Memberships
Active in the field of human rights, he was a life member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and served as President of Albany, New York Branch from 1982–86. He also served as President of the Albany Branch of the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History. Active in community affairs, he also served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Albany County Opportunity, Inc., the local anti-poverty agency for four years.
A member of the American Library Association for 48 years, at the 1964 annual conference, he authored the resolution forbidding Association officers and staff from participating in state associations that deny membership to black librarians. This action led to the integration of the library association of several Southern states, and he became the first black librarian to be accepted as a member of the Georgia Library Association. In The Black Librarian in America (1970) Josey recalled the 1964 annual conference:
"Much to my chagrin, the Mississippi Library Association was honored there for its National Library Week Activities. I exploded! I was seething with anger, for I remembered that three civil rights workers-Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Micheal Schwerner had been murdered and lay dead and buried somewhere in Mississippi, their bodies not yet discovered. I also remembered that the Mississippi Library Association had withdrawn from ALA rather than give membership to Negro Librarians."
He was first elected to the ALA Council, the policy making body of the Association in 1970 and served until the summer of 2000, a period of 29 years. In 1979, he was elected to a four-year term on the ALA Executive Board.
From 1980–82, he served as Chair of the Cultural Minorities Task Force of the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science. Having served on numerous ALA Committees, he chaired the ALA Committee on Pay Equity, the ALA Committee on Legislation, and the ALA International Relations Committee several times.
Josey was the President of ALA in 1984–85. At his inaugural address in 1984, Josey made this forward-thinking comment still applicable to libraries today: “The information industry has the technology to control information, but its price tag on information distribution and its profit goal create a bias in what information is made available and how it is dispensed. Only the nonprofit organization, the library, dedicated to a total community service goal with trained experts, librarians, running the operation can provide the full scope of information for the total population in a fair and objective manner.”
In the spring of 1987, he was elected to a 4-year term on the Board of Directors of the Freedom to Read Foundation and chaired the ALA International Relations Committee from 1987 to 1990. From 1990 to 1994 he served as the Chair of the ALA Legislation Committee. He returned to chair the ALA International Relations Committee for the next two years. In May and June, 1987, Professor Josey lectured in three African countries, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, and Zambia under the auspices of the United States Information Agency.
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