Black Librarians In 1940s Detroit

I’m writing a prequel to the Detroit series and as usual, I’ve fallen down the research rabbit hole. I wondered if the Detroit Public Library had any Black women on staff in 1940. So I hied myself to the 1940 census and discovered that thirteen Black women worked as librarians in Detroit in 1940—some for the WPA, some in public schools, two in hospitals, and several in the Detroit Public Library.

One of them, Marjorie Adele Blackistone Bradfield, was a trailblazer in more ways than one. She earned her degree in Library Science at the University of Michigan in 1937 and was hired at the Detroit Public Library shortly after. She spent her career there establishing the library’s collection of African-American literature, emphasizing books that highlighted the contributions of Black people to American society and culture.

If you have access to newspapers.com, you can find her obituary in the Detroit Free Press; otherwise, there’s a brief biography of her on Wikipedia, with a wonderful photograph from her days at the University of Michigan.