Host Sharon Hinton invites her guest, historian and librarian Kantigi Camara, to discuss the importance of black librarianship and how it ties into black representation.
WBCA Podcasts
On Another Level
[MUSIC] I have a problem every year, around in the payday. Because the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. For some reason has been treated as America's civil rights mascot. On this day, you'll have folks who would have never in their life. [MUSIC] Hi and welcome to another edition of On Another Level. I'm your host, Sharon Aiden Hinton, and also the producer of this program. Let me tell you, we're live tonight, and we were live on Saturday. Katie, Studio Manager, get ready to show this flyer of what happened this weekend. We had, the Boston Media Producers group, had a media networking form and community conversation this Saturday at the Roxbury Public Library in New being square. We brought together trendsetters, leaders in radio, television, print, and social media. They all came together to network with each other and to network with the community. It was off the hook. It has never been done in Boston, ever. And we did it, the Boston Media Producers group. So Yahoo, I'm a general manager. We had 10 people alone, just on the radio panel. We had about 10 people, no, we had eight people, 10 people on the TV panel and social media, and also print. So we had the owner, co-owner of the Boston banner. We had people from channel 7, channel 5, GBH, channel 2, radio and television, WBC. And then we also had people that were newspapers from Western Massachusetts, social media people. We had people from the ages of 20, all the way up to 80. Some veterans in the business and some newbies in the business. Some of the young people in their 20s and 30s on Facebook pages alone, have 46,000 followers, Instagram, 100,000 followers. This has never happened before, but because of the energy that was in the room, you got to stay tuned because everybody is pressing us to do it again. So kudos to everyone. I'm telling Carmen Fields, who's a veteran from channel 7 was there. Amazing, and she's an author. We also had Ed Gaskin, who in his day job is the executive director of Greater Grove Hall Main Streets. But he's actually a writer, and he's an author. And I think he's working on his seventh or eighth book. I think he said his last book now, which he's just finishing up and has over 400 pages. I'm not going to tell you the title of that. He's been published in The Banner, The Boston Business Journal, The Jewish Times. He's an author. He's a publisher. He's an editorial writer. And so we had writers, we had musicians, we had people in all areas of the business, and in all ages. And this has never happened before. We had women owners of radio stations, geez, we had Danielle, who has Spark FM TV. And we also had Courtney Boston, who's the general manager of WWOC, Woke Woman. So we had, and we had Charles Clemens, who started Touch FM. And Boston also has Touch TV, who announced on Saturday, he's building a low power radio station in Sierra Leone. So we had, we had movies and shakers, we had players and playmakers. It was awesome off the hook. And stay tuned, because we'll give you more information, because now we're being told we need to do it again. And we're doing it again this night, as always, I have an amazing, amazing guest. Now I don't know where you are right now, especially if you're live with us. But this is the day before elections. You can't register to vote anymore. You just have to know what you're talking about and vote. Later on in the program, we'll tell you about some of the five ballot questions you need to be aware of. They're all important, some more important than others, depending on where you are. If you're a school teacher or you're a parent or student, the MCAS, whether or not the MCAS should stay as a graduation requirement. If you are a gig driver, meaning you drive for Uber or Lyft, and you want to unionize, there's a question about that. There's also a question about whether or not state auditor, the state auditor should be able to audit the elected officials in the legislature. There's another one. And there's two more. I'll tell you about those later. But right now, I'm talking really fast. I'm sorry. Right now, my guest is a very, very good friend of mine, very learned friend of mine, Contiji Kamara, Mr. Contiji Kamara, historian and librarian. Welcome to the show. Oh, thank you for having me. I'm so glad you were here. You and I have known each other for a while. A big while. And a big while. And you were very instrumental in my, after graduating at Northeastern University, actually becoming employed at Boston, at Northeastern University. You and I met, and I was telling somebody earlier before the show, I always wanted to work for black side productions, which did Eyes on the Prize. And I get hired to, as a, as a producer, segment producer, on the last documentary, We Come This Far By Faith. And there was a song, and it didn't have a title, and they had already recorded the song and didn't know who it was, and we needed to get the release for that. And I went to the library, the only places that had any kind of record of that song was Northeastern University's library, and Harvard. And I was already at the New England Conservatory, so I walked across the campus, and I met you in the library. And you helped me research this, and we struck up such a good conversation and friendship. We ended up doing that first workshop, remember? Yes. And we had people, it was about a racial equity workshop, and we're trying to get the students in the Ujima Scholars Program to understand what you and I experience, because we had a little bit, you know, older, seasoned, seasoned, and about when this country was so racially segregated, and also there was colorism, light skinned, dark skinned. And remember, we handed out those little pieces of paper, but it wasn't black and white, it was like red and green or something. And they didn't know that, I