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73 years after being denied, she finally has her library card

Hannah Sparling
hsparling@enquirer.com
Pearl Wortham Thompson, 92, was denied a library card in Raleigh, N.C. in 1942 because she was African-American. She eventually moved to Cincinnati and was the first African-American teacher at Hyde Park Elementary School. The Wake County, N.C. library system recently honored her and presented her a library card.

The silver chain swings back and forth, back and forth, tethered to the lone light bulb screwed into the ceiling.

There are piles of old newspapers and reference manuals, books in need of rebinding. It’s dark. Musty. Cold.

This was Pearl Wortham’s first trip to the Olivia Raney Public Library in Raleigh, North Carolina. Pearl was 17, a freshman at the all-black Shaw University. The Olivia Raney was for white people, and Pearl knew it. She knew she wasn’t allowed a card, but she was on a mission for a history paper, and the book she needed wasn’t at the black library.

So, to the Olivia Raney she went.

Pearl was the first black teacher at Hyde Park Elementary School.

It was 1942 in Raleigh, the days of segregation and Jim Crow laws. Pearl went on from there to become a teacher. She became Pearl Thompson, and she and her husband, Roland, moved to Cincinnati, where Pearl became the first black teacher at Hyde Park Elementary School.

She and Roland had a daughter, Deborah. And Pearl taught a boy with Down syndrome how to read, something no one else thought possible. She retired; Roland died; and about five years ago, Pearl moved into the Mallard Cove senior center in Sharonville.

Pearl is 92 now, but she’s not at Mallard Cove to die. She’s here to enjoy the rest of her life, however long God intends that to be, she says. And, let’s get one thing straight: Pearl is still in charge.

About that library, though.

Pearl’s husband, Roland, got a car during a trip where Roland took Pearl to meet his parents.

Pearl hit disapproving stares the moment she walked through the door. You’re in the wrong place. This is the white library, said the woman behind the counter. Pearl explained her plight – that she needed a book they didn’t have at the black library – but to no avail. She was sent around back to the “morgue,” a dank basement room where old newspapers and reference books go to die.

Someone might come along to help.

So Pearl sits, and she waits. A single light bulb, a swinging silver chain.

Pearl can’t remember how long she sat in that morgue – 10 minutes, or 30, or several hours. She can’t even remember what book she wanted; she just knows she was determined to get it and write that paper.

Finally, a librarian wandered in.

Why are you here?

Pearl told her.

You can get the book, the librarian said, but you can’t take it out.

“So I sat there and I read that book and I made that report,” Pearl says. “I was determined. It was something within my spirit that said, ‘This isn’t right.’”

There is no bitterness in Pearl’s voice when she recounts that day. There’s also no anger or resentment when she talks about being forced to the back of the bus or relegated to black entrances. It wasn’t right, but it was the law back then, she says.

Pearl reads with her granddaughter, Maia.

And, anyway, Pearl is on a mission to love “in spite of.”

“In spite of what you do to me, I’m required to love you,” she says.

Pearl’s father died eight days after her sixth birthday, so her mother had to work long, hard hours to support the family of five. But Pearl never felt her childhood was lacking. Her ancestors were slaves – “Of course, you can imagine what their life must have been like,” she says – and frankly, she sees more hate and suffering now than she ever faced in pre-civil rights era North Carolina.

“I’ve had a wonderful, exciting, challenging life,” she says. “I was loved. I was cared for. I was supported.”

Pearl gushes when she talks of her home at Mallard Cove, the care she receives and the friends she’s made. She’s taking a creative writing class, and she’s got a few poems in her pocket. And, again, she’s in charge.

Today, she needs to go downstairs to have some pictures taken. Deborah, her daughter, suggests maybe a wheelchair would be best. “I want to walk,” Pearl says. And so, they walk.

In Raleigh, life went on after Pearl was sentenced to wait and read in the morgue. Desegregation happened. The Olivia Raney library was torn down.

But Pearl was gone to Cincinnati by then, and she never did get her library card. That always bothered her some.

At Mallard Cove, she sleeps in a medical recliner, always facing east. She watches the sunrise each morning, and she says the same prayer out loud: “Good morning. What’s the miracle going to be today?”

One day, the miracle is simply having strength to tell her story. Pearl isn’t feeling well in the morning, but by afternoon, she’s better. Sometimes, miracles are small like that, she says.

And a bigger miracle?

Pearl, her daughter and granddaughter took a trip in early July back to Raleigh. Pearl is not as lithe as she once was, so she picked five places to visit: the cemetery where her ancestors are buried; the school where she studied and later taught; her childhood home; a park; and then, the library.

This is the house in which Pearl was raised in Raleigh, North Carolina. It still stands today.
Pearl Thompson gets a library card in Raleigh, North Carolina, 73 years after being denied a card because she was black.

This time, when Pearl walks through the door at the Cameron Village Regional Library, she slowly makes her way to the front counter with a walker, and she cries. It is the first time she can remember not being in control of herself.

“You shoulda seen me in Raleigh,” she says. “I was bawling like you don’t know what.”

Pearl gives a short speech, sharing her story and passion for every child learning to read. Then, barely audible through choking sobs, she asks for her miracle.

“So,” she says, “I’ll take my card now.”