October 9, 2023
Lou Helen Devine Sanders (SCI ‘89) started her educational journey occasionally attending school with her older sister.
“I started out when kindergarten was not in place, but my mother obviously saw some gifts in me,” Sanders said. “She would dress me up and send me to school with my sister in off times periodically.”
Going to school with her older sister wasn’t the only way Sanders’ early education in rural Flora, MS was unconventional. As a family of sharecroppers, Sanders and her 11 siblings would need to be out of school for periods of time to help with harvesting and planting crops, typically enrolling in school during August and September but not returning until around Thanksgiving.
Sanders recalled one incident where it had rained too much to be able to work in the fields, but she still couldn’t attend school because she had no shoes.
“When the bus came back, and the door opened, my heart dropped because I wanted to go badly,” Sanders said. “I wanted to be able to go to school at all times, but especially when the opportunity presented itself.”
When Sanders was unable to attend school, she would “guesstimate” what her classmates were learning and stay up at night to study that material. This led to an incident in Sanders’ eighth or ninth grade year on Mississippi History Day. The teacher gave the class a surprise test on that day, and Sanders received a 100 percent despite not having been in attendance on the days the material was covered.
“The teacher was baffled,” Sanders recounted. “’How could this student – who I know has not had any instruction for this period of time – ace my test?’ And that was because I had done work behind the scenes.”
In her senior year of high school at Sumner Hill High School in Clinton, MS, Sanders received a certificate for perfect attendance.
“I had never had the opportunity to attend school every day,” she said. “I was more proud of that than the academic certificates I received.”
Graduating high school with honors in the Class of 1969, Sanders went on to Jackson State College, now Jackson State University. As an undergraduate student, Sanders spent much of her time volunteering at the university’s library to make up for the learning she had missed earlier in her education.
“The library was my second home,” Sanders said. “I was there as soon as I got out of class and remained there – except dinnertime maybe – until the library closed at 10:30 every night.”
In her junior year, Sanders realized she could not become a teacher as she had originally planned because her English literature major was in liberal arts and not education, and it was too late to take the required courses. However, as she also pursued a minor in Library Science, the field captured her heart, meshing perfectly with her love of reading.
“I fell in love with librarianship because whatever I could get my hands on, I read,” Sanders said, remembering reading the Bible, magazines, and historical fiction at home and school in her youth. “Whatever I could read, I read.”
Never missing a class during her collegiate career, Sanders finished second out of 775 students in her graduating class, was named salutatorian, and graduated summa cum laude with a 3.85 average GPA.
After attending Jackson State College, Sanders continued her education journey at the University of Michigan for a master’s in library science. She completed the degree in record time, summer 1974, taking the maximum number of courses allowed each semester.
Sanders returned to her alma mater as a full-fledged librarian, September 1974. After working in the Jackson State College library for 13 years, Sanders realized she needed a change.
“I was always a school-aholic,” Sanders said, sharing that she took additional courses such as pre-law and received a specialist degree in Educational Leadership during those 13 years.
Fate led Sanders to pursue her doctorate at the University of Pittsburgh.
She met Pitt students at an American Library Association (ALA) conference, who encouraged her to come to Pitt for her doctorate. Though she hadn’t heard of Pittsburgh before, she began looking into it. She ran into the Pitt students the following year, as well.
That year, her boss had given her a ticket to attend the conference’s banquet, which she had never been able to attend. At her assigned seat, she began talking to the man sitting next to her, the Honorable Daniel Weinstein. Sanders mentioned casually that she planned to one day get her doctorate.
“He immediately took me by my wrist, pulled me from my chair, and immediately took me over to the incoming dean of the University of Pittsburgh’s [School of Library and Information Science] table,” Sanders said. “He found her and said, ‘Here’s a bright young lady; give her some money so she can get a doctorate.’”
Weinstein knew Toni Carbo, the incoming dean, through serving on the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS) together. Carbo, who did not officially become dean until August 1986, pointed them to the then-Department of Library Science Chair, Blanche Woolls, PhD, who took Sanders' contact information.
Next thing Sanders knew, African American activist and librarian E. J. Josey – “the guru of Black librarianship” – wrote Sanders in July and offered her a fellowship to attend Pitt, where he had become a senior professor in 1986. Unable to have everything prepared start in a month or so, Sanders wrote back, informing him she couldn’t accept this year, but she would be very interested in attending next academic year.
