Wallace Van Jackson becomes the first African American to receive the American Library Association’s Centennial Award. He received his BLS from the Hampton Institute Library School in 1934 and his MLS from the University of Michigan in 1935. In the aftermath of the 1936 ALA Annual Conference in Richmond, Virginia, Van Jackson wrote letters to Library Journal decrying the treatment of African American librarians at the conference. In addition, Van Jackson was a library science professor at the Atlanta University Library School from 1941-1947.