History UnderfootAtlanta
  • Church & institution
  • Segregation
  • 1902–1959
  • City of Atlanta

The Carnegie Library: closed to Black patrons until 1959

Atlanta's Carnegie Library excluded Black residents when it opened in 1902. Black patrons were limited to separate branches, beginning with the Auburn Avenue branch in 1921, until the system was desegregated in 1959.

See it on the map All Segregation records

The record

In 1902 W. E. B. Du Bois, then teaching at Atlanta University, met with the library's trustees to protest the exclusion, without success. Andrew Carnegie offered in 1904 to fund a branch for Black readers, but it did not open until July 25, 1921, as the Auburn Avenue Branch. In 1959 Irene Dobbs Jackson, mother of future mayor Maynard Jackson, sought a card at the central library and became the first Black patron to receive one, and that year the library board opened the system to Black patrons (Wikipedia dates the vote to May 19, 1959). The Auburn Avenue Branch closed the same year.

Today: The Atlanta Central Library stands on the site. The Carnegie building was torn down in 1977, and its facade bays became the Carnegie Education Pavilion.