In the 18th century, when slavery stretched across the Northern and Southern colonies, enslaved people were sometimes taught to read so they could learn the Gospel. But as abolitionist movements gained power, slaveholders began to see literacy as a threat and forbade the reading or possession of books. 13 In free states, African Americans who were barred from libraries and other educational spaces created their own institutions. Between 1828 and 1841, no fewer than nine Black literary societies and social libraries opened in Philadelphia, and there were dozens more throughout the North, dedicated to the “restoration” and the moral and intellectual “improvement” of Black communities. These spaces often combined reading, writing, and activism. The circulating library of the Garrison Literary and Benevolent Association, founded in 1834 in New York City, for example, included books about abolition and colonialism. 14 Historian Michelle Garfield has shown that spaces like these empowered Black women, in particular, to engage in political discussions about self-determination and freedom. 15 And some of these Black feminist activists later became public librarians. Ernestine Rose, appointed director of the New York Public Library’s 135th Street branch in 1920, hired many pioneering female librarians of color — among them Catherine Allen Latimer, Nella Larsen, Regina Anderson Andrews, and Pura Belpré — and made the library into a hub for the Harlem Renaissance. 16