forget which color we gave to the light skin people, which color we gave to the dark skin. And they were on separate sides of the auditorium of the room. That's correct. And then eventually somebody said something, and so it was part of the whole lesson. And as a result of that, somebody else that was employed there saw what we did, the response from the kids, and then I got offered a part-time job, and then I ended up working there full-time. So you were the reason why I got so beat up at the African American. No. And at that time, my daughter was three and a half, and she's now 27, so I've got pics of her being a little bitty, and your daughter grew up in there, and they became good friends still growing up there. And so I welcome you. You have been an amazing friend to me, but you've also been someone who I see as a historian and a scholar. And when I look at who you are, librarian in Northeast University, Simmons College, School of Librarian Information Sciences, you also were a librarian at Northeast University for 24 years, for a long time, 24 years, Branch Manager, Parker Hill Branch, Boston Public Library, Branch Librarian Manager, another Boston Public Library branch for about eight years. Simmons, you got your education from Simmons College, School of Librarian Information Science M.I.S. It's not called university. It's not called university. Simmons University? Yes. Oh, it's Simmons College back that, right? Yes. And then you got your BA from Livingstone College in history, a minor in physics, and business? P.E. Who knew? Um, so, and I know you to be in a lot of other different places. And so, um, I, you know, the people that I met through you and that you and I met together at the African American Institute, some of them have just passed this past year, James old Jones, we met. Right. Um, and then Cohen Powell, um, Merley Evers, the wife of a murdered civil rights activist, Medgar Evers. There's so many, uh, Angela Davis, so many people, iced tea. So many people have come through the African American Institute and you and I started in the old building, the original, separate standing building, and then we actually survived the transition to the new building, both the same address 40 Leon Street, even though they're in different places. So I want to ask you for the audience, how did you even think about being a librarian? Well, it's a very long story. So I'll make it a show. We only got out. Okay. I'll make it as short as possible. When I was in the Black High School during the Jim Crow era. Now you were in South Carolina? North Carolina. Yeah, let's keep it separate. Hi. Uh, at the Black High School, my English teacher asked me if someone would like to be in charge of the library doing the activities period and the free period as well. And I was the only one that raised my hand. And for the next two years, while I was there, I was the librarian in the -- In the high school? In high school. Then I went to -- when integration started, I was one of 54 students that helped integrate a previously old white high school who had about 1,500 students or so. And I took a library science course that they were offering. And the head librarian there asked me, "Why don't you go to library school?" I said, "Nah, I want to do that." So when I went to my Livingstone College, I majored in history. And Livingstone is strictly Black College? HBCU all the way. And when I graduated, came up here because I was working for the National Park Service as a park historian, a ranger historian, I'm sorry. But Nixon froze the jobs, and a good friend of mine -- I forgot his last name. We call it Willie Smith -- said BPL was looking for a person of color. In Boston. In Boston. But you were still down south. I was still here because Nixon froze the jobs, so I was stagnant. You left me hanging, you might say. You and a bunch of other people. That's right. And when I applied, they said, "Okay." So they gave me five years to get my degree and work full-time. So hold on. If you just tuned in, we have -- I think you're the only Black librarian I've ever interviewed ever. Oh, well, for that case. Well, amen. But I want to bring some of the -- people don't understand, I think, the importance of that. I want to play a clip. It's a short clip, about two-minute clip, to give a little background history about black librarians. Can we roll the tape, please? With the story hidden amongst the bookshelves, Librarian Rodney Freeman is making it his mission to tell the untold stories of fellow Black librarians then and now, his upcoming documentary shedding light on a history of struggles and why these Black librarians matter. Being a Black librarian means that, you know, you do have an additional responsibility to make sure that everyone is truly represented in the library. Black librarianship is about bringing equity, bringing ourselves to our work so that it's not monolithic. I knew that there were a lot of Black librarians going through some of the same stuff that I went through, if not even more. This documentary really does trace the history of Black librarianship all across the country and it also really speaks to the people who are doing the work today. When I did my research with young Black males, one of the things that they said was, "If I would have had a Black librarian, I probably would have read more." I think the library profession is better than it was, but we are still limited in people of color. I'm the first African American woman to run a presidential library. It's an honor, but it's also really shocking. We're not just telling our stories. We're telling the stories of those who come before us. You have to see someone in the position in which you want to be in in order to even fan tone being in that position. I tell the story all the time about Dr. Carla Hayden and what her as the librarian of Congress means to me. As soon as she became librarian of Congress, that little girl in me, it was almost like a healing. To hear the experiences of some of the people that we interview