In addition to being a prominent figure in American civic life, education, and religion, Thomas Fountain Blue made history as the first African American to serve as public library director. Henry Ann Crawley Blue and her carpenter father, Noah, welcomed their son, Blue, into the world on March 6, 1866, in Farmville, Virginia. Alice Blue and Charles Blue were their other children.
From 1885 until his graduation in 1888, Blue was a student at Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia. He attended Virginia Union University, then known as Richmond Theological Seminary, in Richmond, Virginia, in 1894 and graduated in 1898 with a Bachelor of Divinity. After a week, when the Spanish-American War broke out due to the USS Maine’s sinking off the Cuban coast, Blue enlisted in the Sixth Virginia Volunteers unit, which consisted of African American troops. He was stationed at Tennessee’s Camp Poland and Georgia’s Camp Haskell.
As the first Carnegie Library in the US to employ only African Americans to serve African American consumers, Blue was chosen to head the Western Branch Library of the Louisville Free Public Library in 1905. The library was located on South 10th and Chestnut Street. Upon completion, the library housed more than 4,000 volumes and 53 periodicals, and its construction cost $31,024.31.
The Eastern Branch Library, Louisville’s second Carnegie Library for African Americans, was inaugurated by Blue in 1914. Among the sixteen national Army training camps established throughout the country during World War I, Blue was designated Education Secretary at Camp Zachary Taylor in Louisville after being enlisted and leaving the branch. In the United States, Blue collaborated with Black soldiers who mostly served in support and manual labor capacities.
Upon his return to Louisville in 1919, Blue was appointed chief of the “Colored Department” for the city’s public library system, where he oversaw eight African American assistants. This position was his first after the war ended in 1918. When it came to staffing several Black library branches, the Colored Department was the pioneer in the US.
Blue presented a paper titled “Training Class at the Western Colored Branch” at the 1922 American Library Association Conference in Detroit, Michigan. Following his presentation, he moderated a discussion with the Negro Roundtable, which included other African American Library employees from around the country.
Thomas Fountain Blue, Jr. and Charles Blue were born to Blue and Cornelia Phillips Johnson of Columbia, Tennessee, whom Blue wed on June 18, 1925. Two years down the road, in 1927, Blue called its inaugural conference at Hampton Institute to launch the Negro Library Conference.
Reverend Thomas Fountain Blue, who later became a minister, died in Louisville, Kentucky, on November 10, 1935. He was a charter member of the Louisville Chapter of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, a member of the American Library Association, and the Special Committee of Colored Ministers of Louisville on Matters Interracial. This man was 69 years old.
The American Library Association and the Canadian Library Association held their annual conferences in 2003 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in Toronto, Ontario. During the conference, Blue was posthumously honored for his leadership in promoting professionalism among African American library staff across the US. Blue and his wife, Cornelia Phillips Johnson, were honored with a gravestone at Louisville’s Eastern Cemetery by the Frazier History Museum in 2022.
This is a part of our new series – “Hidden Gems in Black History,” where we highlight uncommon facts throughout Black history. Join us every day during Black History Month for interesting facts about Black people and places you likely haven’t heard before!
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