During a time when political parties are strategizing to jail librarians with criminal charges, a documentary is making sure to set the record state on the activism of Black librarians: They ain’t quiet. In fact, they are very loud and proud of what they do.

“Are You A Librarian: The Untold Story of Black Librarians” uses archival resources to highlight how Black librarians were – and still are – movement workers fighting for equal access to information and knowledge. The project is being spearheaded by Rodney Freeman Jr., a University of North Carolina at Charlotte archivist who started his librarianship in 2010. To him, the history of Black librarian’s freedom fighting spirit makes sense. For a group of people who were once beaten or killed for learning how to read and write, literacy is gold.

“For Black people, it’s power,” Freeman said. “To some other people, they’re scared. I mean, all of these books I’ve been reading about how literacy was used to suppress Black folks and used as a tool of white supremacy? It’s all about power and freedom from your situation and imagining something more than what you can be.”

Freeman became inspired to do the documentary a couple of years ago during the American Library Association’s annual summer conference. He was enjoying some comradery amongst fellow Black men librarians. A much-needed moment in a profession that is less than seven percent Black, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. As Freeman talked to his colleagues about navigating the industry as a Black man, he thought about how telling their stories would ease the sense of isolation.

“I was like, ‘I want somebody who looks like me to capture our stories and preserve this for future generations,’” Freeman said. “Hopefully it inspires younger generations to get into this profession because the reason why we’re only seven percent is because people don’t feel like we belong here. But if you knew the stuff that I know with all this research, you might feel like you belong here.”

Many people know about the sit-ins at lunch counters during the 1960s, but what about the sit-ins that came first at southern segregated libraries? Freedom Libraries, implemented during the 1964 Freedom Summer Project, filled in the gaps of lackluster education for thousands of Black youth in Mississippi. A Freedom Library in Canton, Miss, was filled with so many books that it nullified a bomb placed beneath the structure by white supremacists. Freeman is sharing these historical gems alongside more than 20 interviews from today’s Black librarians who are finding their own resilience while battling discrimination and microaggressions in the workplace. Freeman said it is important to connect the past with the present.

“Black Librarians today are living out the dreams of past Black librarians,” Freeman said. “What did they fight for if not to see Black Librarians today developing and producing innovative programs, services for the community and, in some cases, leading these institutions into the future?”

Freeman is currently putting the final touches on the documentary and will premier the film during this year’s ALA summer conference. The documentary will be released to the public in early 2025. Here are three Black librarians whose activism will be highlighted during the film.

E. J. Josey

While held at gunpoint, activist and librarian E.J. Josey learned an important lesson: how to never back down from racism.

He was drafted into the Army in May 1943 and was trying to board a bus when the white bus driver told him to step aside to let white soldiers on first. Josey refused and stood his ground even when the bus driver pulled a gun on him. Josey survived the violent encounter and continued his services where he found a love of books in a non-segregated library. After leaving the military, Josey wanted to make a way for everyone to experience the joy of gaining knowledge without the threat of discrimination.

Josey became the second African American to graduate from University at Albany, SUNY with a master’s in librarianship in 1953. He joined ALA in 1952 and made the profession more equitable for Black librarians while enduring racism and discrimination in the library field. When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to desegregate schools in Brown v. Board of Education, the decision trickled down to other public spaces, including libraries. But the ALA was slow to implement the decision and ALA chapters in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi remained segregated. During the 1964 ALA annual conference, Josey drafted a resolution forcing the ALA to part ways with southern ALA chapters that continued to refuse membership from Black librarians. The resolution passed after a fierce debate, the southern chapters quickly integrated and Josey became the first Black librarian to be accepted into the Georgia Library Association in 1965.

Josey took his passion a step further in 1970, when he co-founded the Black Caucus American Library Association to further grow the leadership and professionalism of Black librarians. During his term as the second Black president of the ALA from 1984 to 1985, he created committees that focused on pay equity and library services for under-resourced communities.

Dorothy B. Porter

The librarian system for categorizing and organizing books used to be anti-Black, but Dorothy B. Porter took care of that.

The Virginia native was inspired by the art and culture of the Harlem Renaissance. Her desire to archive Africana pushed her to become the first Black woman to graduate with a library science degree from Columbia University. The self-described “bibliomaniac” was appointed chief librarian at Howard University in 1930. Over the next 40 years, Porter’s curiosity, love of Black works, bilingual tongue and networking skills built up Howard’s Moorland-Spingarn Research Center from a space that only housed collections regarding the enslavement and abolition of Black people to a world-renowned repository of Black culture. Prominent Black freedmen, pan-African scholars and historians from around the globe started visiting Howard and donating their private libraries and archives to the university. Manuscripts written by and for Black people across the African Diaspora, rare items written in Latin and music compositions from Brazilian composers started filling the collections of the research center. When it came to assessing the worth of these Black works, Porter quickly learned white libraries didn’t value Black collections the same way Howard scholars did. Why? The Dewey Decimal Classification system.

Named after white librarian Melvil Dewey, the decimal system is used to organize the contents of a library. Dewey’s racist, misogynistic and antisemitic views and policies played a role in how the system was created. Porter realized that all Black books, no matter the topic, were placed in either the enslavement or colonization category. She challenged this racial bias by creating her own system that categorized Black works according to author and genre. This method dismantled racist stereotypes and narratives about Blackness as it amplified Black people’s contributions to the arts, linguistics, political science and other subject areas.

“The only rewarding thing for me is to bring to light information that no one knows,” Porter said in a 1995 Washington Post interview. “What’s the point of rehashing the same old thing?”

Dr. Carla Hayden

Before Dr. Carla Hayden became the first woman and African American to lead the largest library in the world in 2016, she already had a four-decade-long track record of making sure libraries are equitable and accessible spaces for all.

In 1973, her career began by reading stories to children with autism as an associate and children’s librarian with the Chicago Public Library. Hayden worked her way through the ranks as she earned both her masters and doctorate degrees from the University of Chicago’s Graduate Library School. By 1991, she became the head of the same library system that inspired her career. About two years later, she became executive director of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore – one of the nation’s first free public libraries, it had slowly deteriorated into disarray. From 1993 until 2016, Hayden transformed the space into an oasis of information and community care. Lawyers and social workers started providing services at local branches. Librarians took grocery orders and had them delivered to branches located in food deserts. It was the first library in Maryland to offer free internet access.

Hayden’s most publicized act at the time happened in 2015, when protests and uprisings engulfed Baltimore after Freddie Gray died of cervical spinal injuries while in police custody. Schools and businesses closed due to the unrest. But Hayden came to the library with food, water, flowers and coffee. She and her staff decided the libraries were going to stay open and serve the community. Because of that decision, children were fed and tutored, and the public had a space of refuge.

A year later, then-President Barack Obama nominated Hayden to be Librarian of Congress. After being sworn in, Hayden made it her mission to increase accessibility to information by digitizing the Library of Congress’ massive collection of historical archives. She also improved the library’s connection to the community, both in person and on social media. When she was selected to become Ms. Magazine’s Woman of the Year in 2003, she told the publication that the days of the quiet librarian trope were gone.

“Now we are fighters for freedom, and we cause trouble! We are not sitting quietly anymore,” she said.