February marks both National Library Lovers Month and Black History Month – a bit of the history of Black librarianship in the U.S.

“Dorothy B. Porter, a librarian at Howard University, was the force behind reclassifying books by and about Black people. Before Porter, the Dewey Decimal classification for African American books was under slavery or colonization. Porter aimed to change that by expanding the university’s collection and cataloging based on genre and author’s name. Libraries from other states contacted her for assistance in reclassifying their collections. Because of Dorothy Porter’s hard work and dedication during her forty-year career, all works belonging to African American culture, social justice, literature, history, etc., were correctly classified — effectively desegregating the Dewey Decimal System.”