So that the library program did give choices and you can properties to help you blacks along with whites, however in a good segregated arrangement that blacks had been no more willing to just accept 40 years as a result of its instigation. Desegregation from public transportation, apartments, and you will organizations for the Houston occurred when you look at the waves set in place by the a couple high civil-rights wins during the Texas. Allwright (1944), and that outlawed this new state’s 
whites-just primary elections (Hine, 1979). Another situation try Sweatt v. Painter (1950), and therefore governed that black youngsters have to be permitted to attend the fresh College from Colorado Legislation College as the established separate law university getting blacks was not brand new equivalent of it (Pitre, 1999).
Following brand new Supreme Legal made their choice on Sweatt case, influential blacks into the Houston turned into their interest towards the central collection. In a letter into library panel quoted from the Houston Informer, four Dark colored leadership and you can activists, in addition to Lonnie Smith of your own Smith v. Allwright situation, noted that they could possibly earn case against the collection if they chose to document, however they well-known “a volunteer service” while the such as a method “carry out help into the starting a far greater understanding and you can effect anywhere between white and colored individuals of Houston.” (1) The writer, and you will seem to other best black people, therefore saw the hassle to help you desegregate individuals collection given that historically significant, a medical second step inside their long fight to secure citizenship rights and you will informative options.
Rayzor talked of Christian brotherhood
Working with them are attorney Herman Wright. The guy with his companion, Arthur J. Mandell, got portrayed the fresh Congress regarding Commercial Teams for the Tx throughout the 1930s and 1940s. One another had become members of brand new Houston branch of your own National Organization on the Growth of Coloured Someone (NAACP) when you look at the 1947 (Pitre, 1999, p. 72). Wright, because the a person in this new NAACP’s Courtroom Redress Panel, adopted abreast of the fresh group’s first means just after library panel players failed to work. Early in Oct regarding 1950 the guy spoke of the phone that have board president Mrs. Roy L. Arterbury about your chances of arranging a meeting involving the board additionally the NAACP’s Courtroom Redress Committee. She frequently try noncommittal while the Wright used upwards once again, now that have a page to the November 17. The guy reported that in the event the board hadn’t set up a meeting because of the November 27, new committee perform consider filing fit. Library manager Harriet Dickson Reynolds punctually penned right back, saying that Arterbury or any other panel users was basically out-of-town hence an excellent quorum could not be hit. She assured Wright you to Arterbury would label him when she returned, regardless if she did not say whenever that might be. (2) It absolutely was an old question of “cannot contact us, we shall phone call your.”
From inside the a memo written following the meeting, Reynolds indexed that “Mr
Harriett Reynolds was stalling. She sent Wright’s letter and her reply to secretary city lawyer Herman W. Mead. At the end of January 1951, Arterbury and another enough time-time panel associate, Mrs. R. L. Younger, confronted by Mayor Oscar Holcombe to discuss an approach to boost the library’s finances. In their head to, Holcombe trained him or her to not meet with the NAACP committee and to not ever amuse the possibility of desegregating this new library? Holcombe was mayor on the 1920s and on / off through the 2nd three decades, and you can immediately following a highly short term membership in Houston’s Ku klux Klan part, had decided none to participate in neither restrict you to definitely organization during its heyday from the 1920s (Kellar, 1999, p. 15).
Some other 12 months passed and another category took up your panels out of pressing for access to the fresh new library. Inside the March 1952 panel chairman Arterbury and you will librarian Reynolds met with a light woman, Mrs. Newton Rayzor, and a black colored child, Charles Shaw, symbolizing new Chapel Alliance Council. Shaw pounded preparing to governmental equality. Mrs. ” Rayzor and you may Shaw requested several things: you to definitely Houston’s black customers be allowed to have fun with any and all of the city’s libraries and they get icon with the brand new library board. Reynolds and Arterbury tried to appease them because of the citing you to definitely blacks could use the new central collection getting site functions and so they you may demand one instructions about main collection getting provided for the brand new (Colored) Carnegie Collection because of their use. Reynolds and ideal the Carnegie Library requisite a family of the Library classification to greatly help increase the the means to access and you can donor support for the branch. (4)