Savannah Library Branch
Will Get a Clarence Thomas Wing
The board of the Chatham-Effingham-Liberty Regional Library in Savannah, Georgia, has accepted a controversial anonymous donation of $150,000 that will help complete an addition to its historically black Carnegie Library branch. In June, the donor had requested that at least a new wing of the renovated library, founded in 1906 by the local Colored Library Association, be named in honor of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, according to the August 22 Savannah Morning News.
Although Thomas used the branch as a child, local detractors argued that naming the facility in honor of an ultra-conservative black man who opposed affirmative action and the Voting Rights Act would dishonor the black community. Two board members voted against the measure at the August 21 meeting, including Robert Brooks, who withheld his earlier threat to resign in order to vote against the measure. In July, Brooks had told the Morning News that Thomas “looks upon his race as Hitler looked upon the Jews and I call him Judas because he sold his people out.”
Board member Jean McCorkle, who voted in favor of the measure, drew a rebuke from Brooks when she said the Carnegie was not a black library but a community library. “It’s not about whose name is there, it’s about what is to become of this wonderful facility,” she said.
The Carnegie branch was closed in 1997 due to structural damage, but by May 2000 more than $1 million in grants, donations, and public funds had been raised for repairs. In the spring, architects offered an enhanced design that would double the building’s size, at an additional cost of $300,000. The anonymous donor has also pledged an additional $25,000 in matching funds.
Posted August 27, 2001.
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