On the afternoon of July 16, 1960, eight African American students bravely filed into the whites-only Greenville County (S.C.) Public Library and sat down in the reading room to look at newspapers and books. One of those students was a young Jesse Jackson—later to become famous as a civil rights activist and minister—who was home in Greenville on summer break from the University of Illinois.

In the midst of the Civil Rights era in America, librarians were battling for and against segregated libraries in the South, however they were also battling over integration within their own ranks. Integration of the library profession was a long process that started in the early 20th century.