleague George Wilson, which was conveniently rejected on a technicality] did prompt the construction of a segregated, inferior branch that provided library access for those Blacks who could afford neither the time nor the financial means to travel to the District of Columbia to use their integrated libraries. But since Black Alexandrians already paid taxes to subsidize the library’s operation, they should have been allowed to use the White library. I am fortunate and suspect I would have used both the Black branch and the D.C. facilities. However, I would not have been happy with the outcome.

Q: You refer to the book as a microhistory. Could you explain what this is and why microhistories are valuable?

A: Microhistory, as distinct from macrohistory, is characterized by its attention to lesser-known events, individuals, and communities on the margins of power and influence. Historian Charles Joyner referred to this process as “asking large questions in small places.”

I used microhistory to investigate the impact of the 1939 Alexandria Library sit-in on the development of library services to White and Black Alexandrians and on the course of library desegregation in the city. I also used microhistory to explore and analyze the role of human agency in the evolution of library history. Tucker employed personal agency to conceive and plan the activities associated with the sit-in, and the five protesters’ communal agency enabled the execution of Tucker’s agenda.

A microhistorical approach allowed me to analyze and contextualize the proactive, nonviolent, direct-action, desegregation initiative of select members of Alexandria’s Black community within the larger frame of the White, historically empowered establishment.           

Q: How did you come to the topic—were you already working on your PhD and decided to use this as your dissertation, or did the topic spur you to go on for your PhD?

A: I was already enrolled in the doctoral program in library and information science at Simmons University when I sought a second home in Alexandria. During my research into the city, I chanced across the Alexandria Black History Museum’s brief, web-based history of the sit-in [NOTE: Brenda has since contributed additional content for the website]. I was surprised and disappointed that neither my library school studies nor my studies in Black history ever made mention of this early, historic civil rights event. I wanted to rectify the records. So, in effect, my dissertation topic found me. My dissertation chair encouraged me to transition the dissertation into a book.

Q: Good advice! What advice do you have for people who want to turn a dissertation or other research paper into a book or article for wider audiences?

A: Buy and read From Dissertation to Book, 2nd ed., by William Germano (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013)!! It is an invaluable resource!

Q: What were some of your most valuable sources in putting together a chronology of the events and the larger context? What was a real “a-ha!” moment as you learned about the subject?

 A: Primary sources (archival records, library board meeting minutes, library by-laws, Black and White local and national newspapers, official correspondence) and oral history interviews were the most useful tools for understanding and contextualizing information on events. Secondary sources provided additional information for broad-scope context.

My ah-ha finds were locating Samuel Tucker’s letter to Katharine Scoggin (the Alexandria Library librarian) in which he adamantly stated he had sought admittance to the Alexandria Library rather than the Black branch, and finding the White library’s by-laws in which they explicitly state Blacks were to be denied library access. Whites who were neither Alexandria residents nor taxpayers could freely use the library after a modest $1.50 annual payment.     

Q: Is there anything you wish you could have found but did not? Or put another way, if you could go back to chat with one person involved in the sit-in (whether Tucker, one of the sit-in participants, or even an adversary), what would you want to ask them?

A: I desperately wanted to find out about the lives and activities of the protesters after the sit-in, and I wanted to know their attitudes about the protest outcome. Unfortunately, at that point, Samuel Tucker and all the protesters were deceased. Robert Strange, though not an actual protester, could not be located [NOTE: Tucker had assigned the teenage Strange as a “runner” between the library and Tucker’s law office, so Tucker could be kept apprised of events as they unfolded]. I did interview Samuel Tucker’s niece, Rev. Deborah Thomas-McSwain, and she gave me a wealth of information about Otto Tucker, which was an enormous help. I ended up using the scant information from death notices and city directories but did not find the information I sought.

If I could speak with one person, it would be Tucker. I would ask him how he felt about the group of Black Alexandrians who undermined his efforts to desegregate the library.

Q: Other points that you think are important to stress?

A: It was extremely important to me to implode the myth that the Black Civil Rights Movement was limited to the years 1954–1968. It was also important to situate the protest within the larger story of Alexandria’s history and to situate that history within the histories of Virginia and the South. Context is essential for a full understanding of history. Above all, I wanted to ensure that the marginalized voices omitted from the official record of events were included in the complete story of the protest, so I interviewed surviving Alexandrians, as well as direct and indirect witnesses.

[NOTE: The original Alexandria Library, which was built on Queen Street, is now the Kate Waller Barrett Branch of the Alexandria Library system. The building and an historical marker are shown above. Several blocks away, at 902 Wythe Street, is the Alexandria Black History Museum. As Brenda describes and as shown below, the museum envelopes the “hastily constructed” segregated Robert H. Robinson Library, which opened in 1940, less than a year after the sit-in.

Brenda was recently interviewed by John Kelly for his column in the Washington Post and has given presentations at the Alexandria Library and in other venues. As noted above, on April 30, 3 p.m., she will participate in a reception, reading, and book-signing event sponsored by the Office of Historic Alexandria (OHA) at Lloyd House.

You can buy a copy of Brenda’s wonderful book at the Alexandria Black History Museum, The Lyceum, Freedom House Museum, or the Alexandria Tourist Center, or you can order it from an independent bookstore, or buy it online.]