Mobile libraries | Public libraries | Great Depression
By
smithsonian.com
During the Great Depression, a New Deal program brought books to Kentuckians living in remote areas
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| A Pack Horse librarian returning over the mountain side for a new supply of books (Part of Goodman-Paxton Photographic Collection, Kentucky Digital Library) |
Their horses splashed
through iced-over creeks. Librarians rode up into the Kentucky
mountains, their saddlebags stuffed with books, doling out reading
material to isolated rural people. The Great Depression had plunged the
nation into poverty, and Kentucky—a poor state made even poorer by a
paralyzed national economy—was among the hardest hit.
The Pack Horse Library initiative, which sent
librarians deep into Appalachia, was one of the New Deal’s most unique
plans. The project, as implemented by the Works Progress Administration
(WPA), distributed reading material to the people who lived in the
craggy, 10,000-square-mile portion of eastern Kentucky. The state
already trailed its neighbors in electricity and highways. And during
the Depression, food, education and economic opportunity were even
scarcer for Appalachians.
They also lacked books: In 1930, up to 31
percent of people in eastern Kentucky couldn’t read. Residents wanted to
learn, notes historian Donald C. Boyd. Coal and railroads, poised to
industrialize eastern Kentucky, loomed large in the minds of many
Appalachians who were ready to take part in the hoped prosperity that
would bring. "Workers viewed the sudden economic changes as a threat to
their survival and literacy as a means of escape from a vicious economic
trap," writes Boyd.
Read more:http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/horse-riding-librarians-were-great-depression-bookmobiles-180963786/
