Library Desegregation

Watch our community conversation on the history of library desegregation in Falls Church, recorded on June 4, 2023. 

• Edwin Henderson II - founder, the Tinner Hill Heritage Foundation
• James Page - Sr. Pastor, Galloway United Methodist Church
• Jenny Carroll - MRSPL Director
• Chris Barbuschak - co-author, Desegregation in Northern Virginia Libraries
• Paula Hawkins - MRSPL staff member
• Davanshi Patel - co-founder and CEO, Center for Youth & Family Advocacy

A Profound Debt

The Mary Riley Styles Public Library owes a profound debt to two local Black activists, Dr. Edwin Bancroft Henderson and the Reverend Wallace Earl Costner, who in the 1950s worked to ensure that what was then the Falls Church Public Library would be open to Black citizens whose access had previously been limited.  

Both men were leaders in their fields. Henderson (1883-1977) had a career as the director of physical education for the Black school system in Washington, D.C., and held executive roles with the Virginia branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Reverend Costner (1895-1971) served as minister at the Second Baptist Church in Falls Church from 1935 until his death. He was a civic activist whose daughter became the first Black graduate of the high school in Falls Church. Marian Costner (later Selby) graduated from what was then George Mason High School in 1964. 

Correspondence and minutes preserved in the library archives in the Falls Church History Room show that in the autumn of 1955, Henderson and Costner met with the librarian of Falls Church to discuss “the matter of the library’s service to the colored people of Falls Church.” At the November 10, 1955, library board meeting, it was proposed that the Black children of Falls Church – who attended the Black school outside the city – be offered the same library privileges available to the city’s White students. The board minutes record that “the motion was approved unanimously.” Further conversations led to the decision to extend library access to non-resident teachers of these Black students as well, which was communicated in a letter from the librarian to Costner.  

Jim Crow & Segregated Libraries

This library was not always available to all the public, nor was it always free. Its evolution followed a path typical for libraries in the United States: It was founded as a private subscription library, with materials available only to paying members, and was then sustained and developed by the dedicated efforts of unpaid women volunteers, before eventually becoming a fully taxpayer-supported institution.^₁ However, in segregated communities, Black citizens did not have equal access to public libraries and their resources for literacy and learning. In their book on the desegregation of public libraries in Northern Virginia, Fairfax librarians Chris Barbuschak and Suzanne LaPierre noted that “During the Jim Crow era in the southern United States, many public libraries served white residents only. Black residents often had no public library service at all or were restricted to separate libraries or bookmobile stops.”² 

Before the Civil War, access to learning was forbidden to Blacks in Virginia. The state had anti-literacy laws that made it illegal to teach Blacks to read. After the war, the first public school opened in Falls Church, a two-story brick school that was for White students only. Black children attended grammar school in a two-room wooden building; the only options for those who wanted to continue their education were to attend a Black trade school in Manassas or enroll in a Black high school in Washington, D.C. Mary Ellen Henderson, wife of E.B. Henderson and longtime principal of the grammar school attended by Black students of Falls Church, published a report in the 1940s that highlighted the shocking disparity of resources for Black and White students.³ Reverend Costner was also a persistent and energetic advocate for improved educational opportunities for the community’s Black students. 

The Supreme Court & NAACP

Two Supreme Court rulings, Brown v. Board of Education I and II in May 1954 and May 1955, overturned the “separate but equal” standard that had been established by Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. The Supreme Court concluded that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” and ordered states to begin desegregating “with all deliberate speed.” In one of his many “Letters to the Editor” of the Washington Post, Henderson wrote of the judicial decision that “Now that the keystone of the arch of racial bigotry has been knocked out by the Supreme Court, the whole system may be expected to crumble and fall.”⁴ Equal access to public libraries was specifically on his mind in the autumn of 1955, when, as head of the Virginia chapter of the NAACP, he addressed the annual Virginia Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers conference, urging “teachers and parents ‘to force open public libraries’ to Negro children as a means of shortening the educational gap between white and colored children.”⁵ 

Fairfax County Public Library records from the 1940s show clearly that the library in Falls Church failed to provide service to its Black citizens.⁶ In a 2022 interview, a woman who worked in the library in the early 1950s observed that Falls Church was strictly segregated during those years, adding that “No Black people came into the library.”⁷ While no records have been found in the library archives to indicate that the library ever had a policy that explicitly barred Blacks, Jim Crow norms prevailed. In the 1880s a Black citizen, Frederick Foote, was elected to successive terms on Town Council, but at the end of the nineteenth century Falls Church retroceded a portion of its territory to Fairfax County, substantially reducing the Black population of the town. In 1914, Falls Church Council members, including Samuel Styles, husband of Mary Riley Styles, proposed and approved racially restrictive zoning measures that would have banned Black citizens from owning property in Falls Church. Black citizens, including Henderson, banded together to form the Colored Citizens Protective League and successfully challenged the ordinances. The CCPL became the first rural branch of the NAACP.  

Change Begins in the Library 

With the active participation of Costner and Henderson in programs at the library, change gradually occurred. Costner served with the librarian on a Falls Church mayor’s “Committee on More and Better Reading.” A 1950s local authors’ display at the library included Henderson’s book on Black athletes, and Henderson was one of the panelists at the library’s inaugural oral history program in 1965. In a 1953 library board meeting, it was suggested that the library promote the fact that it “operates on a non-segregated basis.” The library’s commitment to serving all members of the community was underscored in 1956, when library board chairman John Bold began an address to a city-wide public meeting with the declaration that the library “belongs to you... all of you... regardless of class, or creed, or color.” In a state where the governor-supported policy of Massive Resistance meant that many schools – and some public libraries -- closed entirely rather than accept integration, these were strong words. When a new, dedicated library building opened in Falls Church in 1958, E.B. and Mary Ellen Henderson were among the first to sign the guest book for the building’s grand opening. The library’s neighbors at its new location included Henderson’s mother at the house next door and the Reverend Costner directly across North Virginia Avenue. 

Mary Riley Styles Public Library acknowledges with deep gratitude the contributions of Henderson and Costner in encouraging the library to more fully live up to its promise to provide access for all. In its 2023 Strategic Plan, the library recommitted itself to its mission to offer opportunities for literacy and lifelong learning, while “seeking to serve a broader cross section of the community, particularly those who have been traditionally underserved.” Commenting on the opening of the new library building in 1958, Henderson observed that “we’ve always been, from the beginning, friends of the librarian, and we’ve been members and have supported it... because I thought it was good for the town,” adding that “the dedication of our new City Hall and Library [has] meaning as civilizing justice and law and education to supplant ignorance and prejudice. Negro citizens therefore are equally proud of our new Library and City Hall, which they, too, helped erect.”  

Rev. Wallace Earl Costner c.1971 (courtesy Center for Local History, Arlington Public Library)  

Dr. Edwin Bancroft Henderson and Elizabeth M. Styles on March 26,1976 

Mary Ellen Henderson's comparison of Black and White schools in the 1940s

1956 letter confirming library access for teachers from local Black schools

Guest book page from 1958 library grand opening, signed by Mary Ellen and E.B. Henderson