“How Much Is Not Enough?”: Public Library Outreach to “Disadvantaged” Communities in the War on Poverty

Abstract

This article explores the class politics of urban public librarianship through “outreach” efforts during the federal War on Poverty, using the Chicago Public Library as a case study. Using federal money available through the Library Services and Construction Act of 1964, major metropolitan library systems spent nearly a decade opening experimental branches in “disadvantaged” Black and Latinx neighborhoods and publicizing library services to “the urban poor.” Although urban public library outreach was nothing new, this effort reflected the influence of both the civil rights movement and the short-lived national attempt to eradicate poverty, and it unearthed the same conflicts. Outreach efforts allowed activists, staff, and “disadvantaged” communities to challenge public libraries’ authoritarianism, but devastating budget cuts in a slowing economy put public libraries on the defensive in the latter half of the 1970s, leaving political conflicts in librarianship and the nation’s cities to smolder as the War on Poverty was gradually abandoned.