As the State of Mississippi prepares to demolish the building that once housed the Eudora Welty Library, the Jackson-Hinds Library Board of Trustees hopes that new funding, a strategic plan and new leadership will revitalize the capital city’s long-neglected libraries.
The board is searching for an executive director to lead the library system after its former executive director, Floyd Council, resigned after two years at the helm.
“Mr. Council took over leadership of the library system at an incredibly challenging time wherein the library system faced significant facilities challenges and funding cuts,” the board said in Oct. 29 press release, crediting him for helping the library system make “great strides towards establishing a firm foundation” during his short tenure.
‘Closing Libraries Left and Right’
In recent years, libraries in Jackson have suffered from neglect, with some falling into ruin due to a lack of funding for adequate repairs and persistent damage from thieves.
In a Nov. 14 interview with the Mississippi Free Press, Jackson-Hinds Library Board President Peyton Smith commended former executive director Floyd Council, saying that JHLS saw “significant growth” under his leadership.
A major piece of that leadership included triage for Jackson’s struggling libraries, Smith explained.
“We’d just been closing libraries left and right, it felt like, for a long time,” he said.
On Dec. 19, 2023, the Jackson City Council voted to deed the Eudora Welty Library location on State Street to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, which shared plans to raze the building and turn the site into a greenspace near the two Mississippi Museums.
In March of this year, President Joe Biden signed a spending bill that included millions in “historic funding for Jackson’s Eudora Welty Library,” a March 9 JHLS press release stated.
The federal grant came after the JHLS board submitted a HUD Congressional Directed Spending Grant request at the invitation of the Office of U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, a Mississippi Republican, the release continued.
“This money, $3.75 million, is a tremendous first step in restoring library service to downtown Jackson,” Smith said during a press conference on March 18.
Neither the City of Jackson nor the Jackson-Hinds Library Board have announced where the new Eudora Welty Library will be located; currently, the City has housed the contents of Eudora Welty Library at the Jackson Medical Mall.
Mississippi Department of Archives and History spokeswoman Sarah Warnock told WLBT on Nov. 25 that the State will begin demolishing the former Eudora Welty Library building in January 2025.
South Jackson’s Richard Wright Library has sat boarded up for years on McDowell Road. Smith said he anticipates re-opening the branch will be “a really big project.”
“That building—because the damage that’s been done to it by basically people breaking in and stealing all the wiring and just kind of destroying that building—it’s going to be a significant project,” he continued.
The City of Jackson demolished the former Charles Tisdale Library, named for the late Jackson Advocate publisher, on Oct. 12, 2022. Flooding and black mold plagued the North Jackson branch.
Smith is hopeful that those days are behind them.
He shared that the board is in talks to relocate the Charles Tisdale Library to the site that was once Chastain Middle School—one of 13 schools that the public school board decided in 2023 to close or consolidate.
JHLS also recently reopened the city’s Willie Morris Branch, which they closed for about a month to repair the HVAC system.
“We’re getting to a point where that’s stopping and we’re moving into the direction where we’re getting new libraries open,” Smith said.
“For a lot of people, the library has not been a good story for a long time. And people need it. We hear people, and we’re working really hard to get out of the hole and make sure we don’t fall back into it again,” he continued.
City Council Wants Investment In Jackson Libraries
The Jackson City Council discussed the public library system’s ongoing issues during its regular meeting at City Hall on Nov. 5, 2024, when mulling the possibility of giving JHLS a $1.5-million endowment.
The funds would come from a $10-million settlement a court awarded the City of Jackson from Zurich American Insurance Company stemming from a lawsuit over damaged city properties sustained during a 2013 hailstorm.
Since the City of Jackson’s January announcement of the settlement, council members have shared that they hoped part of the funds could go toward rehabilitating the capital city’s libraries.
On Nov. 5, some council members raised concerns about how the board would allocate the funds throughout the county and said they wanted to ensure that the library board would use the resources to take care of the libraries in the capital city.
“It’s imperative that we make sure there’s sound oversight,” Ward 1 City Councilman Ashby Foote said.
The Council amended the order for the endowment, adding a proposition that the funds only be used for libraries within the Jackson city limits.
“Our libraries are either closed or are falling in,” Ward 3 City Councilman Kenneth Stokes, who has long advocated for having well-maintained libraries in the City of Jackson, said during the Nov. 5 council meeting.
“If we’re doing an endowment … we need people in this city to benefit from money being allocated for libraries,” he continued.
In a Nov. 26 statement to the Mississippi Free Press, Board President Peyton Smith shared that JHLS and the City of Jackson have not yet finalized a memorandum of understanding to solidify an agreement for how to use the funds.
Both parties are “all on the same page that the $1.5m endowment that the City is funding will only be used to support capital repairs at Jackson branches of the library,” Smith added.
