04/20/2026
We've come a long way thanks to people like Carrie Coleman Robinson, we still have miles to go.
In 1969, Carrie Coleman Robinson, a Black school librarian in Alabama, brought a landmark case to the U.S. District Court against the state's Department of Education.
Born in Mississippi in 1906, Robinson began her career as a librarian serving Black schools in South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana before settling in Alabama. In 1946, she decided to continue her professional education. Unable to be admitted to the University of Alabama library school due to her race, Robinson enrolled in the University of Illinois master’s degree program in 1948, returning to Alabama afterward.
In 1962, Robinson was hired as Negro School Library Supervisor in Alabama’s Department of Education. While serving in this position, federal funds became available to improve secondary school libraries across the nation. The Alabama DOE's list of viable candidates for a supervisor position excluded Carrie Robinson, despite her high qualifications, and the position went instead to an underqualified white person. It was later found that department officials routinely failed to advertise and recruit for applications from Black people compared to similarly situated white people.
On May 14, 1969, she filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court, alleging that she had been denied equal protection as a department employee because of her race. On December 23 that year, the National Education Association and the Alabama State Teachers Association filed a class action suit against the department on Robinson’s behalf. It was the first time the NEA filed a racial discrimination suit against a state department of education, and the only time it supported a school librarian.
On October 6, 1970, both parties in the Robinson case reached an agreement: Robinson was promoted to a higher-ranking role and received a salary increase, while the state agreed to pay all her legal fees.
Read more about Robinson and her impact on librarianship: https://bit.ly/4tPI0db
