Of the many wonderful things about public libraries, perhaps the most wonderful is that they are welcoming spaces for all. Regardless of race, economic status or background, all have the same opportunities and access within the walls of a public library.

But that wasn’t always the norm. In the days of segregation, funding restrictions and discriminatory laws kept libraries off-limits to black residents. Effie Cannon Bruns Thatcher, the first librarian to be employed by Georgetown County, saw that injustice for what it was and quietly refused to accept it.

Born on Oct. 1, 1892 at Enfield Plantation in Plantersville, Thatcher served the Georgetown County Library for more than two decades starting around 1940. She believed deeply that access to knowledge was a right rather than a privilege. So she did what she felt was right: after the doors officially closed for the day, she reopened them unofficially to everyone.

“It wasn’t something she did in secret,” said Trudy McConnell Bazemore, Thatcher’s granddaughter and the current Associate Library Director for Georgetown County. “It was something she did with intention, so that everybody had access to the information and the books and materials.”

Had Thatcher opened the doors to all during daytime hours, funding and thus the library’s very existence would have been jeopardized. So, she found another way.

“She didn’t ask for permission, and I don’t think anyone ever tried to stop her,” Bazemore said. If they had, Bazemore is sure her grandmother, who she always called Meme, would have told her about it and about how she had handled it.

The story of Thatcher’s quiet act of resistance is one of many stories Thatcher told her granddaughter while she was growing up. And it is certainly part of what inspired Bazemore to become a librarian herself. It’s clear in her every word how much esteem Bazemore has for her notable ancestor.

Thatcher didn’t just manage the Georgetown Library. She built it from nearly nothing. 

In 1940, the library was housed in a single room at Winyah Indigo Society Hall and operated as part of the Works Progress Administration – created after the Great Depression as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. When the WPA pulled out, taking most of the library’s collection with it, the county was left with just a handful of books on the shelves and no staff to manage what was left. Thatcher, who had previously worked with the WPA to make school lunches more nutritious for local children, decided she had to do something.

Thatcher appealed to Georgetown city and county councils and secured modest funding—just enough to pay small salaries for herself and her colleague Mary Bonds. The women had to find other sources of funding for books and operations. With characteristic resolve, Thatcher organized “silver teas” and rummage sales to raise money, and catered the junior-senior prom in exchange for donations. Slowly but steadily, she rebuilt what had been lost and laid the foundation for something even greater.

In 1953, her efforts paid off when the library moved into a new home on Highmarket Street—a beautifully renovated former county jail. A magazine article from the time hailed it as the most beautiful library in the state. Constructed from the building’s original bricks and making a showpiece of its unique circular stone staircase, the new library was also considered one of the best-equipped in the state. The renovation cost $92,000, the equivalent of about $1.1 million today.

Thatcher continued to serve until her retirement in 1963. Two years later, a portrait of Thatcher was commissioned and hung in the library in honor of all she had done to transform the institution and aid the residents who relied on it. An article published in the Georgetown Times upon the unveiling of the portrait described Thatcher as “a spreader of sunshine among Georgetown’s reading public,” known for her energy, “smiling eyes and a soft, gentle voice.” But her granddaughter recalls a woman of conviction, who never hesitated to speak her mind or stand her ground when something mattered.

“She was the kind of person who didn’t need anyone’s approval to do what she knew was right,” Bazemore said. “She believed the library was for the entire public. Not just some.”

Bazemore followed in her grandmother’s footsteps and has spent her own career at the Georgetown County Library. But she’s always quick to say: “I could never fill her shoes.”

“I came into a job and an institution that was already running successfully, and she came into a situation where she had to rebuild that institution,” Bazemore said.

It’s clear though that the Georgetown County Library is as much a labor of love for Bazemore as it was her grandmother.

Effie Cannon Bruns Thatcher passed away on June 22, 1982, three months shy of her 90th birthday. But her legacy is alive in every person who walks through the library doors—doors that, thanks to her, were never truly closed to anyone.