for this documentary has been amazing. I have learned so much just about the history of librarianship, we're going to find a way to make sure that we preserve Black history, preserve our culture so we can pass it down for people, people, generations because it's important and it's American history. Black librarianship means to me, it's my existence. The library is open for everyone and that is truly what it means to be a Black librarian. We want to represent everyone. I say it all the time, representation matters on every level. I have been books that you can read, that's a such an important thing. Thank you so much. I'm ABC, Good Morning America and it was called Hear the Untold Story of Black Librarians. That piece was done about a year ago but we're live tonight and there's some other stuff that we want to give you. You're back here with my good friend, Contidi Kamara historian and librarian. I learned so many historical things. You have that stamp collection too, right? Yes, I do. Do you still have that? Yes, it has grown beyond my expectations. I started out just doing world stamps and my special topic was ships, then flowers and all of a sudden one day when I was babysitting my son, I found these black stamps from Africa of black Americans and that exploded my interest and now I have a complete album, just an album that must be about that thick of African Americans who have been featured on stamps throughout the world and it has grown, it's still growing but I have put it into two different topics, an album for President Barack Obama and just an album for Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King. Now let me ask you something, in this piece that we just saw this clip, in 2021 only of all the librarians in America, only 7% of them were black librarians and there's even, I think there's only 1%, 1% or 2% of black male librarians, it's another clip that will show how does that feel, I mean that clip said representation matters. I know a story and I connected you with the students that said you changed their life. Dr. Abdi Ali, I'm talking about him, Dr. Abdi Ali told me he was a homeless Somalian refugee and he had no place to stay and he would come to the library down in the south end when you were the librarian and I'm trying to think of the book, I think it was either Solon Ice or Malcolm X or something like that, it might have been, but it was a black book that you put in his hand and he said as a result of reading that, it changed who he said he wanted to become and he now heads up right Boston, which is all about literacy and before that he was working with teachers of color, help them get their licenses so they could be, there would be more teachers of color in the Boston public schools. So you, and when I asked you about him you were like, well I hope so many people and I remember you doing that at the African American Institute, your office was full, my office was full and we were just spitting knowledge and standing up for students and we both got into trouble because other people wanted to sort of, you know, I'm telling a little bit about history, you don't mind, but you know, no, but you were a support to me because I was looking for someone on that campus, predominantly white campus, that could speak my language so that we, I didn't have to go through racism 101 to explain what was happening, that we knew that was happening in the classrooms and some of those classrooms on the campus and then I think the students looked to us because we were telling them the truth. We were always, you were always opening up books and showing them different things. You were telling me about books that were already in the library that you had cataloged, that I could go when I was researching things or to help in the classes that I was teaching there and it also helped me as I was taking classes in there. And so representation matters, I know the reports say that a black student that has a black teacher by grade three is 40% more likely to graduate high school and if they have two teachers, by the time they graduate, they're 37% more likely to go to college. And so as a black librarian, have you felt the influence that you've had in some of the students that have come into your office, come into your library? Well I had influence on students before I even came to Northeastern. I was the first black male librarian to be a young adult librarian in BPL. In fact, I was the only black male librarian in the entire eastern part of Massachusetts. But we had a teen group or I had established a teen group and they would always come once they got to know me. They would visit me after school. And in doing that, they started having different activities of creating activities because they said we are not taught black history in school. So this is what I did. I had them right. The first thing they did was write my famous black person that impresses me. It was a book a little about maybe 20 pages. I don't know where it is now, but I lost my copy. And then they put together, which may have been the first black history crossword puzzle in the US. Wow. Then they went on and did another one for black women and they were working on another one, but I'd left and went somewhere else. Why does that matter? It was a lot. You being there and you being there for the students, why does it matter? Well, even today when they see me and some of them have graduated from college, they tell their children, "This man helped me when I was in high school. This man also taught me black history." So it was important. It was important. So the difference is the make if someone sees them. So I know as a teacher, but I'm asking you as a librarian, there's an African proverb. I know you know it. When we lose an elder, we lose a librarian, right? And so you've given me a bunch of books that you had and I'm looking at the books and some of them, I'm looking at them, some of them I knew about and I didn't have, I used to have them. And so when we were homeless and I lost two storage units, so