Librarianship for Democracy at Home and Abroad

Abstract

This chapter charts Reddick’s rise as a major African American intellectual during the World War II era. As the curator of the Schomburg Collection in Harlem, Reddick helped organize Pan-African Congresses alongside W. E. B. Du Bois and Kwame Nkrumah, became a force in the Double Victory campaign against fascism at home and abroad, collected black soldiers’ letters during the war, used the library as a base for political organizing in response to crises such as the 1943 Harlem Race Riot and those surrounding the Atlantic Charter, published pioneering articles on Africa and the US military’s evolving policies toward black soldiers, pressured the US government to recognize the military heroics of black messman Dorie Miller, and generally served as a public intellectual for black America. He also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to effect racial change and served as a member of the American Council of Learned Societies’ Committee on Negro Studies alongside Melville Herskovits and Lorenzo Dow Turner.