The regional advocacy group Tri-Town Against Racism (TTAR) is relocating the mail-box-sized “Little Free Diverse Library” that once stood in front of the Rochester Plumb Library to the Rochester Women’s Club building, 37 Marion Road, with a grand unveiling on Saturday, May 4, from 12:00 pm to 2:00 pm.
Rhonda Baptiste, vice president of TTAR, the group that donated the little library to Rochester last year, is happy the group found a new spot for it after the Rochester library trustees asked it be removed from town grounds last September.
The little library, its glass front exclaiming “Diverse & Anti Racist Books Only,” drew more criticism than praise from residents proclaiming it’s redundant to have a little library right outside a big library, that it offers messages on issues that not everyone in town agrees with, and that it’s not a message that should be accessible to children.
Baptiste said the Women’s Club reached out to TTAR soon after the town library’s decision. The club came to TTAR, saying it would love to host the little library. The decision to agree to the plan came in December, only three months after the town library’s vote to have it removed.
“It’s a good, accessible location and a better experience for the user,” Baptiste said.
The Rochester Women’s Club owns the building at 37 Marion Road and leases to the town the space used as the Town Hall Annex. That’s why the privately owned property is a better location for the little library in Rochester, Baptiste said. “It is more accessible, right at the edge of the road, and a more private and desirable experience for the user,” she said. “And it will be in a place that is more welcoming and approachable.”
Even one of the objectors of the original plan seemed pleased with this one.
“I’m a proponent of private property and being able to do what you wish on your own property so long as it doesn’t impede someone else’s rights,” said resident and Zoning Board of Appeals member Jeff Costa, who had taken issue in a public meeting of the Plumb Library Trustees with the location of the Little Free Diverse Library on the basis that town property should not be a distribution point for content that he asserts is not appropriate for “under-aged members of our community.”
Baptiste said the unveiling will also celebrate the April 29 birthday of Abraham Skidmore, the black barber in Mattapoisett who decades ago started that town’s annual Halloween Parade. As such, festivities will include a cake and birthday yard games such as Cornhole, Giant Yahtzee and Giant Four-In-One.
TTAR has installed two other Little Free Diverse libraries, in Mattapoisett at Ned’s Point and in Marion at Old Landing.
Tri-Town Against Racism
By Michael J. DeCicco