a lot of my books were gone and they're out of print. And so I feel like a piece of me, like I lose a piece of me when I lose this book, this knowledge, this access to the knowledge that I want to pass down or that I want to reread, right? To reacquaint myself. But them seeing you there and in black male there, what difference does that make? It made them feel, I think it made them feel proud. It made them feel wanted. They knew they could come to me for information that some of them could not even go to their parents' fault. Because I was giving them the answers, straight shoot, no play, and they was accepting it. And it seemed like they became a family. I became a surrogate father, you might say. I remember a lot of the brothers from the two, if you're not from Boston, you know about the Institute and 49 Lee on the street, the African American Institute, I remember that I remember the two as a student undergrad and then also the two as working there, as staff member there. But it always had a special place on campus for everybody of color. And they would go up to the library and see you. That's true. So much, even in the old tube and the new tube, I think it was more so. The old tube was different, the way it was constructed, because on the third floor-- You had 20 steps to go up. And you had the whole-- I know you felt it. But there were two tiers to there. Yes. And so there were classrooms off of there. And so there was a space, there was a general space for everybody, but then there were nooks that you could have student groups, so we had classes and stuff. It was a different setup, and it was more like home. And it was the second floor inside the library, you had to spiral staircase. Was that the second? I felt like it was the third. Maybe it was all those-- oh, because we went down to the other floor. That's right. Yes. Okay. But one of the things that I really enjoyed was we had the breakfast club. And it was sometimes so crowded that we had to pull chairs in and we couldn't close the door because everybody wanted to be part of the breakfast club. Sometimes we just joked around. A lot of times we talked about the issues. I remember we had to kick students out of there. That's right. I just remember, you know, we're ready to go home, and you and I would stay. With the students, they want to talk to us about different things that almost had nothing to do about the academics, but they just felt like there's an adult here, they're away from home, and we're sitting there listening to them and helping them navigate, going above and beyond what our job descriptions were, but it felt like they felt safer with that place on campus. That's true. And the African American Institute was actually the students on campus protested to have that place for black students on that campus to be, and then there was another protest when there was a transition between the old building and the new building, and my job actually was created as a result of that protest that I ended up coming into, and you were there before me. But I knew that place as a student, so I already knew, being a student at different places, because I was on the radio station there as a student, and we were the blackest spot on that campus other than the Institute, and people would come from all the other campuses to be, if we had a party or something like that, it had some kind of gathering, they came to the -- and that was actually a place that a lot of intellectual thought and a lot of revolutionary thought was fostered, right? Yes, yes. I was surprised to see how many Latino and Asian students frequent the place during the run of a day. It just began to get the white students in the to really maybe two or three months, maybe less than a year before I left, they were beginning to come in. But they didn't stay as long because too many black students coming in. Well they did if they thought they were black, if all their friends were black, they were in there. That's true. That's true. Yeah, and also the Institute was the jump-off point for the Latino Student Cultural Center, the Asian Student Cultural Center, the Multicultural Center, and a lot of the other student centers, the black students on campus set the blueprint for how students could be empowered on campus, and you know, and there's a whole story behind that. Let's get back to some of these books that are up here. We, you and I know some of the people that have written this book, Heywood Finel, Kuda's story. I think he's working on the fourth book if he hasn't released that yet. This man, and also Heywood Finel who's a producer, he has the front page and he's going to kill me because I forget the other part of his show. But anyway, we have to feature Heywood Finel, he's a producer here and he is also a black playwright, and for about 25 years he's had the Harlem Renaissance play and he's working on that. And then these two particular books are done by young people that are at this youth after school program that's at the corner of Washington Street is right in Engleston Square. And so there's, you know, what is the importance of because you're also an author, we don't have your books up here, I apologize. Tell us some of the titles of your books and why you became an author. How do you do that? Because most people think I don't have anything to say and I'm not going to put it in a book. So tell us the titles of your books and what you say in some of those books. Okay, let's start off my writing experiences first because I started writing short stories when I was in college. And then when I came to actually, well, let's go back to when I was with the National Park Service as a Ranger historian, I wrote a paper on the black man and American Revolution. As far as I know it was still being used as a reference guide for, as a trainee guide for the other Ranger historians that want to work in concrete. Then when I started working, it was at Engleston because I worked at Dudley, Engleston, Madapan is where I started, the main libraries, yes, and