Virginia Lacy Jones
*Virginia Lacy Jones was born on this date in 1912. She was a Black librarian and administrator.
Virginia Lacy was born to Edward and Ellen Lacy in Cincinnati, Ohio. She spent much of her childhood in Clarksburg, West Virginia, in a family that was "poor, hardworking, proud, and ambitious." Books and reading were always a part of her home life. She and her mother frequently visited the public library in Clarksburg. In 1927, Jones moved to St. Louis, Missouri, to live with an aunt and uncle.
This relocation facilitated a virtually expense-free college education through Harris Teachers College as she desperately wanted to further her education, but her family could not afford it. She entered Sumner High School, where her uncle taught, and completed her final two school years in 1929. While in high school, Jones realized the possibility that librarianship would be a part of her future. An experience at the St. Louis Public Library inspired her most. She was researching information for her church's citywide essay contest on "The Values of Attending Sunday School" when she encountered a friendly reference librarian. She remembers that after telling this librarian what she was looking for, the librarian showed her how to use the periodical indexes.
After high school, Lacy abandoned becoming a teacher and enrolled at the Hampton Institute, the only library school in the South where Blacks could be trained. There, she met Florence Rising Curtis, the director of the library school and eventual mentor to Jones, who earned a B.S. in Library Science from Hampton in 1933. Later that same year, she found employment in Kentucky as the assistant librarian of Louisville Municipal College, the Black branch of the segregated University of Louisville. She soon realized that a career in librarianship would require an advanced degree, so she returned to the Hampton Institute and earned a B.S. in Social Studies Education in 1935.
During her second tenure at Hampton, Curtis invited Lacy and other faculty and students to attend the American Library Association's annual conference in Richmond, Virginia. The Black participants could not attend the exhibits or stay in the provided accommodations, and special arrangements helped them to attend the regular meetings. At this time, a realization of the importance of training for Black school librarians began. Florence Curtis proposed the establishment of regional centers to provide summer classes for these librarians and chose Jones to head the program at Prairie View A&M College in Texas.
These courses were taught in reference, book selection, school library administration, and cataloging and classification. In 1936, Jones returned to Louisville Municipal College as Head Librarian, and she taught courses for Black public and high school librarians who needed college credit to be certified by the state. Lacy received a General Education Board fellowship upon recommendation from Curtis to attend the University of Illinois. In 1938, she completed a master's in library science. Upon completion, she returned to Louisville Municipal College as a librarian and instructor. However, there had been a negative leadership and working environment change, and Lacy resigned.
Following her resignation, Lacy became a catalog librarian at Atlanta University to replace the school at the Hampton Institute, which had closed. She helped plan the Atlanta University School of Library Service. She was sent to library schools to observe the various programs. The school opened in the fall of 1941 and was committed to training librarians and creating leaders to improve library services in the South, particularly for Blacks. Lacy held dual positions within the university. She was a catalog librarian and instructor. It was also in fall 1941 that she married Edward A. Jones, Professor of French and Chairman of the Foreign Languages Department at Morehouse College.
After teaching for two years at Atlanta University, Lacy Jones received a second fellowship from the General Education Board. This allowed Jones to attend the University of Chicago Graduate Library School, where in 1945, she became the second Black to earn a doctorate in Library Science. Her dissertation was on "The Problems of Negro Public High School Libraries in Selected Southern Cities." She served on the Atlanta University School of Library Service faculty until she was appointed Dean in 1945. She was the second person to hold this position after Eliza Atkins Gleason. Her tenure as Dean of the School of Library Service ran until 1981.
During the 36 years Jones spent as Dean, the school trained some 1800 Black librarians, which was more than any other school in the country, and she was instrumental in creating the Coretta Scott King Award. After her retirement, Jones was appointed the first director of the Robert W. Woodruff Library at the Atlanta University Center, a position she held from 1982 to 1983. Virginia Lacy Jones, who, throughout her 50-year career in the field, pushed for integrating public and academic libraries, died on December 3, 1984, in Atlanta. During her professional career,
Jones wrote on issues concerning libraries in the South and Library Science education for Blacks. The Robert W. Woodruff Library now houses 18.5 linear feet of these papers and correspondences, personal letters, and photographs about her life.
