Carla Hayden

Based on Wikipedia: Carla Hayden

In May 2025, President Donald Trump fired the Librarian of Congress via email. Carla Hayden had held the position for nearly nine years, had transformed one of the world's greatest repositories of human knowledge, and learned of her dismissal the way you might learn your gym membership was canceled.

The firing sparked immediate outrage. Three United States Poets Laureate condemned it. The American Library Association called it unjust. Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries connected it to broader efforts to "ban books, whitewash American history, and turn back the clock."

But to understand why Carla Hayden's dismissal matters, you have to understand who she was—and what the Library of Congress means to America.

The People's Library

The Library of Congress is not just any library. It's the largest library in the world, holding more than 170 million items: books, photographs, maps, manuscripts, films, and audio recordings spanning human civilization. It serves as the research arm of the United States Congress, but it belongs to all Americans. Hayden called it "the people's library," and she meant it.

When Hayden took the job in 2016, she became the fourteenth person to hold it—and the first woman. She was also the first African American. And crucially, she was the first professional librarian to serve as Librarian of Congress since 1974. For over four decades, the position had been filled by historians and scholars. Hayden actually knew how libraries worked, from the ground up, because she had spent her entire career in them.

A Childhood Shaped by Stories

Carla Diane Hayden was born in Tallahassee, Florida, on August 10, 1952. Her father, Bruce Kennard Hayden Jr., directed the String Department at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University—one of the nation's historically Black colleges. Her mother, Colleen, was a social worker. They had met at Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois, both of them pursuing education during an era when opportunities for Black Americans remained severely constrained.

The family moved to New York City, where young Carla grew up. But when she was ten, her parents divorced, and she relocated with her mother to Chicago. That city would shape her future in ways she couldn't have imagined.

Her family history stretched back through slavery. Her father's maternal ancestors, who eventually settled in Du Quoin, Illinois, had been enslaved—a story chronicled in Ruby Berkley Goodwin's memoir It's Good to Be Black. Her mother's family came from Helena, Arkansas, in the Mississippi Delta, a region whose history is inseparable from the struggle for civil rights.

What ignited Hayden's love of reading was a book. Specifically, Marguerite de Angeli's Bright April, published in 1946. The story follows a young African American girl who joins the Brownies—a junior Girl Scouts program. For a Black child in mid-century America, seeing yourself reflected in a book was rare. That representation mattered. It planted a seed.

At South Shore High School in Chicago, Hayden discovered British history and cozy mysteries—those gentle detective novels where murders happen in quaint villages and are solved by clever amateurs over cups of tea. She attended MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Illinois, before transferring to Roosevelt University in Chicago, where she studied political science and African history.

Finding Her Calling

Here's the thing about careers: sometimes they find you. Hayden didn't set out to become a librarian. She graduated from Roosevelt University in 1973 with no particular library ambitions. But something drew her to the field afterward—perhaps the realization that libraries sit at the intersection of everything she cared about: access, knowledge, community, and equity.

She earned her master's degree in library science from the University of Chicago in 1977. A decade later, she completed her doctorate there. The University of Chicago's Graduate Library School was legendary in the field, and Hayden emerged from it with both theoretical depth and practical determination.

Her first library job was telling stories to children with autism at the Chicago Public Library. Think about that. The woman who would one day lead the largest library on Earth started by reading aloud to kids who experienced the world differently than most. From 1973 to 1979, she worked as a children's librarian at the Whitney Young branch, named after the civil rights leader who had pushed American corporations to hire Black workers.

She rose through the ranks: young adult services coordinator, then library services coordinator at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. In 1987, she left Chicago for Pittsburgh to teach at the University of Pittsburgh School of Information Sciences. Then she returned to Chicago in 1991, becoming Deputy Commissioner and Chief Librarian of the Chicago Public Library system.

During those Chicago years, she crossed paths with a young couple named Barack and Michelle Obama. The future president was teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago and working as a community organizer. Their paths would cross again.

Baltimore: Where She Made Her Mark

In 1993, Hayden took a job that would define her career for the next twenty-three years: executive director of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Maryland.

The Enoch Pratt is one of America's oldest free public library systems, founded in 1886 by the philanthropist whose name it bears. "Free" meant something radical then—and still does. Anyone could walk in and access knowledge, regardless of wealth or status. No fees. No membership requirements. Just books, waiting to be read.

Hayden didn't just manage the Pratt. She transformed it. She created after-school centers where Baltimore teenagers could get homework help and career counseling. She oversaw the construction of the library's first new branch in more than thirty years, which opened in 2007. In 1995, Library Journal named her Librarian of the Year—the first African American to receive that honor.