then South End and Parker Hill. And I'd filled in in other places along the way, but it was at South End where I started working during newspaper articles. They were called Shining Stars in Black History and then Unsung Heroes that I did for the Boston People's Voice. And that book, those articles I put into my first volume, which I didn't bring. That's okay. It was 48? Okay. It was 48 stories. But that was not my next to the last book. My last book was called John Henry Davis, World's Strongest Man. It was really a picture book for young people. But before that, I wrote a book called Vatakia. Vatakia? Vatakia, it's a science fiction, a novel. But right now I'm working on two other books and those are only three I have written thus far. Only three. You heard that right. Only three. I've only written three books, only three. There's another piece, this is a little bit longer piece, but I want people to pay attention. It's called Black Excellence in Librarianship. It's compiled by, you know, he presents himself as white, slavery, who knows, stacks and facts. Now, you know, when you listen to this show, I ask you to pen and pencil and take down information. There is critical information about this. And, you know, I used to think, you know, librarian, that's not the case, it's very exciting, especially in this current day when books are being banned and certain history of people who are Americans are being banned from being taught. So this is a talking, this piece is Black Excellence in Librarianship. World of Tate, please. Who are some badass Black librarians that more people should know about? My name is Peter and this is Stacks and Facts. While Librarianship as a profession is known for advocating for social inclusion, it also has a long track record of exclusion in many ways. First, there were the many segregated libraries, mostly but not exclusively in the south. This segregation could mean that Black people weren't allowed in the library's period, or it could be in the form of separate but equal situations where Black people had to use different entrances or didn't have access to the same materials or the same hours of operations as white people. Black librarians also found themselves hitting glass ceilings in terms of employment, assuming they could afford the education in the first place, they might never get the chance to fill a management role. And even the American Library Association itself hosted council meetings and conferences in places where segregation was the law of the land, preventing Black librarians from participating fully. If you've been around this channel for a while, you might remember the video I did back in October talking about why librarians are mostly women and mostly white. It talks a bit more about how librarianship is set up to be mostly accessible to women and white folks. If not, have a look. I'll put a link to it at the end of this video and in the description, but since it is Black History Month, I wanted to use this as a chance to highlight some Black excellence and tell you about five Black librarians that you really should know about. 1. Dr. Carla Hayden. Dr. Hayden got her start working at Chicago Public Library in 1973 and is the current librarian of Congress appointed by Barack Obama in 2016. She's the first librarian in over 60 years to hold the position and the first woman ever, which is ridiculous in its own right. Before her appointment as the librarian of Congress, she was the CEO of Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Maryland. When the police killed Freddie Gray in 2015, protesters took to Baltimore streets peacefully to speak out against the systems in place that led to his death. When the protests turned violent, though, thanks in no small part to Baltimore police shutting down public transit, the city shut down, but she kept one branch of Enoch Pratt's doors open to the community, making sure that there was at least one safe place people could go. It ended up becoming a command center of sorts, where daily necessities got distributed and media outlets set up camp to cover it all. And on top of it all, she was also the president of the ALA from 2003 to 2004. 2. Dorothy B. Porter. Dorothy B. Porter was the first African-American to graduate from Columbia's library school in 1932. She became a librarian at Howard University, where she's credited with turning the Moreland Spingham Research Center into one of the most important and well-developed collections of African-American materials in the world through some excellent collection development. She became friends with book dealers around the world, and so when something of interest came up, she'd drop them a line and see if they might be able to get her a copy, maybe even for free. She also did important work implementing an alternative classification system to Dewey's, which, let's be honest, is woefully under-equipped to recognize and organize anything outside of colonial knowledge, whereas libraries using Dewey at this time would often lump anything to do with blackness into just a couple of subject headings with very little regard to what they actually were, 325 and 326 if you were curious. In this new classification system, works by all authors would be organized by genre, and then by an author's name, this put black authors on equal footing with their white counterparts rather than just squirreling them away to one or two shelves. 3. Audrey Lorde Audrey Lorde worked in libraries in the 1950s and 60s and got her MLS in 1961 from Columbia too, but is perhaps best known for helping people recognize that not all women were treated or advocated for equally in the feminist movement. This helped lead the movement toward a better understanding of intersectionality as a thing before it formally entered the vocabulary in 1989, thanks to Kimberly Crenshaw. An exceptional poet and author, Lorde's Poem, who said it was simple, says it best, I think. There are so many roots to the Tree of Anger that sometimes the branches shatter before they bear. Sitting in Natix, the women rally before they march, discussing the problematic girls they hire to make them free. An almost white counterman passes a waiting brother to serve them first, and the ladies neither notice nor reject the slider pleasures of their slavery. But I, who ambound by my mirror as well as my bed, see causes in color as well as sex, and sit here wondering which me will survive all these liberations. 