Speaker 1: For now, though, it is time for the Way Black
Speaker 1: History Fact. Today's Way Black History Fact is sponsored by
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Speaker 1: today we're talking about the first sit in protest of
Speaker 1: a white's only library. This reading comes from Zen Education Project.
Speaker 1: On August twenty first, nineteen thirty nine, twenty six year
Speaker 1: old Samuel Wilbert Tucker, an innovative civil rights lawyer, launched
Speaker 1: a sit in aimed at protesting the white's only policy
Speaker 1: at the segregated Alexandria, Virginia Public Library. Earlier in the year,
Speaker 1: Tucker and an acquaintance, retired Army sergeant George Wilson, had
Speaker 1: been rejected in their attempts to apply for library cards
Speaker 1: and were told by an assistant librarian that the library's
Speaker 1: library boards policy was not to issue cards to colored persons.
Speaker 1: According to historian Jay Douglas Smith, author of Managing White Supremacy, Race, Politics,
Speaker 1: and Citizenship in jen Crow, Virginia, Tucker There we Go
Speaker 1: foiled a lawsuit on behalf of Wilson, arguing that taxes
Speaker 1: paid by black citizens helped operate the library, so blacks
Speaker 1: therefore had a right to use its facilities. Corporation Court
Speaker 1: Judge William Wools held off on his ruling to give
Speaker 1: the city and library time to solve the issue with
Speaker 1: actions such as creating a separate branch library for African Americans. Tucker, though,
Speaker 1: decided to force a confrontation. According to Smith, he recruited
Speaker 1: five black men otto Tucker, Edward Gaddis Morris, Murray, William Evans,
Speaker 1: and Clarence Strange, all between eighteen and twenty two years
Speaker 1: of age, to go one by one into the library,
Speaker 1: well dressed and ask to apply for borrowers cards. Anticipating
Speaker 1: that they would be rebuffed, Tucker had instructed the young
Speaker 1: men to select books from the shows and quietly sit
Speaker 1: down to read each at a different table and after
Speaker 1: being refused. The action was an early attempt at non
Speaker 1: violent protests, preceding by two decades the civil rights lunch
Speaker 1: counter sit ins that began in Oklahoma City in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty eight. In Greensboro, North Carolina, in nineteen sixty, when
Speaker 1: the men did not stand up and vacate the library
Speaker 1: at the librarian's request, police were summoned. They told the
Speaker 1: men they would be arrested if they did not leave.
Speaker 1: Men politely refused. Over an hour later, they went peacefully
Speaker 1: with the police. When they left the library, the men
Speaker 1: encountered an audience of two to three hundred people, plus
Speaker 1: news reporters and photographers waiting outside. The crowd had been
Speaker 1: gathered by Tucker to witness the discrimination and arrest. Although everyone,
Speaker 1: including the police, remained calm, City Manager Carl Budweski, ordered
Speaker 1: the police to charge the men with disorderly conduct the
Speaker 1: next day, and hearing before Police Court Judge James Rhese Duncan,
Speaker 1: Tucker's questioning led the police officers to concede there was
Speaker 1: no disorder. Tucker accused the city of assuming that the
Speaker 1: men were disorderly because they were black. City Attorney Armstead
Speaker 1: Booth then requested the judge to postpone the case while
Speaker 1: the charges were reconsidered. The disorderly case dragged on through
Speaker 1: the fall of nineteen thirty nine, with Judge Duncan allowing
Speaker 1: multiple continuance is but never officially ending the matter in court. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Tucker's lawsuit on behalf of Sergeant George Wilson proceeded in
Speaker 1: Judge Woolve's court, and Wolves finally ruled on January tenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen forty, when he issued a split decision. He denied
Speaker 1: Wilson's petition for a library card on a technicality that
Speaker 1: Tucker was the one who actually filled out the application
Speaker 1: for him, But Wolves also ruled that Alexandria must permit
Speaker 1: black residents to use the white library because there was
Speaker 1: no other separate library for non whites. Two days after
Speaker 1: Wolve's ruling, the Alexandra City Council undermined any thought of
Speaker 1: having an integrated library by approving money for a separate
Speaker 1: library for black residents. Tucker denounced the council's action as
Speaker 1: pouring insult into injury. He wrote to city Librarian Catherine
Speaker 1: Skaggin to say, I refuse and will always refuse to
Speaker 1: accept a card that could be used only at the
Speaker 1: forthcoming black library, and that is our way. Black History
Speaker 1: fact for the day