Here at 902 Wythe St. sits the Alexandria Black History Museum, an Alexandria-operated institution housed in the former Robert Robinson Library. The building was originally constructed in 1940 as the first "separate but equal" library for African Americans in the segregated city. Its walls hold layers of story: the Alexandria Library began in 1794 as a private lending library called the Alexandria Library Company, and in 1937 Dr. Robert South Barrett donated funds to build Alexandria's Public Library.
The Library Company cooperated, contracting with the Alexandria City Council to turn over its collections as the City agreed to include the public library's operating expenses in its budget. Nearby in 1939, lawyer Samuel Wilbert Tucker organized a pacific sit-in at the new "whites only" Alexandria public library, the Kate Waller Barret branch, an action that led to the arrest of protesters by Virginia's police and is commonly cited as the first non-violent protest by African Americans against racial segregation. Today this building presents changing exhibitions that connect those years and events to the community.
Notice the doorway itself, once the threshold that quietly rewrote what this city's library shelves would hold for all its people.