A Culture and a History of Dissemblance: Understanding the Life and Legacy of Chicago Public Librarian Vivian G. Harsh

In 1931, Vivian Gordon Harsh was hired as the head librarian of the George Cleveland Hall branch library, and during her twenty-seven year tenure, Harsh helped to shape the branch into a community touchstone for South Side Chicago. From the 1930s to the 1950s, community members met and intermingled at the Hall library for neighborhood events, and patrons would often visit the branch’s famed Special Negro Collection for their own projects and personal reading. As central as the 135th Street library was to the New Negro Movement in Harlem, the Hall branch became one of the main intellectual centers of the Chicago Renaissance, and Harsh was integral to the library’s success. Born and raised in Chicago, Harsh served in the Chicago Public Library system for twenty years before being appointed as Hall’s head librarian. As the first black librarian over a full library branch in Chicago, Harsh brought to this position a commitment to racial uplift, a belief in the importance of education, and a profound interest in African American history. Harsh worked, in particular, to build the Special Negro Collection into the largest black archive in the Midwest, which remains the most enduring testament to her career. Despite her many contributions, Harsh was labeled an “enigma” after her death, a moniker that has largely persisted even after her prized Special Negro Collection was renamed in her honor. This paper demystifies who has Harsh, what she valued, and how she helped to popularize the study of African American history in Chicago. By recovering Harsh’s life and legacy, this paper adds to the more recent scholarship on the Chicago Renaissance by helping to define the many ways that black women directly and indirectly informed black cultural production during this era.