American librarian and educator Jessie Carney Smith (born 1930) devoted her life to perpetuating the study of the history and culture of African American people through library science.
In 1964 Smith became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in library science from the University of Illinois. Beyond the confines of academia where she found her niche, she is widely known for her written collections that document the culture and achievements of African Americans and of Black people worldwide. Smith has lectured widely and served in a variety of international assignments.
Greensboro Native
Jessie Carney Smith was born Jessie Carney in rural North Carolina on September 24, 1930. One of four children born to James and Vesona (Bigelow), she was the youngest of the brood and the twin sister of Jodie. Raised outside of Greensboro, Smith lived with her family in a home that was situated adjacent to the tobacco farm of her grandparents, John Harvey and Minnie (Lea) Bigelow. Instilled by their parents with a strong work ethic, the Carney siblings spent much of their time helping with their father's business, a gas station and repair shop with a convenience market.
Growing up in the southern United States soon after the onset of the Great Depression, Smith and her family faced the cultural taboos of a segregated society. Regardless, they attended concerts, art exhibits, and other cultural events made available to them in Greensboro. Smith began her formal education in 1935, at age four, as a "primer" student in a four-room schoolhouse in nearby Mount Zion. She proved to be a precocious child and was double promoted from first grade to third grade, continuing at Mount Zion through the seventh grade before attending James B. Dudley High School in Greensboro. Because of segregation, her social contacts and life experience revolved around the African American population. Her primary, secondary, and collegiate education transpired exclusively at segregated schools. Thus she was exposed to history from the vantage point of her African American heritage, a circumstance that influenced her later dedication to the study of African American history and culture.
The Carney children, whose parents were alumni of North Carolina A&T, acquired a great respect for learning and education. Inspired by their parents and other family members, the siblings spent time outside of the classroom in reading the many books - including college texts - which were readily available around the Carney household. In 1946, following up on a youthful aspiration to become a fashion designer, Smith enrolled at North Carolina A&T; she graduated with a B.S. in home economics in 1950.
Smith at this time in her life had not determined to become a teacher; neither had she given consideration to spending her life as an academic in the field of library science. She spent the fall of her college graduation year at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where she studied textiles, clothing, and related arts, while becoming increasingly ambivalent about the clothing industry as an option for African Americans. During this time of uncertainty over her career, she married Frederick Douglas Smith on December 22, 1950, in Maryland, before making her way back to Greensboro. After a brief move to the state of Delaware, the couple settled permanently in Nashville, Tennessee.
Dr. Smith
In 1953, disappointed at the limited career opportunities available to her as an African American and a woman, Smith accepted a clerk's job at Fisk University. Holding little aspiration at that time of becoming the head librarian of the university within twelve years, she resumed her education regardless, enrolling at Michigan State University in East Lansing from 1954 to 1955, to earn an M.A. in child development. She returned to Nashville and resumed her clerical position while completing her master's thesis, yet her frustration with the job market persisted. Even with post-graduate work completed, her options for employment were few.
The mother of a young son by now, Smith opted to pursue a curriculum of library science at Nashville's George Peabody College for Teachers (now a part of Vanderbilt University). She earned an M.A. in 1957 and that spring secured a teaching position with the Nashville city schools. Later that year she accepted employment at Tennessee A&I College (now Tennessee State University) in the capacity of head cataloguer and instructor. In 1960, on fellowship from the State of Tennessee, she enrolled in a doctoral program at the University of Illinois, where she worked as a teaching assistant for three years. Having gone through a divorce in April of 1963, Smith returned to Nashville nonetheless in accordance with the terms of her fellowship, which required state service in Tennessee after graduation. She spent two years as assistant professor and coordinator of library services at Tennessee State University.
Upon completion of the graduate program requirements at University of Illinois in 1964, Smith distinguished herself as the first African American ever to earn a doctoral degree in the field of library science from that university. In 1965 she joined the library administration and faculty at Fisk University, succeeding Arna Bontemps as head librarian and establishing a lifelong career.
The 1970s
From her anchor position on the library staff at Fisk, Smith branched out and embarked on a lifelong pursuit of indexing and chronicling the cultural history of African Americans. She spent the 1970s as a part-time lecturer at Peabody Library School and from 1971 to 1973 served as an associate professor and part-time consultant at Alabama A&M University. She spent 1971 through 1974 as the Tennessee representative of the African-American Materials Project, based in North Carolina, and she was a visiting lecturer at the University of Tennessee School of Library Science in 1973 - 74.
During these years her duties at Fisk were augmented to include a post as director of the federally funded Internship in Black Studies Librarianship, from 1972 to 1975. In that capacity she was charged with overseeing the Miniinstitutes in Black Studies Librarianship in the spring of 1975. That same year she served as the director of the school's Research Program in Ethnic Studies Librarianship (also federally funded). In the spring of 1979 she directed the Fisk Institute on Ethnic Genealogy for Librarians.
