Portsmouth Colored Community Library Museum

Portsmouth Colored Community Library Museum

904 Elm Avenue • 757 393-8591

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In the face of being excluded from using the Portsmouth’s main library, a committee of black citizens led by St. James Episcopal Church pastor Rev. M. B. Birchette, worked from the late 1920s on to establish a library that Portsmouth’s African American citizens could use.  In 1937 a reading room at the church was opened.  The reading room was partially funded through the New Deal-era National Youth Administration (NYS).  Unfortunately, the funding ran out in 1941 and it closed.

The Portsmouth Library Association took up the cause and raised funds for land on which to build the library and worked with the city government to see it completed in 1945.

On December 20, 1945, the tiny 900-square-foot Portsmouth Community Library opened on South Street.  Unlike other communities where “Colored” or “Negro” branch libraries were created as smaller or separate off-springs of segregated white libraries, the Portsmouth Community Library is the recognized brain-child of the African American Society itself. Not only did the community count on the library for books, but it became a community resource that housed clothing drives, organized Negro History Week programs, and provided other services.

In 1963, the library closed its doors as a result of a lawsuit that led to the integration of the city’s public library, opening those doors to all of Portsmouth’s citizens.

In 1967, the building moved a few blocks to the parking lot of Ebenezer Baptist Church saving it from demolition and giving it new life by serving as a meeting space for the church.

Hours:

Thursday and Friday 12 – 4 pm

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