Teresa Letizia

“A Day for Rememberin’: Inspired by the True Events of the First Memorial Day,” is a newly released book by children’s author Leah Henderson. The phrase, “a day for rememberin’”– just about says it all about the holiday we observe at the end of May each year. How many of us mark that day remembering what we’re asked to, and how many are even aware of the intention of the holiday?

This new addition to A.K. Smiley Public Library’s Young Readers’ Room will help new readers—and older ones—learn about the history of the day and why it’s important to observe it. Memorial Day is designated as a day to remember the countless number of our neighbors, friends, and relatives throughout history who have given up their lives in duty to their country while serving in the military.

Henderson’s inspiring account is of one of the first commemorations of Memorial Day — on May 1, 1865. She encountered the story through a photograph of a gathering for Decoration Day, as it was initially named. She tells it through the eyes of Eli, the 10-year-old son of a formerly enslaved man, who, with his family, is moved to honor those who had given their lives fighting for the freedom of his community in the conflict which had divided the United States.

The War Between the States is featured in another new addition to the Library, “The Black Civil War Soldier: a Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship.” Author Deborah Willis honors this often unrecognized group of Civil War soldiers using the medium of photography, the use of which was beginning to become widespread during the mid-1800s. Willis showcases a collection of portraits and personal ephemera exploring the lives of the Black Union soldiers, as well as those of other African Americans aiding in the struggle, from family members left behind to female spies, ultimately revealing their remarkable resilience.

Besides the volumes inspired by photographs and letters, authors have also conducted interviews with soldiers in some of our new books. Bestseller “Modern Warriors: Real Stories from Real Heroes” is an offering by FOX & Friends Weekend cohost Pete Hegseth. His is a collection of stirring narratives from fifteen individuals, including decorated Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, marines, Purple Heart recipients, combat pilots, a Medal of Honor recipient, and more.

From bestselling novelist James Patterson is the non-fiction volume, “Walk in My Combat Boots: True Stories from America’s Bravest Warriors.” Patterson and his team spoke with veterans of the Vietnam, Gulf, and Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Among other experiences, each relays how they dealt with threats of sudden death from snipers and improvised explosive devices, and how a majority of them suffer degrees of post-traumatic stress.

Of course Memorial Day is really about the soldiers who are not able to tell us their stories, the ones who didn’t make it home to us. The following two books get as close as we can to knowing them, through those who knew them best, their families. “Three Wise Men: a Navy Seal, a Green Beret, and How their Marine Brother Became a War’s Sole Survivor,” is written by brother Beau Wise (with Tom Sileo), a United States Marine Corps combat veteran who is the only known American service member to be pulled from the battlefield after losing two brothers in Afghanistan.

“Sacrifice: a Gold Star Widow’s Fight for the Truth” is a poignant memoir by Michelle Richmond Black who details her grief in becoming a gold-star widow. After losing her Green Beret husband, Bryan Black, when he died fighting the Islamic State in Niger in 2017, Michelle Black went looking for answers. Given few details about her husband’s death, Black conducted exclusive interviews with the survivors of her husband’s unit and delved into research of military leadership and accountability to learn what happened to him that final day and, finally, to know and understand his full sacrifice.

Here is a list of additional current titles available at the Library remembering soldiers. Pick up one to peruse and take “a day for rememberin’” the soldier’s sacrifice — the ultimate sacrifice, for fellow soldier, for country, and for each of us.

• The daughters of Kobani : a story of rebellion, courage, and justice
• The Greatest Beer Run Ever: a Memoir of Friendship, Loyalty, and War
• Ghost Flames: Life and Death in a Hidden War, Korea 1950-1953
• I Marched with Patton: a Firsthand Account of World War II alongside One of the U.S. Army’s Greatest Generals
• Facing the Mountain: a True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II
• Inferno: the True Story of a B-17 Gunner’s Heroism and the Bloodiest Military Campaign in Aviation History
• Whatever It Took: an American Paratrooper’s Extraordinary Memoir of Escape, Survival, and Heroism in the Last Days of World War II
• The York Patrol: the Real Story of Alvin York and the Unsung Heroes Who Made Him World War I’s Most Famous Soldier
• A Thousand May Fall: Life, Death, and Survival in the Union Army (an account of German immigrant soldiers)

We can very well set a mood of peace out of which a system of peace can be built.

