Montgomery Portraits: Librarian committed life to freedom. (Montgomery Advertiser, 4/11/2011)
Excerpt: The results of her disregard for the consequences and for flaunting the conventional lock-step conformity demanded by the white South were predictable. Her friends deserted her; she received anonymous threatening telephone calls. Montgomery Mayor William Gayle, a member of the local White Citizens' Council, withheld funding for the library in an effort to coerce the library's superintendent and trustees to fire Morgan. Admirably, they refused to fire her, citing her right to freedom of speech. Infuriated, many library patrons -- at that time only whites were allowed to use the city library -- tore up their library cards.
On July 16, 1957, the day after a cross was burned on her lawn in the Garden District, this courageous, highly intelligent, eminently moral, middle-aged woman resigned from the library staff and committed suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills. Some who had criticized her stance against Jim Crow attended her funeral, apparently remorseful for the tragic result of their behavior. Nevertheless, it was not until 1962 that Montgomery's public library was peacefully integrated.
In 1958, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in "Stride Toward Freedom" that it was Morgan who acquainted white Montgomerians with Gandhi's nonviolent movement and helped them understand the significance of the bus boycott.
In 2005, Montgomery's main public library was named in memory of Juliette Hampton Morgan, a Montgomery librarian who devoted her life to the defense of free speech, human rights and American democracy.
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