Students are getting ready for summer jobs and internships—possible stepping stones to future careers. One of my jobs was at the Main Library in Detroit during college. It was a new, massive marble building that had gravitas in spades. In the purchasing and procurement department, I was responsible for sending college catalogs from around the nation and world to the 23 libraries that made up the system.
I loved my job, and it must have shown it because for a while I wanted to go into Library Science. In the end, I didn’t, but the access I had to the three stories of stacks beneath the building was a heady perfume of old books and hidden gems—red meat for my curiosity. I gravitated toward research.
On my first trip to the nation’s capital, I took a picture of the magnificent copper dome of the Library of Congress. It was awe-inspiring and another trigger for my enjoyment of libraries. (You must be 16 to do research there.)
My future son-in-law helped make the Library safe after January 6, 2021, when, as a National Guard soldier, he was stationed there in case the rioters attacked.
Along with my memories of seeing the Library of Congress was a dose of reality I did not experience growing up in Michigan. For the first time, I saw what I had only seen on the news. The signs were numerous and shocking to this young teen—WHITE ONLY.
Those of us who were on the short end of Jim Crow see some worrying signs of its resurgence, such as the firing of the Librarian of Congress. I believe Americans won’t let this happen again. It’s on all of us to keep it in the past.