For Tracie D. Hall, the first Black woman to be appointed Executive Director of the American Library Association, accepting that post had as much to do with confronting a familial history of low literacy as it did with a more legible desire to participate in the shaping of contemporary information institutions and systems.
Arguing that library services should not be limited to our traditional audiences: those that have the requisite capacities to use libraries. Hall notes that there are people who do not have the ability to read and people who do not have the access to read. Both groups deserve our attention and advocacy. Beginning with the Frederick Douglass quote, "Once you learn to read, you will be forever free" and connecting the absence of that agency to the rise of mass-incarceration, underemployment, COVID-19 mortality and public health inequities, Hall mines the link between literacy and self-determination which she maintains is as true today as ever.
Have questions for Tracie Hall? Submit them in advance using this
Google Form.