4. Daniel Murray was born a free man in 1852 in Baltimore. In 1861 he started working for his brother at the United States Senate Saloon and helped him with his catering business, which exposed him not just to the politicians of the era, but also a number of government workers, among them the Librarian of Congress, Ainsworth Rand Spofford. This likely helped Murray to get part-time work with the library in 1871 at the age of 19. Murray distinguished himself in Spofford's eyes such that Spofford made Murray his personal assistance in 1874. This helped him get the skills and historical inquiry and foreign languages that he needed to excel in the library, and so he was promoted to Assistant Librarian in 1881. As a Librarian he did extensive work creating bibliographies of black-authored works, and even created a selection of works, literature, portraits, and even patents by African Americans, which got displayed at the 1900 World's Fair in Paris. In his private life he advocated for the advancement and equality of African Americans, and in 1897 helped found the National Afro-American Council, a precursor to the NAACP in response to a rise of political disenfranchisement, anti-black riots, and lynchings at the turn of the century. Murray himself was on the receiving end of some of this when Spofford's successor was appointed. Murray was demoted and took a pay cut in 1897 because of the friction incident to cast. In other words, as Elizabeth Dowling Taylor wrote in her biography of Murray, "requiring white employees to report to a black superintendent was apparently deemed inadvisable." Number five, E.J. Josie and the B.C. ALA. Not just one Librarian, but many, the Black Caucus of the American Library Association formed partly in response to the ALA's own not-great policies around race in the United States. Remembering the 1964 ALA Conference, the founder of B.C. ALA, E.J. Josie, explained, "Much to my chagrin, the Mississippi Library Association was honored there for its National Library Week activities. I exploded. I was seething with anger, for I remembered the three civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, James Cheney, and Michael Schwerner had been murdered and laid dead and buried somewhere in Mississippi, their bodies not yet discovered. I also remembered that the Mississippi Library Association had withdrawn from the ALA rather than give membership to Negro Librarians." The Black Caucus formed in 1970 and in 1971, it presented a formal statement of concern regarding the treatment of Black Librarians as well as a resolution to censure libraries and librarians who provided materials to private segregated schools, as a way to circumvent integration. Today, according to its mission statement, "The Black Caucus of the American Library Association serves as an advocate for the development, promotion, and improvement of library services and resources to the nation's African-American community and provides leadership for the recruitment and professional development of African-American librarians." You can learn more about the BCALA at their website, www.bcala.org. These are just a handful of the many Black librarians who've done good things for the profession and their community, but maybe there's someone else you think should be added to this list? If so, tell me about them in the comments below and then maybe other people will learn about some really cool people too. Today, there are thousands of Black Librarians and library workers around the world. Interested in becoming a radio DJ, Boston Neighborhood Network's 102.9 FM is offering a course of radio production that can get you started. For more information, please head over to bnnmedia.org/services/portshop. So I told you, you needed to have a pen and a pencil. Every time, one of the reasons I love doing this show is because I learned too and I'm a lifelong learner, I'm a student officially, but I'm also a lifelong learner. I did not know about all these Black librarians. I knew a couple of librarians. The event that we did this Saturday, I met some more librarians, but the one that I have known the most is my guest, Mr. Contiji Kamara. I saw you commenting and go, yep, yep, yep, through the whole thing and 2024, who knew that we would still be dealing with some of the same racism and segregation issues. There's one clip that I'm not going to be able to play because it was too long and it was talking about what's happening to Black librarians. Now I know and I'm not going to name who it is, but there has been an effort just like pushing out Black books out of libraries and out of classrooms, pushing out Black librarians as well. I saw some information about how to increase Black librarians and one of them was to pay for their schooling because it's really expensive to go to schools, especially now, and to maybe encourage people to go into library sciences and get master's degrees. The librarians that I know that I've met in the universities have not been, except for you, have not been Black. And so I think there's maybe this unconscious bias when I'm researching something they're not thinking about me. They may be thinking about me in terms of being a woman, but not in terms of being a Black woman. What kinds of, or if you've experienced anything, have you experienced any racial segregation or marginalization because you're a librarian and specifically a Black librarian? Yes, I have. One of the main things that, one of the main places that I experienced wasn't blatant, but it was subtle and you didn't, if you didn't know it, you would go over your head. Probably at someone's