With the scope of her influence continually expanding, Smith was appointed director of a library study for the Tennessee Higher Education Commission in 1975 - 76. Likewise, she served on the staff of the Institute in Multicultural Librarianship at the University of Michigan during the summer of 1975. Appointed to a fellowship assignment through the National Urban League, she served in the capacity of Expert to the Library of Congress Processing Department in 1974. In 1976, she served as a consultant to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Central Research Library, again through the Urban League fellowship program; and from 1974 to 1980 she participated on the visiting team to the American Library Association (ALA) Committee on Accreditation.
African American Historian
As Smith established a niche for herself in the American academic community, she immersed herself in researching the history of the African American people. Armed with enormous pride in her heritage, she increasingly turned toward writing and editing books that detailed the accomplishments of African American individuals throughout history. Likewise she espoused the habit of collecting news items that recorded the achievements of contemporary African Americans in the United States and abroad.
On a mandate to study libraries in Black colleges, through a fellowship from the former Council on Library Resources, Smith completed her first published work in 1977. This publication, Black Academic Libraries and Research Collections: an historical study, has been used heavily in determining funding support for these college libraries. By 1980 she had published two dozen educational pieces and bibliographies.
A few years later, encouraged by her colleagues and professional peers, Smith organized a definitive effort to document the lives of notable African American women. The project culminated in the publication of an award-winning volume, called Notable Black American Women, in 1992. In these pages, interspersed among the biographies of popular contemporary personalities and renowned individuals from U.S. history, Smith included vignettes of lesser-known African Americans, women whose contributions to American life and society were no less significant than those by more recognizable names. This provocative approach by Smith earned critical acclaim.
With the success of her first collection, Smith embraced yet another mission in life: to document the lives of African Americans, from a variety of unique vantage points. In 1990 her compilation of the Statistical Record of Black America was cited among the 30 best references volumes of the year by Library Journal. She published Epic Lives in 1992, followed in 1994 by the original edition of Black Firsts, which was recognized by American Libraries as one of the outstanding reference sources of 1995. Smith then reprised the Notable Black American Women collection, publishing Volume 2 in 1996. A similar publication, Notable Black American Men, appeared in 1999; it too won a number of awards. Notable Black American Women, Volume 3, was published in 2003. Her Powerful Black Women appeared in 1997, followed by Black Heroes of the Twentieth Century in 1998 (re-issued in 2001).
Respected as a reviewer as well as an author and editor, Smith's critiques have appeared in College and Research Libraries and in Journal of Library History. Her special reports have been commissioned by such bodies as the State of North Carolina, the U.S. Office of Civil Rights, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. She has lectured at dozens of venues, including the Library of Congress, University of Illinois, Cornell, University of Wisconsin, Jackson State University, Howard, and Savannah State College where she led a faculty workshop and made an appearance as keynote speaker.
Literate in French and German, Smith is well traveled. She lectured worldwide during the 1980s and served in various foreign assignments over a period of three decades. She attended the Pugwash Conference in Nova Scotia in August 1968 and appeared at the University of London in June 1972. In June 1973 she served as director of the librarians' conference workshop in Tokyo, Japan, for the United States Army in the Pacific. She was a book reviewer for the Black Bermudan program at Civic Hall in Hamilton, Bermuda, in May 1980, and spent December 1984 on educational tour to Dakar, Senegal. Among her more notable U.S. projects, in 1984 - 86 she directed "I've Been to the Mountain Top: A Civil Rights Legacy." For this federally funded lecture program she worked in conjunction with prominent civil rights leaders Coretta Scott King, Lerone Benett, and James Farmer.
Smith has been seen on television talk shows, including Today in Bermuda in 1980, Nashville's Jumpstreet in 1981, Black Pulse in 1982, and on Black Entertainment Television in 1992. She joined Keith Rush on WASP-AM radio in 2001 and Pete Braley on WBSM-AM radio in 2002. Heard on National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation" in February 2003, she discussed Black firsts with Neal Conan.
Sidelines
Socially active throughout her lifetime, Smith is renowned for her warmth and humanity, traits that she attributes to the example set by her parents and her grandparents. Her memberships include the American Library Association, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), The Links Incorporated, The Metropolitan Nashville Chapter of the Coalition of 100 Black Women, and Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. From 1976 to 1977 she presided as president of the national library honor society, Beta Phi Mu, the first black to be so empowered. Central to her message is the importance of keeping open the doors of research and knowledge for upcoming generations of students.
Committed to physical fitness, Smith walks, jogs, works with hand weights, and experiments with low-calorie recipes. Her avocations include flower gardening and reading, especially biographies.
Books
Contemporary Black Biography, Gale Group, 2003.
Other
"Jessie Carney Smith," AKA Authors,http://dickinsg.intrasun.tcnj.edu/akaauthors2/Carney.htm (December 16, 2003).
"Vita" (resume of) Jessie Carney Smith, 2003.
(Conversation with) Jessie Carney Smith, January 2004.
