Page 21 - BCALA Winter 2018

Three Unsung Pioneers of the
East Baton Rouge Parish Public
Library System
By Eddie Hughes, Southern University Baton Rouge
The history of the United States of America is saturated with reports
of White Americans violating the human and civil rights of African Americans. It is well documented that White Americans used race as a motivating factor to utilize a variety of mechanisms to oppress, exploit, and degrade African Americans
for the sole purpose of relegating them to second class citizenship; for instance, White Americans used their dominance to deny African Americans access to professional organizations which led to a
denial of opportunities to learn a profession, establish networks, and chances to benefit from prospects of advancement into socioeconomic hierarchy. For example, the denial of African American access to inner circles of the library profession, made it sensible for African Americans to conclude that the profession of librarianship was
a direct replica of mainstream America. This report is a brief analysis of three pioneering African American librarians and how they
persevered, in spite of traditional racist practices, to become East Baton Rouge Parish Public library System’s first African American information professionals.
On Tuesday, March 17, 1699, the first Europeans (French explorers) visited the site known today as Baton Rouge (at three o’clock in
the afternoon); in addition, this French expedition was headed by Pierre Le Moyne, whose title was Sieur d’Iberville (Carleton 1996). As D’Iberville and his party traveled up the Mississippi River (passing the future locale of New Orleans) they reached a small stream at the right of the river (east bank) in search of food. This small stream separated the hunting grounds of the Bayagoulas and the Houma Indians, living on the Istrouma Bluff (itti humma or istrouma). This location was later renamed Scott’s Bluff for Dr. William Bernard Scott who owned a plantation on that
site (Scott’s Bluff is now part of Southern University’s campus). Its banks were separated by a
reddened, 30-foot-high maypole with several heads of fish and bears attached in sacrifice and dripping with blood that natives had sunk there to mark the land line between the two nations (Meyers 1976). The red stick the French saw was probably used both as a boundary marker and for ceremonial purposes. D’Iberville called this area Baton Rouge (French phrase for “The Red Stick”), and hence the region’s name was born.
Baton Rouge was not incorporated until 1817. By 1860, a year before the start of the American Civil
War, Baton Rouge had a residency of 16,046 persons; a little more
than 5,134 (32%) were Black; all
but a small portion were slaves.
The American Civil War was from 1861-1865 between 11 southern slave Sates (Confederate States of America) and 23 United States of America. The problem arose when the United States government would not allow southern plantation owners to expand the institution
of slavery into the new virgin
BCALA NEWS | Volume 45, Issue 1 | 21