college or someone's university when I was taking courses there. And I must add that BPL paid for half of my tuition, which was good. Although they had one person in there that was a little reluctant until the assistant director stepped in and said, "We're going to pay for this." And after that, he retired, but at Simmons, there were some, especially the white men, they didn't want to be around me. They somewhat shunned me to the side and said, "Why are you here?" The white women, of course, were more accommodating in terms of wanting to work with me because they saw all this experience that I had because I wasn't a first-timer. I had worked three or four years in BPL before I even applied to Simmons. So OJT worked on job training. It worked. And I was able to literally breeze, in my opinion, breeze through the courses. But there was one teacher, and they told me to be weary of him. But I wanted to take this management course. And it paid off. He gave me a BPL, I'll take it. So have you seen, what is your opinion about this, what is being termed critical race theory, which is really just history that includes everybody that made the history specifically people of color, that's what they say. And then, you know, this push to ban books that particularly pertain to people of color, black people, LGBTQ, and marginalized people, this push to keep those books off the shelves of libraries and out of the classrooms. How do you view that? Well, I view it as wanting to go back and show that me as being on a lower class. And you'll be in more superior, because the slave issue is still there. And it's more prevalent in the southern states, especially Alabama, well, sorry, Mississippi, Texas, and Florida. And there are some others, but those three states, they're very strong and putting maybe two or three pages on black history, but it's pertaining to slavery. And one has said that, I think it was Florida, it said that blacks made good advancement as being slaves. Oh, God. And this is in the history books. Now if you have a student read this, he thinks very, he or she thinks very low low themselves because this is written about them or not written about them or what is said. And to have a book that's really saved by Laurent Bennett just throughout a title, Arthur, if they read that, they would feel more proud of themselves because of the accomplishments that black people have made, not just during slavery, but also after slavery, as well as before slavery because you look at the African continent itself, that's where they become real afraid of what was going on because you really had a civilization even before Europe. You just reminded me of something. When I first met you, you had a different name. Yes. And I remember that name. As Conti G. Kamara, and I remember when you changed your name because we were both working at the two when it was almost like Cassius Clay, Muhammad Ali, kind of a thing. Why did you do that and what was that transition about? There were two reasons. One, I had always wanted to change my name since I was in sixth grade. My teacher, Mrs. Gloria Victoria Wilson, I don't think she's alive now, but she said that our last names are not our names. You, all of you in here, came from Africa. Your parents or grandparents came from Africa, even great grandparents. And they were stolen, and they were either kings, queens, princes, prince, warriors, and they couldn't have those names. The white man gave you your name, and so when you became free, you took on the white man's name. I had a little caveat to this. I have an uncle that I found out. No, it was my great, great, great grandfather. I found out that every time he was sold to another plantation, he would change his last name. Oh, why? So the last person he, the last name he had was McLaughlin. So that's a good incentive. Yes. So when she said that, my sixth grade teacher said that, I said, "You know, I'm gonna change my name." She influenced me. From the sixth grade up to XYZ years ago, I said, "Okay, I want to do it, I want to do it." And when I got married, my wife said, "Yes, please." And so that's what I did. And you've been in Ghana, too, Acra. Ghana. Yes. You've traveled? Yes. What's the difference between... Did you get to see any libraries there? Yes I did. In fact, that was everywhere I go, even in the U.S. My wife is a minister. We visit a church or a library. So yes, we visit the churches and the libraries. And one of the worst libraries I saw at that time was the University of Ghana, Kate Coase. The worst library? In my opinion, it was worse, it was bad. It wasn't taken care of. The books, leaves, pages, were crumbling. The backs were not being taken care of. You could see dust on the books. It was appalling. So... Okay, the best, the best was the Children's Library in Kamasi. That was Ghana? Yes, still in Ghana. It was very well taken care of. The books were in order, according to their system. The only thing I didn't like was I tried to talk to the head of the library, which was my brother, and he gave me the brush off. He didn't have time, but he was always looking out the window. But I said, "Okay, if that's what you want to do, you go right in here." But I just want to talk to you and see what's going on. But it was a challenging thing. So before we have a few moments left, before we leave, there's two slaves that I want people to see. And the two slaves have to do with tomorrow, election. Can you put up the one about people's rights when they go to the voting poll? You've got to know your rights the election day. If the polls close while you're still in line, stay in line. You have the right to vote. If you make a mistake on your ballot, ask for a new one. Don't just go along and try to scratch it out, because it will invalidate it. If the machines are down at your polling place, ask for a paper ballot. Don't just sit there and go, "Oh, well, I'll just forget about it." If you run into any problems to have questions on election day, hear me. If you run into any problems or have