Sue Cowan Williams Library reopening with three events

The Central Arkansas Library System is reopening the Sue Cowan Williams Library this week.

The library has been closed since November for renovations that included the addition of a kitchen, makerspace, podcasting room, teen center and lofted employee space.

There will be three reopening celebrations.

The first event, Family Dinner Night, is a fundraiser scheduled from 6:30-9 p.m. on Thursday. Tickets are $75 for adults and $15 for children ages 5-12. There is no charge for children under 5. Funds will support programming at the Williams library, including a recurring free Family Dinner Nights program.

The second event is set for 9-11 a.m. Friday, when various officials will mark the library’s reopening.

The third event will be a neighborhood block party from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. on May 4.

The renovations at Williams Library, 1800 Chester St. in Little Rock, near Dunbar Middle School, were funded by voter approval of a capital-improvement bond referendum in 2022. The library was named after Sue Cowan Williams, who taught at Dunbar when it was a high school.

Williams was a part of civil rights history in Arkansas. She represented Black teachers in the Little Rock School District as the plaintiff in a 1942 lawsuit that sought to equalize salaries between Black and white teachers, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.

She lost at the U.S. District Court level but won in an appeal before the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1945. By then, she was among a group of Black educators who lost their jobs. Later, the Little Rock district reinstated her, and she taught at Dunbar until her retirement in 1974.

Williams died in 1994. Nearly three years later, the Central Arkansas Library system named its 10th library in her honor.