A Cranbrook author was invited to speak at the Gandhi-Mandela-King conference in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.
Mike Selby with the Cranbrook Public Library was invited to the conference by Ela Gandhi herself, Mahatma Gandhi’s granddaughter.
Selby said they are part of a weekly ZOOM meeting and she liked his book.
“She was a fan of my book Freedom Libraries. I knew her from a Zoom meeting we have every Friday,” he said.
“It’s called the World House Global Network and international people meet every Friday to talk about non-violence.”
Selby explains what the book and the speech he gave at the conference are all about.
“I went over the history of the American public library movement. It started in 1852 when the City of Boston decided to tax people to pay for libraries and that spread throughout the United States.”
They were supposed to be free for all, but that’s not what happened.
African Americans were not allowed to step foot in them even though they paid taxes that funded them,” he added.
“When Freedom Summer happened in 1964 that’s when freedom libraries took off. There were about 80 of them that were built just to give libraries to African Americans.”
Selby said the stories resonated with Ela Gandhi.
“Ela and her father, which is Gandhi’s son, in the 50s, were barred from using libraries. You become a banned person in South Africa, which means you can’t leave your house. It’s like house arrest,” he said.
“She had that for most of her career. The apartheid police killed her son in a shootout, but she is one of the warmest and most generous people I have met and she brings a lot of hope to hopelessness and oppressed people worldwide.”
The conference lasted three days and welcomed over 300 delegates from around the world.
Below is Dennis Walker’s full interview with Selby about his experience.