Description is exactly "A series of Florence Herald and Florence Times articles reporting on the open house of the WC Handy Library on Monday night, March 22, 1948. Originally simply the Florence Negro Library, the facility, a branch library of the Muscle Shoals Regional Library System, was located in the parsonage of the Tennessee Valley Community Church at 113 N Pine St. Intended to serve the black community of Florence-Lauderdale the library would also serve the black community of Colbert County until the Negro library in Sheffield was completed. 1,000 volumes were available for check-out and Josephine Kimber served as librarian.
Over 100 guests, including board members of the Regional and Negro branch boards, attended the open house between 7 and 9 pm. Refreshments were served by the Women's Council of Florence and the Y-Teens of Burrell High School.
In April of 1948 a contest was sponsored by the board of directors of the new library, of which Dr. Leonard Jerry Hicks, MD was chairman, with Florence-Lauderdale Public Library board member AL Thomlinson offering a $10 cash reward to the Negro student who could write the best essay on naming the library; the contest resulted in a tie between Burrell students Wesley Carr Lewis, who wrote his essay on WC Handy, and Bettie Jo Cherry, who selected Prof. George N. White. Florence Times editor Louis Eckl was asked to break the tie, and Eckl selected Lewis' essay as the winner, thus the Negro branch of the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library was named after WC Handy. "
