Carnegie libraries visited: New Orleans Algiers, New Orleans Childrens’ Resource
I woke up to three of Baton Rouge’s landmarks. 1. From the front window, I could see the state capitol, “Huey Long’s Monument,” a 34 story skyscraper that the Governor began constructing without the legislature’s consent. Never one for modesty, the “Kingfish” stated upon its completion that "Only one building compares with [the Capitol] in architecture. That's St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome, Italy." 2. From the back window, I could peer through the fog to the mighty Mississippi River, which was perhaps 100 feet from my car. 3. My view through the side window was the Queen Casino, which graciously allows travelers to park overnight.
I cannot say whether the Queen Casino’s lineup was star-studded. I can say its parking lot was nail-studded. I heard the whump whump of the flat immediately upon pulling out of the lot. I edged across the street into the lot of a gas/oil company. I tried to change the tire on my own, but no luck: I could not get the jack to work. I called for roadside assistance but gave up after an hour of no response. About that time a guy came out and asked me if I needed help and, yes, I did. Within 10 minutes Derrick had changed my tire, even pumping up the spare, which itself was flat. “Can I slip you a few bucks?” I asked. “Nah, don’t worry about it.” Thanks, Derrick, I hope you are having a good day.
The Algiers Carnegie Library, in New Orleans, would not exist without the efforts of two women, Cita Dennis Hubbell and her daughter, Amy Hubbell. In 1996, the library was closed because of its deteriorating condition. Cita was determined that the library should be reopened, and so she led a community campaign to have the library repaired and renovated. Finally, after almost a decade, the campaign was successful and the library was reopened. After Cita’s death in 2001, the city of New Orleans renamed the library after her.
Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005. Although the Hubbell library was not destroyed, it did suffer extensive damage, and it was finally shut down again in 2008. Once again, a community effort was called for if the library was to be restored and reopened. Once again, the successful effort was led by a Hubbell: Cita’s daughter, Amy, who continues to be one of the library’s patrons. Carmen, the librarian on duty, told me that Amy still lived in the area and frequented the library. I looked Amy up on Linkedin and sent her a message. Would she like to meet for coffee? Yes, she would. We planned to meet the next day.
Ok, so that was weird. Inside the William H. Latter Memorial Library – a converted mansion, about eight miles from the Hubbell Library – I spoke briefly with Emily, one of the librarians. We were standing next to one of the desks for patrons. It was a large desk, and a woman was working at the end opposite of us. As all the other desks in the area were occupied, I asked the woman “Is it ok if I work here?” She neither looked up nor answered. She was not wearing earbuds. I started to put my computer on the desk and asked again if I could work at the desk. She did not look up, although she did look peeved. After packing up her stuff, she walked around my side of the desk, went behind the chair where I had plugged in my computer, bent down, unplugged hers, and walked away.
I could not help but wonder. Was she hard of hearing? Had she coincidentally finished her tasks at the moment I had arrived? Was she annoyed by my brief chat with Emily (although libraries are no longer places where the librarians’ favorite word is “shhhh”)? Has she had bad experiences with men? For what it’s worth, another guy just came and sat down at this desk. He did not ask whether that was ok.
Emily called me back over to her work station. She was excited to show me more of the library’s online resources, and she shared a presentation she had given on the history of this building, which once had been a private hope. She was extraordinarily cheery and helpful.
I told Emily that I had hoped to meet La Von Williams, one of the other librarians, but I knew she was not working today because Carmen, at the Algiers Library, told me that La Von had the day off. Emily reminded me that staff were not allowed to give out any personal information of other librarians, so I guess I blew Algiers’ cover.
La Von Williams said that she “came to this [The Algiers] Library all the time as a child, ever since I was a baby. Growing up, this Library meant everything to me. I was an avid reader, and I never felt anything but love here” according to the New Orleans Public Library website. When La Von was an adult, a close friend’s mother suggested she consider becoming a librarian. “I never planned to be a librarian; but, after she said it, I thought ‘Why not try, I love the Library, I always have,’” she said. “So I started at Nix Library [in New Orleans] as a part time Library page, and three months later, I got a promotion to be full time. I eventually got my MLIS and now I’m a Librarian III and helping to manage a regional branch. I started from the bottom and went up to the top…Like I said, [the Algiers] Library meant everything to me as a child, and I feel so blessed to be able to provide that same feeling down to this new generation.”
At the very moment I was writing these words, who should appear but La Von herself! Apparently she did not have the day off, and Emily had clued her in to the fact that I was here. We had lots to talk about. She told me about her grandmother, Louise LaMothe, who had had to use a bookmobile in the years before the Algiers library was integrated. Louise was a fixture of the neighborhood, and Amy Hubbell knew her well. La Von was proud of her great grandfather, the Reverend Abraham Lincoln Davis, one of the leaders of the civil rights movement in New Orleans, who became the first African-American to serve on the New Orleans City Council.
La Vonn has already worked for New Orlean’s for 30 years, having started at age 23. Her career has not been one of uninterrupted success. She had to leave the city after Katrina and, to get a job, she told me that she changed her phone number “because no one was hiring anyone with a New Orleans area code.” She returned as an assistant manager in 2006. Since then, she has served as the interim director of four New Orleans libraries, but she was never promoted to director. In each case, an outside person was hired. She believes that her skin color has prevented her from being promoted, as most of the city’s library management is white. I asked her if I could put this in the book, and she answered “Yes.”
