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Queen Street

The Queen Street library, known formally as the Barrett Branch of the Alexandria Library, opened in 1937 as the first free public library in the city. The Alexandria Library Association Nonprofit Alexandria Library Association founded 1937 The private nonprofit operating Alexandria's first free public library, which opened on Queen Street in 1937. The association's segregation policy excluding Black patrons was the … operated the branch under a policy that restricted library cards to white patrons only ^[1] Source 1 Alexandria Library Special Collections Manuscript .

On the morning of August 21, 1939, five young Black men — Otto L. Tucker, Edward Gaddis, Morris Murray, William Evans, and Clarence Strange — entered the library, requested library cards, and, after being refused, sat quietly reading books they had selected from the shelves. They were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. The sit-in had been planned and coordinated by Alexandria attorney Samuel Wilbert Tucker, whose law office stood a short walk from the library on Queen Street ^[2] Source 2 Alexandria Gazette, Aug. 22, 1939 Newspaper . The direct action anticipated the sit-in tactics of the post-World War II civil rights movement by nearly two decades.

The city’s response was not to desegregate the Queen Street library but to build a separate, smaller Robert H. Robinson Library for Black patrons, which opened in 1940; the Queen Street library remained segregated until 1962. The Barrett Branch has since been renovated and continues in use as a library; a historical marker at the entrance commemorates the 1939 sit-in ^[1] Source 1 Alexandria Library Special Collections Manuscript .