But her most celebrated moment came in April 2015, during the Baltimore protests following the death of Freddie Gray, a twenty-five-year-old Black man who died from spinal injuries sustained while in police custody. The city erupted. Businesses shuttered. A state of emergency was declared.

Hayden kept the libraries open.

She understood something essential: when stores close and streets become unsafe, people need somewhere to go. Libraries offer refuge—not just from physical danger, but from chaos itself. They're places where you can sit quietly, where children can find something to read, where the internet is free and the bathrooms are clean and no one asks you to buy anything.

"We knew that they would look for that place of refuge and relief and opportunity."

She wasn't being naive or reckless. She was being a librarian.

Fighting the Patriot Act

In 2003, Hayden became president of the American Library Association, the nation's oldest and largest library organization with over 50,000 members. She chose "Equity of Access" as her theme—the idea that everyone deserves the same ability to find and use information, regardless of income, location, or circumstance.

But her presidency became defined by a different battle: opposing the USA PATRIOT Act.

The Patriot Act—its full name is the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, because government acronyms are nothing if not ambitious—was passed in October 2001, weeks after the September 11 attacks. Among its many provisions was Section 215, which gave the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation the power to access library records.

This meant federal agents could demand to know what books you had borrowed, what websites you had visited on library computers, what questions you had asked librarians. They could do this without showing probable cause—the standard usually required for searches. And libraries were forbidden from telling patrons they were being investigated.

Hayden publicly opposed this. She debated Attorney General John Ashcroft directly, arguing that the law undermined the privacy that makes libraries function. If people fear that their reading habits are being monitored, they censor themselves. They don't research controversial topics. They don't explore ideas that might seem suspicious to someone with the power to investigate them. The freedom to read becomes conditional.

Ashcroft dismissed the concerns, insisting that strict legal requirements governed how library records could be accessed. Hayden responded that the American Library Association was "deeply concerned that the Attorney General would be so openly contemptuous" of the library community. She reminded people that librarians had been under FBI surveillance before—during the McCarthy era of the 1950s, when anyone suspected of communist sympathies could find themselves investigated, blacklisted, or worse.

"We need to make sure that a balance exists between security and personal freedoms."

Ms. magazine named her Woman of the Year in 2003.

She also helped create the Spectrum Scholarship Program, which funds graduate education for library students of color, addressing the field's persistent lack of diversity. The program has awarded hundreds of scholarships since its founding in 1997, helping create a new generation of librarians who look like the communities they serve.

The Nomination

On February 24, 2016, President Barack Obama nominated Carla Hayden to become the fourteenth Librarian of Congress. The previous librarian, James Billington, had served for twenty-eight years—longer than any of his predecessors—but had been criticized for letting the institution fall behind technologically.

More than 140 organizations endorsed Hayden: library associations, publishers, universities, educational groups. The American Library Association mobilized its members. The library world wanted one of its own in charge.

The nomination wasn't without controversy. Some senators raised concerns about Hayden's opposition to the Children's Internet Protection Act of 2000, which requires libraries receiving federal funding to install internet filters blocking obscene content. Hayden had argued that such filters were often overly broad, blocking legitimate educational material along with genuinely harmful content.

On July 13, 2016, the Senate confirmed her by a vote of 74 to 18—a comfortable bipartisan margin. On September 14, Chief Justice John Roberts swore her in. The kid who fell in love with Bright April now presided over 170 million items and a staff of thousands.

Opening the Treasure Chest

Hayden described her mission as continuing "the movement to open the treasure chest that is the Library of Congress." She meant this literally. The Library holds incomprehensible riches: Abraham Lincoln's handwritten draft of the Emancipation Proclamation. Thomas Jefferson's personal library, which formed the collection's nucleus after the British burned the original in 1814. The earliest existing film of a sneeze, recorded in 1894. Original recordings of Woody Guthrie, lead sheets from Duke Ellington, photographs from the Civil War.

Most Americans have never accessed any of it. Hayden wanted to change that.

She focused on digitization—converting physical items to digital formats that anyone with an internet connection could view. She worked to make the Library's website more usable, its collections more searchable. She specifically mentioned reaching people in rural areas, far from major research institutions, and people with visual disabilities who needed accessible formats.

She modernized the institution's technology infrastructure, which had fallen decades behind. She rebuilt staffing after years of attrition. She made the Library more welcoming to visitors of all ages.

In January 2017, she invited a four-year-old girl named Daliyah Marie Arana to serve as "Librarian of Congress for the Day." Daliyah had already read more than a thousand books. Later that year, eight-year-old Adam Coffey got the same honor. These moments weren't just photo opportunities—they were statements about who libraries belong to.

