Faith Cabin Libraries were a system of libraries created in South Carolina and Georgia providing library services to Black Americans who were not allowed to use public libraries because of segregation laws. [1]
Faith Cabin Libraries were a system of libraries created in South Carolina and Georgia providing library services to Black Americans who were not allowed to use public libraries because of segregation laws. [1]
This library system was created in the 1930s and 1940s by Willie Lee Buffington, a White mill worker, and his childhood friend, a Black teacher Euriah Simpkins. [2] [3] Simpkins had invited Buffington to the opening of a Saluda County school for Black students. Buffington, surprised and upset by the lack of books in the school, began a letter-writing campaign to area churches soliciting book donations for his library project. [3] However, there were too many books for the school itself, so Buffington and Simpkins decided to build a library themselves. [3]
The first library--the Lizze Koon unit after Buffington's mother--a small free-standing log cabin building, opened in 1932 in Saluda County. [2] [3] It was 18 feet by 22 feet with a rock chimney. [4] The building's furniture was barrels for chairs and kerosene lamps for illumination. [4] At the library's opening, a community member said "we didn't have money, all we had was faith" which lent a name to both the building and the movement as Faith Cabin Libraries. [5]
Simpkins' and Buffington's project spread throughout South Carolina and Georgia, through print publications such as Southern Workman and, later, publications such as Reader's Digest , the Saturday Evening Post and Library Journal . [5] Buffington was active in publicity for the project, appearing on the Hobby Lobby radio program; his appearance helped raise enough money for a library in Lexington, South Carolina. [5] Ted Malone profiled the movement in a 1948 radio broadcast. [5] Buffington's life and the origin story of the movement was dramatized in 1951 in the Cavalcade of America radio series . [5]
Buffington, who was on the faculty of Paine College, a Methodist college in Augusta, Georgia, created a slide collection with a script that could be used by Woman's Society of Christian Service of the Methodist Church to promote the movement. [5] Buffington's salary for the project was being paid by divisions of the Methodist church by the early 1950s. [5]
The Works Progress Administration provided library services throughout the state of South Carolina between 1936 and 1943, however it was disproportionately providing services to White people. [5] During the time the WPA provided library services to South Carolina, there were more Faith Cabin Libraries serving the Black population than WPA libraries. [5] The State Library Board actively denied the existence and continued operation of Faith Cabin libraries in the early 1950s. [5]
Buffington worked with Robert Cousins who was the director of Negro Education in Georgia, to identify communities who wanted Faith Cabin libraries. [5] Assistance in curating and organizing book collections in libraries was provided by the Atlanta University Library School. [5] Seventy-five Faith Cabin libraries were established in Georgia between 1944 and 1960, primarily in school buildings. [5]
In total, there were twenty-nine Faith Cabin Libraries built in South Carolina and over seventy in Georgia. [6] Each community was responsible for housing the book collection and operating their own library. [5]
In the 1950s and 1960s school consolidations eliminated many of the smaller schools with Faith Cabin collections, and public libraries were integrated by the mid-1960s. [5] The library system remained active until the mid-1970s. [4] The Faith Cabin Library at Paine College remained open and available until Buffington retired in 1975. [5] There are three remaining free-standing Faith Cabin Library buildings, one in Pendleton, South Carolina, one in Saluda County, South Carolina and one in Seneca, South Carolina. [7] [8] The building in Seneca is being repurposed as a Black history museum. [9]
The Works Progress Administration was an American New Deal agency, that employed millions of jobseekers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads. It was set up on May 6, 1935, by presidential order, as a key part of the Second New Deal.
Pickens County is located in the northwest part of the U.S. state of South Carolina. As of the 2010 census, its population was 119,224. Its county seat is Pickens. The county was created in 1826. It is part of the Greenville-Anderson-Mauldin, SC Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Pendleton is a town in Anderson County, South Carolina, United States. The population was 2,964 at the 2010 census. It is a sister city of Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland.
Seneca is a city in Oconee County, South Carolina, United States. The population was 8,102 at the 2010 census. It is the principal city of the Seneca Micropolitan Statistical Area, an (MSA) that includes all of Oconee County, and that is included within the greater Greenville-Spartanburg-Anderson, South Carolina Combined Statistical Area. Seneca was named for the nearby Cherokee town of Isunigu, which English colonists knew as "Seneca Town".
Ware Shoals is a town in Abbeville, Greenwood, and Laurens counties in the U.S. state of South Carolina, along the Saluda River. The population was 2,170 at the 2010 census.
