John Kelly’s Feb. 1 Metro column, “Book addresses an ugly chapter in history of N.Va. public libraries,” illustrated the subtle nature of systemic racism. Mr. Kelly wrote that when Fairfax County library systems came onto the scene in the 1930s, “Segregation was so entrenched then that libraries could boast about being open to ‘everyone’ without mentioning African Americans. Everyone would have known what ‘everyone’ meant: anyone who was White.”
This was evidently the case in the town of Herndon, too, when the Herndon Fortnightly Club opened a community library at 660 Spring Street in 1927. The building became a Fairfax County Public Library branch in the 1970s. After a new Fairfax County Public Library building was built in Herndon in 1995, the Fortnightly Club property was purchased by Herndon Friends Meeting (Quakers), of which I am a member, and became our meetinghouse. We have been studying the racist history of our building and are working to overcome it.
Today, people of all races and ethnicities are welcome in the building where they once might not have been allowed.
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