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Ruth Brown (b. July 26, 1891) began working as director of the public library in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, in 1919. Miss Brown was known as a kindly but formidable librarian who loved children but insisted that they whisper in her library. In the 1930s and '40s Brown became increasingly interested in civil rights and racial integration. She joined the Committee on the Practice of Democracy, a progressive group affiliated with the Congress of Racial Equality. She pushed to integrate children's story hour at the library. She associated with African-Americans socially, taking a black friend to her church and eventually even visiting a segregated drugstore lunch counter with two black teachers. These activities were considered unacceptably radical for a public librarian in Bartlesville, promoted by the local Chamber of Commerce as "America's ideal family center."
Although Brown's "interracial activities" were what motivated a Bartlesville citizens' group to call for her dismissal, the actual charge against her was for supplying subversive materials at the public library. The Civil Rights Movement was seen by many as a Communist plot to undermine the United States, and the presence of Soviet Russia Today and liberal periodicals like The Nation in the Bartlesville library served as further proof of the connection. Brown was accused of "exposing Bartlesville's children to subversive literature" and stocking the library with reading material that would inspire people to turn against the American government and way of life.
Brown was dismissed from her job at the Bartlesville Public Library in 1950. A local group, The Friends of Miss Ruth Brown, tried unsuccessfully to have the library board's decision overturned in court. The ACLU and ALA expressed support for Brown, but both organizations decided that the case was outside their jurisdiction.
After the trouble in Bartlesville, Brown worked for several years at a school for African-American children. She later went on to serve as librarian in the Sterling, Colorado, Public Library, where she worked until her retirement in 1961. Brown died in 1975.
References:
Robbins, Louise S. The Dismissal of Miss Ruth Brown. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000.
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