Alexandria Library Sit-In (Historical Marker)

Here follows the inscription written on this roadside historical marker:

Alexandria Library Sit-In
On 21 August 1939, five young African American men applied for library cards at the new Alexandria Library to protest its whites-only policy. After being denied, William Evans, Edward Gaddis, Morris Murray, Clarence Strange, and Otto L. Tucker each selected a book from the shelves, sat down, and read quietly. The men were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct despite their polite demeanor. Local attorney Samuel W. Tucker, who helped plan the protest, represented them in court. The judge never issued a ruling. In 1940, Alexandria opened the Robert Robinson Library for African Americans. Desegregation of the library system began by 1959.

Erected 2008 by Department of Historic Resources. (Marker Number E-88.)

EDITOR'S NOTE: The Alexandria Library - Kate Waller Barrett Branch is located at 717 Queen Street. It was the site of the 1939 library sit-in described on the marker which is actually located around the corner on North Washington Street.


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Also see . . . Alexandria library sit-in arrest charges are dismissed... by Patricia Sullivan, The Washington Post, Oct. 21, 2019.

Circuit Court Chief Judge Lisa Bondareff Kemler... signed an order Friday stating that William Evans, Edward Gaddis, Morris Murray, Clarence Strange and Otto Tucker were “lawfully exercising their constitutional rights to free assembly, speech and to petition the government to alter the established policy of sanctioned segregation at the time of their arrest” and that “sitting peacefully in a library reading books... was not in any fashion disorderly or likely to cause acts of violence.”


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Plaque in the Kate Waller Barrett Branch of the Alexandria Library
Library the Scene of Human Rights Action

A library is the collective memory of all humanity. Its contents are the common heritage of us all.

On August 21, 1939, five citizens of the city walked into this building and sat at one of its reading tables. Though surrounded by the wisdom of the ages, they were denied access to the thoughts on the shelves around them for a reason as implausible as the color of their skin. For merely being in the room, they were arrested.

The act of these five men in defying a discriminatory regulation was one of the earliest examples of a tactic successfully employed by a later generation to undermine racial segregation across the nation. This plaque is placed here so that the names of these five courageous citizens — William Evans, Otto Tucker, Edward Gaddis, Morris Murray and Clarence "Buck” Strange — will forever remain a part of the collective memory of out community.

In commemoration of the 25th Anniversary of the Human Rights Ordinance of the City of Alexandria, March 25, 2000.