
In the 1950s, when I was a boy, I was a frequent visitor to the public library in Cordele, Georgia. (Later, I became a librarian.) The librarian was Martha Lasseter, who ran the place for over 50 years and kept the library open seven days a week. The weekly arrival of the Sunday New York Times was a big event for me. In those days, the library was open only to white people, but in the 1940s, Miss Lasseter set up a collection in the Black neighborhood. Before the 1950s, the building had a dome capped with a large eagle (see photo). I do not know if it was original to the design in 1903. By the 1950s, it was gone. The library is still a working library, with a modern wing added around 1990.
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