Leaders Today: 

Edward Christopher Williams  |  Virginia Proctor Powell Florence  |  Dorothy B. Porter  |  Clara Stanton Jones  |  Carla Hayden |  Related Articles...

Edward Christopher Williams | 1899

In 1899, after finishing his master’s in library science degree in one year, Edward Christopher Williams became the first professionally trained African American librarian.

Born in 1871, Williams attended Adelbert College at Western Reserve University in Cleveland. He became an assistant librarian there before being named the university librarian in 1898.

Williams then earned his master’s in library science from New York State Library School. He became university librarian at Howard University in 1916 and was one of the first Black men to join the American Library Association.

He died in 1929 while pursuing a doctorate in library science.

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Dorothy B. Porter | 1932

In 1932, Dorothy B. Porter, sometimes known as Dorothy Porter Wesley, became the first African American to earn a master’s in library science from Columbia University. Later, she was named Howard University’s librarian, leading the curation of what is now the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center.

In that work, she realized that the Dewey Decimal System had only two classification numbers for anything by or about African Americans—slavery and colonization. Porter created her own system to separate works by genre and author in various subjects, making her the first to decolonize a library.

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Carla Hayden | 2016

On September 14, 2016, Carla Hayden was sworn in as Librarian of Congress—the first woman and first African American to be so named. As such, she is the head of the largest library in the world and the main research arm of the U.S. Congress, as well as the U.S. Copyright Office.

Last year, Hayden brought the Library of Congress (LOC) to a whole new audience when in September she tweeted an invitation to Lizzo to come play some of the flutes in the LOC collection. The pop star accepted and played a crystal flute that was a gift to James Madison at a DC concert, touting the LOC during the show.
 

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