The Edna Frazier Memorial Collection
at South Providence Branch

Dedicated on September 21, 1969, the Edna Frazier Memorial Collection is the largest public library collection in Rhode Island dedicated to Black studies. The Collection was the result of an anonymous bequest in late 1968 and a community survey, which followed, expressing the community's collective desire for more books on black history and culture.

The collection is housed and circulates from a special room in the South Providence Branch of the Providence Public Library, designated the Edna Frazier Room. It serves as a single site Black heritage resource center, offering information on the heritage of Black people in American, their roles, culture and accomplishments.

Serving thousands of adults and children over its three-plus decades, the collection has grown from its initial 900 to several thousand volumes consisting of noted works by Black authors, reference materials, sociological studies, poetry, music, sports, biographies and titles no longer in print.

Materials in the collection span a period in time between 1619 to the present and are inclusive of information on the Black Renaissance and the Civil Rights movements of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, in addition to the well-known movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

Unique to the collection is that it contains a large number of children's books, housed in the children's area of the Library. (Grants from the Providence Shelter for Colored Children have allowed a significant expansion of children's books on the Black Experience.)

In 1984, a special grant from the Dexter Donation enabled the addition of many new titles of interest to both children and adults, as well as the replacement of worn or missing books.

Materials from the collection are available to library patrons statewide through the State's interlibrary loan system.

The Collection memorializes Edna Frazier, a resident of South Providence, mother of seven, and active community leader who served on many school and civic organizations prior to her untimely death in 1968.