Emily Wheelock Reed

Emily Wheelock Reed, 89, who was to be honored by the American Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Committee for her important role in defending the freedom to read in the United States and in the State of Alabama, passed away at the Broadmead retirement community, Cockeysville, Maryland, on Friday, May 19, 2000.

Mrs. Reed was born in Ashville, North Carolina, but lived there for only 1 year. She was raised and educated in Indiana, and graduated from Indiana University, a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She subsequently studied library science at the University of Michigan, where she later worked. She also worked at Florida State University, the Detroit Public Library, a public library in Kauai, Hawaii, and the state library agency of Louisiana.

After leaving Louisiana, Mrs. Reed was appointed Director of the Alabama Public Library Service Division in 1957. Soon after she assumed the directorship, segregationist legislators in Alabama, especially Senator E.O. Eddins, began to scrutinize the collections of the library agency, attacking the holding of "integrationist" and "communistic" books.

Particular controversy surrounded a children's book, The Rabbit's Wedding, by Garth Williams, published in 1958 by Harper Brothers, which describes the wedding of a black rabbit to a white rabbit. Senator Eddins and others took the story to be an endorsement of miscegenation, and insisted that it be removed from the shelves of Alabama libraries. They also attacked the inclusion of a book by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on a list of "notable books" distributed by Mrs. Reed's office. When she refused to reverse her position on these issues, she became the object of legal attempts to remove her from office.

Because most southern libraries were slowly and quietly becoming integrated at that time, the American Library Association and other leaders of the library community declined to take a strong position on Mrs. Reed's behalf, for fear that enlarging the controversy would set back the advances that were taking place. Mrs. Reed herself attempted some compromise with the legislators, placing some controversial books on a special reserve shelf, in order to avoid endangering state funding for the public libraries, but ultimately she refused to give in to censorship.

Mrs. Reed stood firm on the inclusion of books including various positions on integration and other issues, and she was never ousted. In 1960, however, she left Alabama to become a consultant with the library system of the District of Columbia, where she worked for 6 years. She retired in 1977 from the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore.

In its 2000 Midwinter Meeting, the American Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Committee resolved to "recognize and applaud Emily Reed's courageous stand." Mrs. Reed had been a charter member of the Freedom to Read Foundation and a member for 61 years of the American Library Association.