The Vietnam War: The Desegregation Of Libraries In The United States

The second world war saw libraries everywhere, even in internment camps. The Americans tried to make the camps as similar to a small city as possible, and that included libraries. The war built libraries but destroyed many more; the Asian continent saw many a nation’s greatest collections burned by enemies. After the war was over, universities filled with veterans searching for higher education. The libraries at that institution not only processed the new information streaming in with the veterans but the requests that they had. The following Cold War sent parents into a panic. They feared that the Soviets were indoctrinating the children with communist propaganda through the books. This led to a complete stop in information from the USSR. That panic rolled into the desegregation of public libraries.
The Houston libraries saw some success, but it would continue to be a struggle. In the 1950s, librarians were activists. They campaigned to increase voter turnout and library patronage. As television and radio increased in popularity, people weren’t going to the library. The use of pop culture characters in advertising campaigns brought people back into libraries. National Library Week was established to keep people coming in year after year, even after the original organization that sponsored the event dissolved; the ALA came in and picked it