African Americans have not been entirely absent from leadership positions in New Orleans libraries. In 1999 Gertiana Williams became the first person of color, and the first female, to become the New Orleans Public Library’s Executive Director and City Librarian. At the time of her appointment, Williams had been serving as interim director for two years. The position of director had already been open for two years, but the Library Board members were not open to fill it because Williams had been so competent as the interim. One of her main legacies was to greatly expand the library’s computer resources. As Williams told the New Orleans Times-Picayune “Everyone deserves computer access. This [the opening of new computer labs in libraries across the city] is a first step toward realizing that goal.”
Tamyka Miles was appointed as deputy director of the New Orleans Public Library in 2022. Miles knew that she wanted to be a librarian since she was a child: “From the time that I could say what I wanted to be, it was always ‘I’m going to be a librarian’. It’s the only thing I ever wanted to be. It’s the only thing I ever wanted to do.”
Tamyka is not as unusual in her love for libraries as she is in library management. As she has stated: “African Americans make up less than 6% of the library workforce, total, and even less in high-level administration positions. I am very passionate about advocating for more people of color to be a part of this profession, and for our libraries to better serve underrepresented communities. If you don’t have a diverse group of people and backgrounds sitting at the table, can you really be sure you’re providing equitable services?”
I have been in New Orleans several times before, and on none of these trips have I been entirely sober. My initial visit was when I was 20 years old, and a National Explorer Vice President. (In the 1970s, Exploring was the teenage, coed, career-oriented program within the Boy Scouts of America.) After a couple of nights in a nice hotel, I decided to stay an extra night after the meetings were over. I did not have money for a hotel and I just figured that I could find a place to stay. Lugging my suitcase (this was years before rolling suitcases were common) I walked over to some sort of shelter near the French Quarter. I looked at it, and the truly down-and-out men who were loitering in front and thought “Nope, not for me.” After wandering around a little more, paper map in hand, I headed toward a convent. I knocked on the door and a nun greeted me. She told me I could stay there, and showed me to a spartan room with a bed, table, and lamp. She did not charge me. Early in the morning, I awakened to soft morning songs wafting down the hallway.
Once I was here to attend a large meeting of substance abuse professionals. At the time, I was conducting a study of drug abuse in rural areas for the U.S. General Accounting Office (since renamed the Government Accountability Office). At the end of the opening day’s session, the mayor gave a short welcoming speech, ending with Laissez les bon temps rouler! Bring in the hospitality (i.e., booze) carts! The organizers, shocked, reminded him that this was a substance abuse conference, and that it would not be hosting receptions with alcohol. The mayor, now shocked for his part (a conference in New Orleans without liquor?), hastily apologized. I am not sure whether this story is actually true, but that is how I remember it.
Another time, I had been at a bar for far too long, and it became far too late. I was wobbly walking home, and I was walking where I had no legitimate business being. Without warning, I was shoved to the ground, and both back pockets were ripped out. I had been mugged. My wallet was stolen. My attackers could easily have killed me, but killing tourists is bad for business, especially when the wallets of the drunk can so easily be stolen. I staggered back to the hotel. The night clerk was reluctant to let me into my room, as I had no key and no identification.
It is easy to get drunk in any American city, but New Orleans makes it easier. Once I was buying a bottle of wine and the shop clerk asked me “Want me to open it here?” In the French Quarter, you can buy booze right on the street. Even though Mardi Gras is, like, literally only a single day (“Fat Tuesday” is the day before Lenten fasting begins) for the French Quarter tourists every day is Mardi Gras. As the mayor said, “Let the good times roll!”
New Orleans is also an easy city to get sober in, if you are willing to do anything it takes. On the day that I visited, there were 49 AA meetings between 6.30 am and 9.00 pm within 20 miles of my hostel. I attended a ‘mens’ meeting last evening, and there were maybe 40 guys there. We sat on folding chairs in a large circle at the St. Charles Baptist Church. The custom at that meeting is to go around the room introducing yourself and giving your ‘sobriety’ date (e.g., I’m Mark, alcoholic, June 23, 2023). The dates ranged from the late 1970s to about two weeks ago.
The meeting was inspiring. I could see men who have been continuously sober for only two weeks and also for two score. AA makes a pretty big deal of sobriety dates, and almost everyone remembers theirs. Sobriety dates serve two purposes. They remind us of the first day we began working on our sobriety, and they also remind us of the last time (until now) we picked up a drink. The last drink is almost never pretty. It could be when we held up a champagne flute at the Champs Elysees. More often it is when we were chugging from a bottle of cheap vodka on our couch. I have heard it said that no one wakes up thinking “Gee, I think maybe I should check out AA today.” What AA members more often say is something like “I am totally defeated. I am desperate. I’m powerless over my addiction. I must go to an AA meeting.”
I spent the night at the HI Youth Hostel on Canal Street, immediately adjacent to the French Quarter. I stayed at many youth hostels in Europe when I was a college student, and they were generally modest and inexpensive affairs. As an adult, I have bedded down at two youth hostels, one in New York and then the one here. These are not the youth hostels of my youth. They are large and, if not lavish, clean, comfortable, and large. The lobby area (where I wrote this) has reading chairs, a large desk with lamps and multiple outlets, and a pool table. The second story balcony has a kitchen for those who want to cook. A continental breakfast is served at 7.30 am, but coffee and tea are available 24 hours. It’s now 8.30 am and the breakfast area is pretty full. The ‘early’ breakfast crowd skews older, with a few couples probably in their 50s dining. I fall into the ‘youthful in heart’ demographic, and I was given a friendly reception.
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