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Keywords: discrimination, segregation, civil rights, African American librarians, librarianship, professions, American library history, reconciliation
Librarianship in the United States has struggled to diversify the ranks of its profession in a manner that satisfies the goals of organizational leaders in the American Library Association (ALA) and members of diverse racial and ethnic groups themselves. Despite the formation of the ALA Office for Diversity, Literacy, and Outreach Services (or rather the reformation of previous offices into ODLOS with the inclusion of diversity in their charge) and the development of various equity, diversity, and inclusion initiatives, the ethnic makeup of librarians in the U.S. remains largely unchanged since the 1990s, with roughly 88% of librarians identifying as white.1 More recently, Schonfeld and Sweeney (2017) have found that academic libraries show a slightly lower overall percentage of white librarians (71%), but the administrative and leadership ranks are still near the 88% level.2 The dissatisfaction with this ongoing situation is attested by voices gathered in various works like Unfinished Business: Race, Equity, and Diversity in Library and Information Science Education and The 21st-Century Black Librarian in America.3 This situation suggests that American librarianship needs to reconcile its dominant narrative of openness and inclusion with the facts of its history, which, in the United States, might more accurately be characterized as indifferent, if not openly hostile, to diversity and inclusion. In much the same manner that Michael Harris endeavored to de-mythologize the foundations of the public library movement in the United States,4 we must look beyond the accepted narrative, and, perhaps, realize that the narrative actually serves to reinforce ideas of race that are not healthy for the profession of librarianship A second, and equally important, part to the process would be that the library profession reconcile with groups and individuals who have been wronged and harmed: to provide some form of restitution of professional value and dignity—even to those who are no longer living. This two-part need for reconciliation should be open-ended with no specified closing date. The history of racism in the library profession should continue to be investigated and published, and our professional organizations should continue to acknowledge the contributions of librarians of color and the role professional organizations played in thwarting and suppressing those contributions throughout...