Day 11, Thursday February 22, 2024: Mobile, Alabama to Oxford, Mississippi
- Mark Carl Rom
- May 6
- 4 min read
Carnegie libraries visited: Okolona and Houston, Mississippi
Alabama (“We defend our rights” is the state motto) gave me a little gift this morning. When turning off my iPhone last night, I inadvertently put it in SOS mode. The SOS mode disables the cellular service I needed to use my maps and apps. To turn SOS off, I thought I needed a wifi connection, so I drove back to the Ben May Library because I knew that the library would have one. Libraries are good that way. I missed the turn to the main parking lot and instead pulled into the lot of the Mobile Library History and Genealogy Branch. Great, thank you, lack of Google Maps, for this serendipity.. I described my project to Tanisha, who was working the front desk, and she pointed me to the shelves containing the various reports of the Women’s Clubs of Alabama.
The Alabama Federation of Women’s Clubs YearBook 1920 – this was the earliest yearbook in the archives – proclaimed that
The permanent values of human life are expressed in literature as nowhere else. So we must remind ourselves that [this federation] is to nurture those values…The public library should be our natural gathering place, and the Women’s Club could be made a social center…Let ‘A Public Library for Every Town’ be the Slogan of this our Centennial Year.
The back of this volume reported to the Federation the contributions the various state clubs made. The Quest Club, for example, donated $10 ($159.10 in 2025 dollars) to its city library. Every little bit counts.
Emma Harris (“Miss Emma,” as she was known) was the grand dame of Alabama libraries. Born in 1879, she earned her college degree in 1921 at the age of 42. In 1918, one year after her husband, Louis, passed away, she was named head of the private library that preceded the creation of the Mobile Public library. She was instrumental in the efforts to establish a public library, and she became its first librarian when it was dedicated in 1928. Unusual for the times, she helped to float the $250,000 bond issue that was needed to finance that library.
She was not a “I never leave the library librarian,” if there even is such an animal. Her travels made the headlines (in The Mobile Times, at least): “Mrs. Harris Enjoys Interesting Trip.” In October 1929 Miss Emma traveled to Indianapolis to visit the library there, as the Mobile library was patterned after that one. While traveling she also visited the libraries in Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, Detroit, Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis, Evansville, Louisville, and Battle Creek, as well as other small libraries in Michigan. (I wish I had been on that library journey.) In 1961, Mrs. Harris was named Mobile’s “First Lady of the Year.” The commendation read:
Your career in library work reaches back over the years to 1918 and the record is filled with many instances in which you made great personal sacrifices to make books and other publications available to the reading public.
There was a time during the Great Depression when you and others on your staff worked without pay and without lights and heat in the library.
You very successfully served as librarian from 1928 until 1945 and at the age of 82 are still carrying on as head of the library’s research department of southern history.
Like many accomplished women of the day, Miss Emma was the member of many organizations including the Women’s Club, the Business and Professional Women’s Club, the American Library Association, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and, yes, the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
When I was ready to end my much too short visit to the archives, I learned that AT&T’s cell service was out of commission for much of the morning. My phone went on SOS mode not because of what I had done. Good fortune, anyway, because I would not have stopped at the archives otherwise. Technological failure sometimes leads to happy adventures.
Having spent more time in Mobile than planned, I just took pictures of the Carnegie libraries in Okolona and Houston, Mississippi as I passed through those towns. The Carnegie archives do not make any references to any roles that women played in their towns’ efforts to obtain a library.
I thought it would be easy to find a place to park overnight on the Ole Miss campus; I know my way around universities. I slipped into one promising lot – lots of spaces; also, lots of cars – although after an hour or so it had emptied and I sat in the last car sitting there. Sticking out like a sore Goldfinger, I left and eased into the parking area of a Marriott Gardens hotel that was just around the corner.
I think hotels will become my go-to camping home. Cars park there every night, so no one will raise an eyebrow seeing my Subaru, and hotels have lobbies, often with free coffee, sometimes free wifi, and always with bathrooms. Moreover: a decently dressed, older, white, dude is not going to be questioned as to what he is doing there.
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