PBS 'Free for All' documentary explores why public libraries are necessary for democracy

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29-04-2025

When New Orleans was battening down in the 1960s for the arrival of Hurricane Betsy, Dawn Logsdon's mother was preparing by getting children's books from the library to read by candlelight.
'From that moment on, I was hooked,' remembers Logsdon in 'Free For All: The Public Library,' an 'Independent Lens' documentary airing April 29 at 10 p.m. on Detroit Public TV and other PBS stations.
Made by Logsdon (who's the producer, director, editor and narrator) and Lucie Faulknor (producer and co-director), 'Free For All' is a persuasive, clear-eyed love letter to the public library system that lauds its ideals, while also chronicling when it failed to meet them in the past.
The film also serves as an urgent call to save public libraries from ongoing efforts to limit their programming and books, cut taxes that support them and, in some cases, shut their doors permanently.
The latest threat to the future of public libraries? The Trump administration's cost-cutting plan to eliminate the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a move described in an executive order as continuation of 'the reduction in the elements of the Federal bureaucracy that the President has determined are unnecessary."
Early this month, the American Library Association and American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees filed a lawsuit to stop the dismantling of IMLS, which is a prime source of federal funding for public libraries.
For some of us, public libraries have long been a part of our everyday lives. Logsdon recalls how her family would spend summer vacations driving across the country on camping trips. At each stop, her mom would take her to the nearest public library. 'By the time I was 12,' she estimates, 'I'd visited over a hundred libraries in almost every state in the union.'
'Free For All,' in essence, is a continuation of Logsdon's journey. For about a decade, she has been recording what happens at public libraries and noticing along the way how they have gone 'from being America's most trusted and least controversial institution to a battle ground in the growing culture wars.'
Why? It's the sort of question you could turn to the books in a library to answer. The documentary presents a compelling history of public libraries, warts and all.
"Free For All" introduces viewers to some extremely contradictory figures, like the powerful, flawed mega-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, who provided the money to build hundreds of public libraries, but simultaneously paid meager wages to the workers who made his steel fortune possible.
Another key figure is Melvil Dewey, who came up with the Dewey Decimal System and started the first library college for women -- and later was driven out of the profession by librarians, as Logsdon states, for his pattern of sexually harassment.
But the heroes of the documentary aren't the figures mentioned in history books. They are the virtually unknown librarians who devoted their lives to serving their communities -- and who defied the racism and prejudice of their eras in order to do so.
While exploring the Seward Park Branch Library in the lower east side of New York, Logsdon tells the story of librarian Ernestine Rose, a reformer who defied the pressure to 'Americanize' immigrants at the turn of the century and instead helped them adjust to their new home offered them books written in the languages of their native countries.
Later, at the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library in Harlem, Rose integrated the library staff. Black librarians like Regina Andrews were vital to making the site a hub of the Harlem Renaissance that was visited by literary icons by Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. An audio clip shares author James Baldwin's childhood memories of frequenting the branch and reading 'everything there.'
Groundbreaking Black librarian Annie McPheeters, whose mother taught her to read and write by drawing in the dirt on their farm, remembers how a white librarian stood in the door of a new Carnegie library in the South in order to block her family from entering. Years later, McPheeters would work in an Atlanta library that a young Martin Luther King Jr. would go to several times a week.
Contemporary librarians are honoring their predecessors with their innovation and enthusiasm. Elizabeth Timmins of Muehl Public Library, a Wisconsin librarian of the year, outlines her approach to welcoming children with games and activities: 'My philosophy is I'm throwing a party every day and everybody is invited to the party."
Bookmobile driver Tameka Roby of East Baton Rouge Parish Library in Louisiana shares how much she enjoys going out into neighborhoods and helping bring resources to people who can't just access information online, since 'over 40% of our population still doesn't have internet access.'
Logsdon makes a strong case that today's public libraries are remarkable places that can be everything from havens for the vulnerable to gathering hubs for activities and arts performances -- and still fulfill their traditional role as a gateway to all kinds of knowledge and entertainment.
As Logsdon says in her narration, 'Going to the library, it's a rite of passage many of us share.' I grew up in a small town going to a library that was located in the same strip mall as the laundromat where my mother washed our clothes. It was hard to imagine a better place to be than scouring its shelves for a new adventure to take, a new character to meet, new things to learn about animals or dinosaurs or planets.
As an expert source for 'Free For All' describes public libraries at one point, they are 'one of the purest expressions of the possibility of democracy.'
Contact Detroit Free Press pop culture critic Julie Hinds at [e-mail].
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: 'Free For All' PBS documentary: Public libraries crucial to democracy