FIGHT FOR THE RIGHT TO READ

The inspiring story of a lesser-known sit-in that led to the desegregation of a town’s library.

The real surprise here is not that this local protest took decades to achieve its goal, but that it occurred in 1939—well before the Civil Rights Movement really got rolling. Deftly capturing their tale’s real, if low-key, drama, the co-authors describe how, on the day that a new, whites-only library opened in Alexandria, Virginia, five Black men who had been recruited and trained in nonviolent behavior by African American lawyer Wilbert Tucker applied unsuccessfully for cards, then quietly sat down to read. “Oh, mercy, Miss Scoggins,” wails a library aide. “There’s colored people all over the library!” Notwithstanding a judge’s order in the ensuing series of trials, rather than grant access to all, the town built what the authors dub a “‘separate-but-equal’ so-called library” that remained in service through another 20 years of protests and lawsuits. And it wasn’t until 2019 that the charges against the strikers were finally (and posthumously) dropped. In Holt’s painted scenes, hostile library patrons and police hovering over anxious protesters give way to courtroom crowds listening to the serious-looking Tucker present his case, later marchers singing and bearing signs, and finally a set of modern brown-skinned youngsters surrounded by bookshelves in an open, welcoming space; readers will come away realizing that change takes time but that justice is always worth fighting for.

Timely recognition for a small group of unsung civil rights heroes.