Batesburg-Leesville is a town in Lexington and Saluda counties, South Carolina, United States. The town's population was 5,362 as of the 2010 census and an estimated 5,415 in 2019.
Augusta, officially Augusta–Richmond County, is a consolidated city-county on the central eastern border of the U.S. state of Georgia. The city lies across the Savannah River from South Carolina at the head of its navigable portion. Georgia's third-largest city after Atlanta and Columbus, Augusta is located in the Fall Line section of the state.
The Highlander Research and Education Center, formerly known as the Highlander Folk School, is a social justice leadership training school and cultural center in New Market, Tennessee. Founded in 1932 by activist Myles Horton, educator Don West, and Methodist minister James A. Dombrowski, it was originally located in the community of Summerfield in Grundy County, Tennessee, between Monteagle and Tracy City. It was featured in the 1985 documentary film, You Got to Move. Much of the history was documented in the book Or We'll All Hang Separately: The Highlander Idea by Thomas Bledsoe.
U.S. Route 123 is a spur of US 23 in the U.S. states of Georgia and South Carolina. The U.S. Highway runs 75.12 miles (120.89 km) from US 23, US 441, SR 15 and SR 365 near Clarkesville, Georgia, north and east to Interstate 385 Business in Greenville, South Carolina. US 123 parallels I-85 to the north as it connects the Northeast Georgia cities of Clarkesville and Toccoa with the western Upstate South Carolina communities of Westminster, Seneca, Clemson, Easley, and Greenville.
Mary Jane McLeod Bethune was an American educator, philanthropist, humanitarian, womanist, and civil rights activist. Bethune founded the National Council of Negro Women in 1935, established the organization's flagship journal Aframerican Women's Journal, and presided as president or leader for myriad African American women's organizations including the National Association for Colored Women and the National Youth Administration's Negro Division. She also was appointed as a national adviser to president Franklin D. Roosevelt, whom she worked with to create the Federal Council on colored Affairs, also known as the Black Cabinet. She is well known for starting a private school for African-American students in Daytona Beach, Florida. It later continued to develop as Bethune-Cookman University. Bethune was the sole African American woman officially a part of the US delegation that created the United Nations charter, and she held a leadership position for the American Women's Voluntary Services founded by Alice Throckmorton McLean. For her lifetime of activism, she was deemed "acknowledged First Lady of Negro America" by Ebony magazine in July 1949 and was known by the Black Press as the "Female Booker T. Washington". She was known as "The First Lady of The Struggle" because of her commitment to gain better lives for African Americans.
Paine College is a private, historically black Methodist college in Augusta, Georgia. It is affiliated with the United Methodist Church and Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. Paine College offers undergraduate degrees in the liberal arts, business administration, and education through residential, commuter, and off-site programs. The college is accredited by the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools (TRACS).
WGOG is a commercial American radio station licensed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to serve the tri-county area of Oconee, Pickens, and Anderson, South Carolina. The official city of license, and studio location, is Walhalla, South Carolina. WGOG is owned by Appalachian Broadcasting Co., Inc.
The Seneca Institute – Seneca Junior College was an African-American school in Seneca, South Carolina, from 1899 to 1939. This was in a period of segregated public schools in South Carolina.
South Carolina Highway 28 (SC 28) is a 131.220-mile (211.178 km) primary state highway in the U.S. state of South Carolina. It consists of two segments of highway signed as east–west but physically traveling north–south from the Georgia state line near Mountain Rest to Beech Island. It is part of a continuous highway separated by a 17.5-mile (28.2 km) stretch through Augusta, Georgia.
The Faith Cabin Library at Anderson County Training School in Pendleton, South Carolina was one of the 26 Faith Cabin Libraries constructed in South Carolina to offer library services to rural African Americans who were barred from using other library facilities. The one-room, free-standing log cabin with a fieldstone chimney and foundation was built on the grounds of the Anderson County Training School, a Rosenwald School, and paid for by money and timber from the local community.
Scarritt College for Christian Workers was a college associated with the United Methodist Church in Nashville, Tennessee, USA. The campus is now home to Scarritt Bennett Center.
The South Carolina State Library (SCSL) is the official State Library of South Carolina located in Columbia, South Carolina. It is both a library and a state agency. The SCSL manages public library development, federal and state funding for libraries, service for print-disabled and physically handicapped patrons, library service for state institutions, and library service to state government agencies.
The Faith Cabin Library at Seneca Junior College is a Faith Cabin Library built to serve the African American community in Seneca, South Carolina. It was built on the campus of the Seneca Junior College. The log cabin library building was named to the National Register of Historic Places on November 14, 2012.