#BlackHistoryMonth2017
Described as “the historian who never wrote,” Vivian Gordon Harsh
was the first African American librarian in the Chicago Public Library
system and a significant contributor to Chicago's Black Renaissance.
Vivian Gordon Harsh devoted her life to building one of the most
important research collections on African-American history and
literature in the country.
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| Image courtesy of BlackPast.org |
Fresh out of high school, Vivian Harsh began work in 1909 as a junior clerk at the Chicago
Public Library where she would remain during her 60-year career. In
1921, she received her B.A. in library science from Simmons College in
Boston, Massachusetts, and later took advanced courses at the University
of Chicago Graduate School of Library Science.
In 1924 she became the city’s first black professional librarian.
Through her involvement with The Association for the Study of Negro Life
and History founded by Carter G. Woodson, Harsh recognized the need for
library services on Chicago’s south side, the heart of the city’s
African American community.
The library itself became a Mecca
for literary and cultural icons of the period including Richard Wright,
Langston Hughes, Zora Neal Huston, and Gwendolyn Brooks, some of whom
contributed manuscripts to the institution. The resources first
accumulated by Harsh and Rollins in the 1920s have grown into the Vivian
G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature,
the largest of its kind in the Midwest and currently located at the
city’s Carter G. Woodson Regional Library.
Source:
http://www.blackpast.org/
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