– Martin Luther King Jr.

This week we observe the birthday and legacy of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The renowned civil rights leader, who would have been 92 on January 15, was assassinated in 1968, at the height of his mission to further the civil rights cause through nonviolent resistance.

Over half a century later, the legacies of Dr. King, and those of his contemporaries of the civil rights era, continue to inspire us. This recently published scholarship is one example: “The sword and the shield: the revolutionary lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.” It is one of the hundreds of books to be found in the New Book collection at A.K. Smiley Public Library.

Author of the book, Peniel E. Joseph, a professor of history and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at the University of Texas at Austin, writes a dual biography of the two leaders. He sets out to prove that Americans’ understanding over the years of the beliefs and actions of the men has become distilled. Joseph asserts that we have come to think of King solely as a pacifist, and of Malcolm X, strictly as a radical revolutionary. He concludes, however, that each man, both of whom were assassinated at the age of 39 within three years of each other, came to learn from the other’s philosophies and incorporated aspects of each other’s beliefs into his own. Joseph asserts, “Martin Luther King Jr.’s promotion of nonviolence as a shield against Jim Crow’s denial of black citizenship sharpened Malcolm’s political sword, placing them in a conversation that would continue beyond death.”

A young contemporary of Dr. King’s, Congressman John Lewis of Georgia’s fifth district, who died last summer after serving 33 years in the House of Representatives, saw King as one of his teachers in the practice of nonviolence in his civil rights work. A biography of Lewis by Jon Meacham, published in 2020, “His truth is marching on: John Lewis and the power of hope,” is also included in Smiley’s New Book collection. Lewis met King at age 18 and eventually became one of the “Big Six” leaders of the groups who organized the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom at which King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, calling for an end to racism.

Both Lewis and King were contemporaries of Rosa Parks who, with her refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala. bus in 1955, has become an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. She collaborated with civil rights leaders, including King, and her one act of resistance led to the bus boycott by Montgomery’s Black community. Continuing for over a year, the boycott eventually lead to the federal court decision which deemed bus segregation as unconstitutional. “Rosa Parks: in her own words,” also available in the New Book section of the Library, is a fascinating and intimate look at Parks’ experiences. Until very recently her personal papers, kept by the Library of Congress, were unavailable to the public. Take a look at the small volume and see, in her own handwriting, what she thought and felt about the era in which she lived, as well as one hundred photographs from her collection.

If the subject of the civil rights movement and these titles interest you, you may want to investigate another biography of Malcolm X currently out, “The dead are arising : the life of Malcolm X” by Les Payne, and the DVD documentary, “John Lewis : good trouble,” released last year and directed by Dawn Porter. You’ll find both here at Smiley Library.

If you’d like to check out these or other Library items, you may do with our Books to Go curbside service. For more information please visit our website, www.akspl.org, or call 909-798-7565.

“Someone struggled for your right to vote. Use it.” -Susan B. Anthony

The word ‘suffrage,’ which simply means ‘the right to vote,’ doesn’t sound like it fits its definition, does it? The term sounds like it could refer to a state of suffering. But such a thought is far from its meaning. Suffrage, the right for each citizen to have a voice in its government, is the backbone of the freedoms of American democracy. Each American has an inalienable right to vote and be heard, right? No suffering involved. Hmm, well, not exactly.

Groups of American citizens have historically struggled for decades upon decades in order to secure their right to vote, and some conflicts are ongoing to this day. These battles are addressed in some of the newly acquired books by Smiley Library which explore the experiences of a couple of these groups.

