Born on May 14, 1913, Clara Stanton Jones would go on to break historic barriers in library science and public service. In 1970, she became the first African American director of the Detroit Public Library, one of the largest library systems in the U.S. Just six years later, in 1976, she made history again as the first African American president of the American Library Association (ALA). Jones was a fierce advocate for equitable access to information and worked tirelessly to diversify library staff, collections, and programming. Her leadership helped redefine what inclusive public libraries could be in the 20th century.
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