Former ALA Executive Director and “Warrior Librarian” Tracie Hall Featured in New University of Washington Magazine Article

The star power at the TIME100 Gala in New York City last October rivaled the bright lights of nearby Broadway. Luminaries like director Steven Spielberg, actor Angela Bassett and rapper Doja Cat took center stage at the magazine’s glittering annual celebration of the 100 most influential people in the world.

The spotlight shifted from glamour to grit when honoree Tracie D. Hall, ’00, took the microphone. The widely acclaimed “warrior librarian” had earned national attention for her tenacious fight against censorship during her tenure as executive director of the American Library Association. In her toast, she honored her fellow librarians, her fellow warriors, who “despite bomb threats and threats of jail time are fighting to ensure that these words that stand as a vision of the American Library Association will always ring true: Free people read freely. Free people read freely. Free people read freely.” As she closed her toast with a fourth exhortation of those four powerful words, the A-list audience responded with a standing ovation.

Those four words remain Hall’s rallying cry as she continues her crusade defending libraries as the bulwark of democracy, vital for enhancing learning for all and instrumental for unleashing the intellectual and social potential of patrons, especially young ones. Her passion for working with young adults and for advancing her field has brought her back to the UW’s iSchool as a Distinguished Practitioner in Residence. In her courses and research, she is providing the next generation of librarians with the real-world context necessary to better serve an increasingly diverse public in the face of ever escalating challenges. “I hope I can be a source of the same kind of inspiration and learning that I experienced at the iSchool,” says Hall.

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The stakes could not have been higher after Hall became the first Black woman to lead the ALA and its 50,000 members since its inception in 1876. A mere month after she took office in February 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. “It posed an existential threat not just to the association but to libraries in general,” Hall says. “Librarians were very much on the front lines. Even as libraries began to close, we couldn’t stop providing library services.” Librarians sprang into action to reduce the digital access divide that disproportionately affected patrons in disadvantaged communities.

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Hall’s transition between the ALA and the iSchool was anything but a respite. She testified on Capitol Hill about the dangers of the rise of censorship and the perils of inattention to low adult literacy. She gave presentations in Colombia and Australia. She conducted research in England on the impact of Brexit on public libraries. And she cut the ribbon on a project near and dear to her heart. The Litanies for Survival reading room in Chicago is a space stocked with works by and about people of color and the LGBTQIA community—the very books being banned elsewhere.