80 Years Ago: Early Sit-In Protest Happens In Alexandria

ALEXANDRIA, VA — While the sit-in movement gained traction when African-American students sat at a whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1960, Alexandria had its own protest decades earlier. Alexandria Library recently marked the 80th anniversary of five African-American men holding a sit-in at a library on Aug. 21, 1939.

The sit-in took place at Alexandria Library, now known as the Barrett Branch Library at 717 Queen Street. Built in 1937, it was the sole library at the time and was only open to whites.

Samuel Wilbert Tucker, a young lawyer born in Alexandria, had been working for several years to establish equal access to community resources. Those efforts were blocked by the white community in Alexandria, including the library board.

Tucker, then 26, recruited a group of five young African-American men for a deliberate act of civil disobedience. On Aug. 21, 1939, one man entered the library and asked to register for a library card. When library staff refused, he picked up a book and began to read. The other men repeated this action.

Before long, William Evans, Otto L. Tucker, Edward Gaddis, Morris Murray and Clarence Strange sat in silence reading books at five tables.

Library staff called the police, and the five men were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. When the case went to court, Tucker planned to argue that citizens deserved equal access to public services. However, the city stalled the case, and Tucker couldn't pursue the case after falling ill. While the charges were dropped, the city pursued a "separate but equal" library for African-Americans.

The library board went on to approve construction of the black-only Robert H. Robinson Library in the Parker-Gray neighborhood. When a librarian invited Tucker to apply for a library card at Robinson Library, he sent a letter refusing to accept a card there in lieu of one at Alexandria Library.

The former Robinson Library building is now home to the Alexandria Black History Museum at 902 Wythe Street. The blacks-only library ran until desegregation in the early 1960s, according to the museum.

Tucker went on to become the leading attorney for the NAACP in Virginia during the 1950s and 1960s and argued key civil rights cases around the state. He died in 1990, and a new elementary school bearing his name was dedicated 10 years later.