Indianapolis’ first library for Black residents reopens through school librarian’s leadership

Maurice Broaddus was a writer by trade and became a middle school librarian by accident. The award-winning Afrofuturist and sci-fi author& once filled in at The Oaks Academy middle school, where he was also a teacher, for the librarian going on maternity leave. The librarian never came back. “Six, seven years later I’m still covering her maternity leave,” he joked. But what started as mere chance has become an opportunity to mentor young writers, support artists of color, and restore a historic Indianapolis library that was the first in the city established specifically for Black residents. “It’s been a lesson in collaboration, a lesson in building relationships, a lesson in dreaming alongside our neighbors,” said Broaddus, who is Black. “Ultimately, what does it look like to restore a space and then it be true to its purpose?” Broaddus led the project to reopen the Paul Laurence Dunbar Library, established within the now-closed John Hope School No. 26 in 1922, to students at The Oaks Academy middle school, a private Christian school in the Martindale-Brightwood neighborhood.& The library originally existed to serve Black residents& in a& de facto& segregated part of the city. Its restoration after nearly 30 years of disuse...