Ernestine Rose (librarian)
| Ernestine Rose | |
|---|---|
| Born |
March 19, 1880 Bridgehampton, New York |
| Died | March 28, 1961 (aged 81) Bridgehampton, New York |
| Occupation | Librarian |
| Known for | Librarian at the New York Public Library |
Ernestine Rose (March 19, 1880 – March 28, 1961) was a librarian at the New York Public Library responsible for the purchase and incorporation of the Arthur A. Schomburg collection.
Ernestine Rose was born on March 19, 1880 in Bridgehampton, New York and named after Ernestine Potowski Rose, a nineteenth-century feminist. She studied at Wesleyan University and the New York State Library School in Albany, New York, where she graduated in 1904. During her study at the New York State Library School, she worked a summer at a branch of the New York Public Library (NYPL) on the Lower East Side during her college education where she was exposed to Russian-Jewish immigrants and their culture. She emphasized programs that would help immigrants adjust to a new country rather than programs design to “Americanize” then, as was the norm at the time.
During World War I, Rose served as director of hospital libraries for the American Library Association (ALA). Returning to New York, in 1915, she served as head librarian at the Seward Park Branch, located in a Jewish immigrant community of New York City, until 1917. At Steward Park, she encouraged her assistants to become well versed in Jewish, Yiddish and Russian holidays, customs, and literature, intending to make them sensitive to the surrounding community.
Rose became the branch librarian at the 135th Street Branch in Harlem in 1920. The branch had opened in 1905 when the neighborhood was inhabited by middle-class Jews, but a migration of southern blacks, Caribbean, and South American blacks followed World War I changed the neighborhood to be majority African-American neighborhood by the time Rose was appointed. The Harlem Renaissance of the time made Harlem a destination for black writers, artists, musicians, and scholars. Rose immediately noted that many cultural institutions weren’t working with the new community and she wanted to make the library an integral part of the community that would provide guidance and promote racial pride. Her first role was to integrate the library staff, hiring four new library assistants of color, starting with Catherine Allen Latimer and including Pura Belpre and Nella Larsen Imes. She also worked to encourage community groups to hold meetings, reading and organized story hours, free public lectures, exhibitions of black artists and sculptors and a reference collection of black literature.
...
Wikipedia