The Dismissal

On May 8, 2025, two days after testifying before congressional committees, Carla Hayden was fired by President Trump. The notification came via email.

The timing raised eyebrows. So did the stated justification. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Hayden "did not fit the needs of the American people" and cited "quite concerning things that she had done at the Library of Congress in the pursuit of DEI and putting inappropriate books in the Library for children."

DEI stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion—initiatives designed to address historical disparities and make institutions more representative of the populations they serve. The phrase "inappropriate books for children" is vaguer but connects to broader debates about which books should be available in libraries, particularly those addressing gender identity, sexuality, and race.

The American Accountability Foundation, a conservative research group, had posted on X (formerly Twitter) shortly before her dismissal that Hayden was "woke, anti-Trump, and promotes trans-ing kids." The post appeared to reference the Library's acquisition of books dealing with transgender topics—books that exist in the Library alongside millions of other works representing the full spectrum of human thought and experience.

The response was swift. Representative Rosa DeLauro called Hayden "a guardian of our nation's truth and intellectual legacy" who had been "abruptly and callously fired." Three former Poets Laureate—Ada Limón, Joy Harjo, and Tracy K. Smith—condemned the decision. Meg Medina, the National Ambassador for Children's Literature, called Hayden "nothing short of a national treasure" and her firing "a disgraceful act."

The Association of Research Libraries noted that Hayden had "transformed the Library of Congress into a more open, accessible, and celebrated U.S. institution." Publishers Weekly called her termination "the latest blow to professional research and the literary and arts community."

More firings followed. Robert Newlen, the Principal Deputy Librarian who should have served as interim leader, was dismissed. Shira Perlmutter, the Register of Copyrights and Director of the United States Copyright Office, was also fired—though she sued, arguing that her position answers to the Librarian of Congress, not the President. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche was named acting librarian, despite having no library background.

Some observers characterized the firings as an attack on the separation of powers. The Library of Congress serves the legislative branch, not the executive. Having a Justice Department official run it raised constitutional questions.

After the Library

On June 8, 2025, Hayden appeared on CBS News Sunday Morning to discuss her termination. A month later, on July 7, she was appointed senior fellow at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, one of America's largest philanthropic organizations focused on the arts and humanities. The foundation announced she would "pursue scholarship, writing, and research projects" while advising on opportunities to support libraries and archives.

In 2025, she was also named the PEN/Faulkner Literary Champion. The executive director of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation praised her lifetime commitment to the belief that "American culture thrives when stories from diverse perspectives enrich our lives."

What Libraries Mean

Carla Hayden's career illuminates something important about libraries: they are not neutral spaces. They never have been.

Libraries make choices about what to collect, what to preserve, and what to make accessible. Those choices reflect values. When Andrew Carnegie built more than 2,500 libraries across America in the early twentieth century, he was making an argument about who deserved access to knowledge. When Hayden kept Baltimore's libraries open during civil unrest, she was making an argument about what communities need in moments of crisis.

The debate over her firing is, at its heart, a debate over what libraries should be. Should they collect only materials that are uncontroversial? Should they avoid topics that some find uncomfortable? Or should they, as Hayden argued throughout her career, provide equitable access to the full range of human knowledge and experience?

Libraries have faced these questions before. During the McCarthy era, librarians were pressured to remove books by suspected communists. During the civil rights movement, some Southern libraries remained segregated or closed entirely rather than serve Black patrons. In each case, librarians had to decide what they stood for.

Hayden's answer was consistent across five decades: libraries exist to serve everyone, to preserve knowledge even when it's controversial, and to protect the privacy that makes intellectual freedom possible.

Whether you agree with that vision or not, her firing removes from public service someone who dedicated her entire professional life to making knowledge accessible. She started by reading stories to children with autism. She ended by presiding over the largest library in human history. And she was removed, via email, for reasons that remain contested.

A Note on Library History

It's worth remembering that the Library of Congress exists because Thomas Jefferson believed deeply in the power of books. After the British burned the original library in 1814 during the War of 1812, Jefferson sold his personal collection of 6,487 books to Congress as a replacement. His library was eccentric, wide-ranging, and included works on every subject he found interesting—which was nearly everything.

Jefferson's collection established the Library's character: comprehensive, curious, and committed to preserving knowledge across all fields. It's an inheritance that every subsequent Librarian has been charged with protecting and expanding.

Carla Hayden understood that responsibility. Whether reading to children in Chicago, keeping Baltimore's libraries open during protests, debating attorneys general about privacy, or digitizing rare collections so rural Americans could see them, she worked to make that inheritance available to everyone.

That work continues, with or without her. But the library world—and the nation it serves—is smaller for her absence.