A movie made about a library with the book found in our San Benito County Free Library is a fact. Bette Davis starred as the targeted librarian. She was quoted, “she hoped her children would be proud of her for making this film.”
While browsing the aisles into non-fiction by chance I pulled this historical gem, “The Dismissal of Miss Ruth Brown.”
Set in 1950 during McCarthyism, the Cold War, and more than 10 years before the bus boycott and the civil rights movement, this story has lessons for today. Ruth Brown was summarily fired after 30 years as public librarian while consistently performing her job with always high performance ratings.
The excuse offered painted her as a communist because she shelved a book, “The Russians,” and displayed magazines such as “The Nation” and “New Republic.” As an excellent librarian she believed, as did the American Library Association, that when an issue is controversial then a library should provide literature on both sides for the public to read and therefore make up their own mind.
The real underlying issue was something hidden. Ruth Brown loved children; she made her story hour welcoming to all children including Black children. Her town of Bartlesville, Oklahoma, was marginally southern with Jim Crow segregation—making easier borrowing of books by African Americans a concern for her.
Maintaining segregation was the real issue among the conservative Phillips Petroleum employees, the city economic hub and conservative city office holders but they did not want to appear bigoted.
The important meaning today seems to be able to discover the real issue behind the firings of today. Waste and fraud are the reasons offered and bandied about. But we see federal workers fired for no reason at all.
Actually federal workers are hired based on merit and skills not on any political position. These employees just want to work hard and serve their country.
So what is the real issue behind these firings? It seems that our leaders want to destroy our system of government that has taken years to create so that they will be unopposed and do as they wish. Is that what the American people want?
Mary Zanger
Hollister