“On account of race : the Supreme Court, white supremacy, and the ravaging of African American voting rights” is constitutional law historian Lawrence Goldstone’s treatise of the disturbing history of suffrage for African Americans. Though ratified in 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment, which explicitly states that the right to vote “shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” was not fully realized for 95 more years — until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In that near-century of time African American citizens were continually and blatantly denied access to voting often under the guise of “states’ rights,” such as by use of literacy tests or poll taxes, and as Goldstone defines, were often aided by the decisions of the Supreme Court. Out of this grew Jim Crow laws of racial segregation which sought to further African American disenfranchisement and remove the group’s political and economic gains which had been advanced during the Reconstruction period. Though the Voting Rights Act of 1965 seemed to have remedied the ails of the previous century, Goldstone is disturbed by the 2013 decision by the Supreme Court in Shelby County, Alabama vs. Holder which has allowed states to put voter restrictions back into law. The suffering for suffrage, it seems, often comes from progress taking one step forward and two steps back. The right to make your voice heard may be inalienable, but it is also fragile.

While African Americans endured challenges in the 19th and early 20th century, the cause of women’s suffrage was running in tandem. When African Americans were given the right to vote with the Fifteenth Amendment, African American women were not included. One half of the American population — women — were denied this privilege of the citizenry. Author Ellen Carol DuBois begins her account in “Suffrage : women’s long battle for the vote” of the Women’s Suffrage Movement by outlining its beginnings in the temperance and abolitionist causes women embraced in the 1840s. However, the mutual goal of suffrage for African Americans and for women fell away as the Jim Crow era took hold, and the mainstream women’s movement left African American women behind.

DuBois does contextualize the exclusion of these women, as well as other issues of importance to the Movement at the time, such as advocacy for trade unions, birth control, and other social justice reforms. As the Movement continued into the 20th century these were abandoned as well. Women suffragists came to the realization that the vote would not be given to women until a constitutional amendment was put into place. It was Quaker reformer Alice Paul who began the process in 1912. DuBois chronicles the Movement’s history up to the establishment of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, and briefly addresses what came next. She quotes suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt’s comment on achievement of the Amendment, that is was just “the first lap of this struggle for women’s emancipation.”

These are just two of several new books on the subject of suffrage available in the Library. Other titles include “The woman’s hour : the great fight to win the vote” by Elaine F. Weiss, “Free thinker : sex, suffrage, and the extraordinary life of Helen Hamilton Gardener” by Kimberly A. Hamlin, “No place for a woman : the struggle for suffrage in the wild West” by Chris Enss, and “Thank you for voting : the maddening, enlightening, inspiring truth about voting in America” by Erin Geiger Smith. For more on voter suppression, you might consider “Uncounted : the crisis of voter suppression in the United States” by Gilda R. Daniels.

If you prefer a more visually tactile experience of history, you may enjoy “Exploring women’s suffrage through 50 historic treasures” by Jessica D. Jenkins. You may also visit our Heritage Room by appointment and find many suffrage-related artifacts, such as the campaign literature entitled “Form addressed to mothers, fathers and all good citizens urging an affirmative vote for the Suffrage Amendment : October 10, 1911“, published by the Redlands Political Equality League. Or visit the Heritage Room’s online exhibit at www.akspl.org, “The Woman’s Vote: A Century of Suffrage.”

The Library also offers books on the subject for children and young adults. Lawrence Goldstone offers a companion to “On account of race” for young adults with “Stolen justice : the struggle for African American voting rights.” Others for children include “How women won the vote : Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, and their big idea” by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, and “Women win the vote! : 19 for the 19th amendment” by Nancy B. Kennedy.

For more information on how to check out these titles using our Books to Go program or to find our in-person hours, please visit our website, www.akspl.org, or call 909-798-7565.

We often hear people say that libraries are magical places. It seems that, as if just by osmosis, some sense of beauty, of history, of curiosity, of warm childhood memories, of potential for access to infinite knowledge, or of a calming peace invades our being when we enter the special ones, when we enter our library. So today, let’s celebrate libraries, the community gathering sites with a soul, which all of us are especially missing right now. How do we celebrate, you ask? How else, but with a good book, or nine, on… libraries.

