Marian M. Hadley

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Marian M. Hadley
Marian M. Hadley.png
Hadley in Chicago Tribune 1959
Born1886 (1886)
Nashville, Tennessee, US
Died1974 (aged 87–88)
Chicago, Illinois, US
NationalityAmerican
Education
Occupation Librarian

Marian M. Hadley was Nashville, Tennessee's first African American librarian, serving as the first librarian of the Nashville Negro Public Library, a branch of the Nashville Public Library for African American patrons. [1] She went on to work at the Chicago Public Library for almost twenty years, building and promoting the library's collection of African American history and culture.

Contents

Early life and education

Marian M. Hadley was born in Nashville, Tennessee and was an alumna of Fisk University. [2] [3]

Work at the Nashville Negro Public Library

Andrew Carnegie gave $50,000 to the city of Nashville in 1913 to fund the building of two libraries with the stipulation that funds were to be split equally between a branch for white patrons and another as the first branch in Nashville for African American patrons. [4] At the time, Nashville's library only allowed African Americans to check out books via a bookmobile. [1]

Thirty-five people applied for the librarian and assistant librarian positions; the Carnegie Public Library hired Hadley, a twenty-nine-year-old Nashville resident. [5] [6] After accepting the position in the fall of 1915, Hadley moved temporarily to Louisville, Kentucky to take part in a two-month apprenticeship at the Western Colored Branch of the Louisville Public Library under Thomas Fountain Blue. [5] The all-white library board of trustees required that she pay her own train fare and board to attend the training. [7] The Nashville Negro Public Library was opened on February 10, 1916. [4] [8] Nashville Public Library's head librarian, Margaret Kercheval, also provided guidance in running a library to Hadley and Negro branch assistant librarian Hattie Watkins. [9]

In her role as librarian, Hadley became "a driving force in the Nashville African American community." [8] She was highly respected, with a library administrator writing "her work was of the highest order, and in all respects she manifested commendable zeal and interest in whatever she undertook." [10] Hadley served as librarian of the branch for three years before resigning in 1919. [5] [11] [10] After resigning from the library, she became the first executive secretary of the Young Women's Christian Association chapter in Nashville in 1919, helping to establish a local YWCA for African Americans, the Blue Triangle chapter. [6] She returned to the library in the spring of 1921, this time at a salary of $70 per month instead of her previous $60 per month; she worked another two years as the librarian of the Negro Public Library before resigning again. [5]

Work at the Chicago Public Library

In the 1920s, Hadley moved to Chicago to work for the Chicago Public Library. [12] She was one of a talented group of black women professionals brought to the library by Vivian G. Harsh (CPL's first African American librarian), including Charlemae Hill Rollins and Doris E. Saunders. [13] Hadley worked with Harsh to build the library's Special Negro Collection and promote its use through programming; frequent visitors to that collection included Richard Wright and Langston Hughes. [3] She exchanged a number of letters with W. E. B. Du Bois, who was also a visitor to the collection. [2] [3]

Beginning with her time at Fisk University, Hadley had a strong interest in African American history and culture and collected over 1,000 images of African American people and topics. [14] By the 1950s her slide collection was one of the largest in the country on the subject, and she gave talks featuring these images at clubs and churches throughout Chicago. [3] [14]

She worked at the Chicago Public Library for almost twenty years, retiring in 1959. [6]

After her retirement, Hadley was a founding member of Chicago's Ebony Museum of Negro History and Art, which would later become the DuSable Museum of African American History. [15] Hadley died around 1974. [16]

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References

  1. 1 2 Lovett, Bobby L. (1999). The African-American history of Nashville, Tennessee, 1780-1930 : elites and dilemmas. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press. p. 126. ISBN   978-1557285553.
  2. 1 2 Hadley, Marian (31 May 1938). "Asking, partially on behalf of the Chicago Public Library system, to photograph him at the upcoming Fisk University commencement ceremony". Letter to W.E.B. Du Bois. Retrieved 13 January 2019.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Joyce, Donald Franklin (January 1988). "Vivian G. Harsh Collection of Afro-American History and Literature, Chicago Public Library". The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy. University of Chicago Press. 58 (1): 68–69. doi:10.1086/601953. ISSN   0024-2519. JSTOR   4308198. S2CID   145727959.
  4. 1 2 Goetsch, Elizabeth K. (2018). Lost Nashville. Charleston, SC: The History Press. ISBN   9781467140621.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Malone, Cheryl Knott (2003). "The adult collection at Nashville's Negro Public Library, 1915-1916". In Freeman, Robert S.; Hovde, David M. (eds.). Libraries to the people : histories of outreach. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co. p. 149. ISBN   978-0786413591.
  6. 1 2 3 Hanbury, Dallas (2016). ""The library cannot be opened indiscriminately to white people and Negroes: Nashville and the quest for integrated library service". "Seekers of knowledge": the development of Southern public libraries and the African American quest for access, 1898-1963 (PhD). Middle Tennessee State University. p. 137. Retrieved 13 January 2019.
  7. ↑ Malone, Cheryl Knott (2000). "Quiet Pioneers: Black Women Public Librarians in the South". Vitae Scholasticae. 19 (1): 69–71. hdl:10150/106317.
  8. 1 2 Battles, David M. (2009). The history of public library access for African Americans in the South, or, Leaving behind the plow. Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press. p. 44. ISBN   9780810862470.
  9. ↑ Wynn, Linda T. (1997). "The Negro Branch of the Carnegie Library: Nashville's First African-American Public Athenaeum 1916-1949" (PDF). Leaders of Afro-American Nashville. Nashville Conference on Afro-American Culture and History.
  10. 1 2 Brown, Lillie Hooper (26 January 1928). "Letter of Recommendation for Marian Hadley from Lillie Hooper Brown". Letter to. Retrieved 13 January 2019.
  11. ↑ McCrary, Mary Ellen (1959). "Negro Branch of the Carnegie Public Library". A history of public library service to negroes in Nashville, Tennessee, 1916-1958 (Master of Science in Library Service). Atlanta University. p. 20. OCLC   857621755 . Retrieved 13 January 2019.
  12. ↑ Hadley, Marian (9 March 1929). "Describing her life-long interest in "Negro life and Negro children," and her current position at the Harding Square Branch Library, where she is conducting a project collecting childhood anecdotes from prominent persons "to tell in a story to children," for which she seeks Du Bois' contribution". Letter to W.E.B. Du Bois. Retrieved 13 January 2019.
  13. ↑ "George Cleveland Hall Branch Archives". Chicago Public Library. Retrieved 13 January 2019.
  14. 1 2 "Negro Lore Collected by Two Women: Collectors Show Slides, Sculpture of Negro Leaders". Chicago Tribune. 26 February 1959.
  15. ↑ Rocksborough-Smith, Ian (Fall 2011). "Margaret T.G. Burroughs and Black Public History in Cold War Chicago". The Black Scholar. 41 (3): 26–42. doi:10.5816/blackscholar.41.3.0026. JSTOR   10.5816/blackscholar.41.3.0026. S2CID   146200073.
  16. ↑ "H". Encyclopedia of Chicago. 2005. Retrieved 13 January 2019.
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