When the next year came, Josey sent the offer, and Sanders accepted.
Sanders’ appetite for learning continued on Pitt’s campus, where she took 28 doctoral credits in one semester, attending classes Monday through Saturday and cooking dinner for the week on Sunday.
During her time at Pitt, she served as the Vice President and President of the department’s doctoral guild. She also served as the first African American president of Pitt’s ALA chapter.
One year into her doctoral studies at Pitt, Sanders received a call from the then-president of Jackson State University James A. Hefner, offering her the position of Dean of Libraries at the university and to place someone as an interim dean while she completed her studies. Sanders accepted, and it was announced that she would return not only with a doctorate but also as the acting Dean of Libraries.
Sanders fondly remembers her advisors and professors from her time at Pitt.
“It was just wonderful, cooperation and comradery that I experienced at Pitt,” she said.
Josey remained quite pivotal while she was at Pitt, serving as her advisor as well as on her dissertation committee.
Dr. Patrick Penland was also an advisor for Sanders and chair of her doctoral committee until his retirement in 1988. Before his retirement, Sanders recalls showing him a schedule of timelines she created to complete her doctorate in the two years of leave she took from Jackson State University.
“He was just so nurturing and encouraging,” she said. “[When I showed him the timelines,] he said, ‘You can do it; you can make history and get it done in the time and schedule you’ve given yourself.’”
With Penland’s retirement, Sanders needed a new chair for her dissertation committee. Josey suggested Dr. Allen Kent, who established Pitt’s Department of Information Sciences (now the Department of Informatics and Networked Systems) and was considered a pioneer in the field.
“I was so intimidated just to approach him—to ask a person of that note,” Sanders said. “I just assumed with his distinguished career he’d be unapproachable. He was nothing of the sort.”
Sanders spent what might have been up to 30 minutes at the bottom of the Information Sciences Building’s stairwell, working up the courage to ascend the stairs to his third-floor office.
When she asked him to be the chair of her committee, he asked her what she was studying. She told him her dissertation was on the faculty status of academic librarians in four-year state-supported colleges and universities. He told her he’d be happy to.
Upon reading her work, he told her it was better than anything already inside the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, which he edited. When she completed her dissertation, he wrote to her and asked her to submit her work to the encyclopedia to be the authority of that subject.
In her dissertation process, Sanders received a recommendation for a commandment of the quality of her work. Her committee voted formally to write a letter commending her, which was added to her files.
Sanders did make history at Pitt like Penland told her she could: She completed a traditionally four-to-six-year program in two years, never taking less than 18 credits a semester.
“I immersed myself so, so much,” she said. “I was just determined that I would do it.”
When Sanders returned to Jackson State University as the acting Dean of Libraries in 1989, the H. T. Sampson Library only had typewriters and virtually no technology.
“Because I had come from a rich environment at the University of Pittsburgh, I was determined that I would follow after Pittsburgh and infuse our library with the latest and greatest,” Sanders said. “Pittsburgh was an inspiration as to what could be.”
Sanders initially began soliciting tech firms and publishers to use their products on consignment, also submitting for grants, eventually receiving more than $1 million total to modernize the library. The library gained hundreds of new computers, a library automation system with accompanying modules, and a website.
Tech modernization wasn’t the only way Sanders revitalized the library. In the ‘90s, she drew blueprints for a library which became a $13.5 million renovation and expansion to the Sampson library that she orchestrated. It was featured in Architectural Digest in 1998, named the best library construction in that year for the nation.
Sanders held positions with the ALA, Southeastern Library Association, and the Mississippi Library Association before transitioning to the role of Professor/Librarian Emeritus at the university in 2001. She retired from Jackson State University 20 years later, after 47 years of service.
What motivated Sanders throughout her educational journey and long career?
It was simply her zeal for learning.
“Because of my meager beginnings, I’ve always felt privileged to be in an academic environment, and so I never took my surroundings and academic community for granted,” Sanders said. “If I can do it, coming from my background, then I want to encourage you to live up to the best that you can.”
Sanders may be contacted at lhsanders135@gmail.com.