Libraries Aimed at Marginalized Groups in Michigan

Items

• The Black Art Library

  The Black Art Library is self-described as a collection of books and other art history ephemera on Black visual art intended to be an educational resource to share within the Black community and beyond. The library navigates through pop-ups and digitally to bring awareness to and highlight the forgotten works and labor of visual cultural workers.
• General Baker Institute Library

  The General Baker Institute Library is a community library and reading space building on the legacy of Detroit labor organizer General Gordon Baker Jr.’s lifelong work. Inspired by Baker’s co-founding of Detroit and Hamtramack’s respective Revolutionary Union Movements (RUMs) movement of the late 1960s, the GBIL is focused on Black labor knowledge centering labor forward and anticapitalist works to increase political education amongst working class Black Detroiters. GBIL is a hidden gem located on Detroit’s Westside in the Pilgrim Village neighborhood.
• The Free Black Women’s Library- Detroit

  The Free Black Women’s Library Detroit is one of the five branches of TFBWL which is self-described broadly as a social art project. Detroit FBWL is a book bike, trading/borrowing library aimed and centering Black women and femme authors. In existence since 2019, this book project and community service hosts pop-up swaps/lending/readings at community events, community spaces, and Metro-Detroit small businesses, in an effort to build radical collaboration, celebrating the brilliance of Black women/femme authors and readers at no costs to the community.
• Edward Said Lounge Library

  Named after the Palestinian-American professor, the Edward Said Multicultural Lounge hosts a library dedicated to Arab and Arab-American works by various authors. The library acts as a source for both historical and modern critical essays and fiction, and aims to empower Arab and Arab-American students and visitors at the University of Michigan. This library was selected for the archive as it is one of the last remaining multicultural lounge libraries accessible on the University of Michigan's campus, as well as the various resources offered through the Arab Student Organization, who host meetings within the main lounge. The library is open seven days a week, from 10am to 12am, to students living in the University of Michigan's North Quadrangle, as well as visitors who are approved by staff beforehand. Items cannot, however, be removed from the lounge. The lounge is located on the first floor of the North Quadrangle, the address of which is 105 S State St, Ann Arbor, MI 48109.