“The Most Beautiful Libraries in the World” by Guillaume de Laubier is just one of dozens of books on the theme of libraries which Smiley Library houses. It’s not located in our New Book area, but do you think you could pass up looking through gorgeous photographs of magnificent library buildings full of that bewitching allure if you had the chance?! People have been creating some exquisite shrines to the written word for centuries… Do you think our beautiful library could be included?

By the way, you do have the chance to check out library items: though we are physically closed for the moment, our Books to Go program is in full swing, allowing you to select library materials through our extensive online catalog to be picked up at a contactless outdoor appointment. Find our catalog at www.akspl.org (where you can also access eBooks, etc.), or call us at 909-798-7565 for more information.

The newest non-fiction work on libraries in our collection, out this year, is “Information Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers, and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe” by Kathy Lee Peiss. This is an absorbing and expertly investigated account of American librarians, archivists, and scholars who traveled Europe to gather books and documents to assist the military in the war effort, ensuring the preservation of the items, as well as providing critical information for intelligence purposes. Their missions also encouraged the postwar development of American research libraries, some becoming great international repositories of scientific reports, literature, and historical sources.

You knew your librarians and archivists were everyday superheroes, but this is next-level dedication! They are not an anomaly either; I’m reminded of another non-fiction book of a few years ago in our collection, “The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: and their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts” by Joshua Hammer, also available as an e-book.

I might also give a shout-out here to the enormously popular 2018 documentary, “The Library Book” by Susan Orlean, readily available here in book, e-book, audio book, and e-audio book formats. Orlean draws a detailed portrait of the history of the 150-year-old Los Angeles Public Library revolving around the tragic losses of a fire which befell it. Her admiration for this institution, not unlike our own, spills out to become a love letter to all libraries.

On the lighter side, Smiley carries fun fiction publications for all ages. From the Young Readers’ Room, “Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library” by Chris Grabenstein, (the sequel being “Mr. Lemoncello’s Library Olympics”) is so popular it is provided in three formats: book, e-book, and e-audio book. Twelve-year-old Kyle gets to spend the night in a new library which, come morning, by some kind of alchemy, requires that he and his friends work puzzles in order to escape! Then there is “Evil Librarian” by Michelle Knudsen found in the Young Adult section, in book and e-book formats. High-school student Annie falls for the new, young school librarian who is, well… it’s in the title. If he thinks you’re not looking, you might see his horns–yikes!

Always attempting equal representation, as librarians do, Smiley also offers a publication for cats. (Dogs, I hear ya; you’ll get your turn.)  The featured feline of this book is Dewey Readmore Books, his name covertly buried here as a subliminal message. Vicki Myron’s “Dewey the Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World” is an older offering available as an e-audio book. This fact is fortuitous because I do not believe cats can read. They can listen to the audio book, well, you know, if they feel like it, and, only if you do not look at them… But I digress. Dewey’s tail, uh, tale is actually remarkably enchanting: this small creature shared of himself and became a friend to all who came into his library. His fame grew until it became international, and through Dewey, an honorary librarian, we see his effect in the healing of his adoptive librarian and of his struggling town.

Let’s look finally at a more recent pick, last year’s “Syria’s Secret Library: Reading and Redemption in a Town under Siege,” located in the New Books section. Journalist Mike Thompson expounds here on his reporting for the BBC covering the Syrian town of Darayya which saw some of the heaviest fighting of the Syrian civil war. The few brave refugees who remained there after the war took on a dynamic enterprise: to construct a library underground, reclaiming thousands of books from the rubble. According to the author, these awe-inspiring survivors did so in order to construct, “a portal to another world: one of learning, one of peace, and one of hope.”

From this dogged pursuit to move forward we can take a lesson, especially in this dark hour in which we live. Like the refugees, let’s look toward rebuilding, and start with the library, that centering place which is constructed on the tenets of lifelong learning and education, preservation, intellectual freedom, democratic and diverse access for all with privacy, and social responsibility and service to the public good. You know, it just may be the concept of the library, upheld by these ideals, where that magic actually lives.

And so ends my love letter to our library.