questions on election day, call the election protection hotline 1-866-our-vote. This is information from the ACLU. So that's information. The other slate that I want you to put up is there's a watch party. So just because you're young, and you think this has nothing to do with you, there's a gang gang vote, election watch party that you're invited to, and it's tomorrow evening, and I can't really even read this. But Kerry, you have to read this for me. I can't even see that. But it's actually tomorrow evening, and I want to say it's our Bernie and Hall, I don't know where it is. But there's information on the screen, you can read it for yourself. It's closer to you, but they're all invited, everybody's invited, but it's really geared for young people, I'm going to try to get this information before we get out of the air. We've only got a few more minutes, five minutes, a little bit less than five minutes, but I know we talked about the challenges of black librarians right now. What should people do to support black librarians? Should they go in the library and see if the librarian is black and ask for, you know, why don't you have a black librarian? Should they go in and ask for certain books so that books are restocked on the shelves? I mean, what do we need to do? Well, I think they should ask for certain titles written by and about black people, because we have just as much information to give and render to that individual is a white author. One of the, now even though there are some black male librarians in BPO now, and I was the first black male to work with, for the Boston Public Library, and when I left, that's when they started hiring more. But there was one white man who was at the new Grove Hall branch. The new one? The one that's underneath the avenue? Yes. Okay. But he was terrific, he promoted black events, had authors come in, promoted books. He was very good. So you can't say that all whites are-- I know we can't offer them. They're not our model. It's just like black people are. And you can't say all black folks are going to do something to-- Well, you brothering and brother. That's right. Every sustain is just that. Can you put that slide up? Just one more time, the gang gang vote election watch party. It is 6 p.m. to 9.30, tomorrow evening, Tuesday, November 5th, at Hibernian Hall, 184 Dudley Street, Boston Mass. It's 6 p.m. to 9.30, polls closed at 8. And this is specifically geared for young people sponsored by DASPER Mass, MPDC, which is Madison Park Development Corporation, Teen Empowerment, and the Boston Community Action Teams. We'll get you that information tomorrow evening, 6 to 9.30. It's free. They're talking about having buffalo wings and instead of being on your couch or doom scrolling on social media, come spend your time with us, good vibes, fun games, free food, and more. There it is. We've got like three more minutes left. Maybe. If someone wanted to get in touch with you, is that possible? Do you have a Facebook page or an email? I do have a Facebook page. And they would go to? They would go to. Just can't eat you. Come on. Mm-hmm. T-I-G-I-C-A-M-A-R-A on Facebook. And they could reach out to you and get information about books or what do you have in your Facebook page? Nothing. [laughter] To be honest with you, nothing. Oh, God. It's, I don't do that much Facebook information about myself. You will after this show. You will after this show. No, you can't really. Just like a teacher. You can't really. You can't really retire. No, you really don't retire. But nobody has contacted me to even help anymore. But I was willing. And I did. And plus we want to find out a bunch of books, the three titles that you've already done and what? The three titles were R. The first one is Vatakia, V-E-T-A-K. That's the science fiction one. Science fiction. The second book is John Henry Davis, World's Strongest Man. That's a children's book. And the third is Unsung Heroes. It's a compilation of 48, mostly unknown black people who did significance. Well, I think you're one of the unsung heroes. And I remember Ed Bullens, who's on the campus at Northeast University. There's some amazing people that were on that campus. You're one of them. So I thank you for being here. Mr. Contiji Kumar, my best friend, my good friend. Not best friend. Good friend. And also such an amazing intellectual person. So I appreciate you. I want you to come back with your stamp collection. And I want you to come back here on another level. I'm also going to be on the radio podcast Black Teachers' Manor in WBCA, 102.9 FM. And that's live from 6 until 7 p.m. here at BNN Media TV. Thank you for being here with us. I hope you learned something. Go out and vote. There is no excuse. You can't register anymore, but you can vote. And we will be deciding who the next president of the United States is going to be. And next year, Mayor, City Council, and all these other things. It seems like there's always an election here in Boston. And there's always information here. On another level, thank you. Take care of each other and yourself. God bless. I have a problem every year around Imokay Day, because Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for some reason has been treated as America's Civil Rights mascot. On this day, we'll have folks who would have never in their life. Marked with, agreed with, voted with, anything he believed in. One of the biggest biggest in the United States Congress. Here, if you want to actually sit down or die for King, vote. The march has begun. Every day we rise like the sun and flight till the battle is won. Can you hear the footsteps? Listen, 'cause we're coming like a gang on the streets. So you better start running. It's time for some action now. Historical progressions, generations marching in succession through 400 years. Hate, blood, sweat, and tears, and counting. The resistance is mounting. Marked, Jefferson, put your hand in the air just like this. We're the riders, not the generation of fighters, where it gets hard, we charge. [MUSIC]