OFFICE OF THE PRINCIPAL
23 September 1925
Dear Miss Addams:
I am glad that you felt free to write to me as you have about the Hampton Library School; and I thank you also for letting me see Mr. White's letters to you and to Mr. Belden.
I think that Mr. White's fears and those of his associates in the N.A.A.C.P. are based upon misapprehensions which have been largely if not entirely removed by Mr. White's recent conversations with Miss Bogle of the American Library Association and with Dr. Keppel of the Carnegie Corporation. I believe, of course, that enforced segregation of the colored people in library training would be unfair and unwise; I hope that there will always be a considerable number receiving such training in the Northern schools; but the situation seems to be that the demand for trained colored librarians is nowadays much larger than the supply; this demand is increasing in the South; Hampton Institute, we are told, has better facilities for giving such training than the other institutions which have been examined; and the American Library Association, the Carnegie Corporation and the General Education Board have joined in asking us to undertake it and in providing a few initial scholarships, all of which, as I recall, have been assigned to candidates from the lower South. The Carnegie Corporation will probably provide for the expense of establishing the School; otherwise we could not venture upon it.
Under these circumstances, we have not felt that we could refuse to give this desired and evidently needed library training, -- exactly as we give business training, though there are many good business schools in the North to which Negroes are admitted.
Mr. White, in his letter to Mr. Belden, seems not to realize that Hampton now has more than two hundred students in its collegiate schools of education, agriculture, home economics and business, and that degrees have been given now for three years to students graduating from the four-year courses in those departments. The Library School will of course be upon the collegiate level; and the securing of Miss Florence R. Curtis of Ogdensburg, N.Y. as its organizer and director seems to be regarded [page 2] by those who know her as a reasonably sure guarantee of the School's standards and success. It will be called, as you quite rightly suggest, simply "the Library School of Hampton Institute." There will be no more emphasis on its being colored than in the case of our other schools. I am sorry that we cannot open them all to white people as well!
Faithfully yours,
James E. Gregg [signed]
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