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‘I Still Want to Make a Difference’

By Jeff Wick

Lamplighters Address Diversity Via the Bookshelf

‘I Still Want to Make a Difference’
‘I Still Want to Make a Difference’
The Lamplighters have a journal in their Free Little Library for people to write in when they borrow a book. In the entry to the left, a 5-year-old named Abby drew a picture and said, “Thank you for this library.” In the entry on the right, someone wrote “If you are reading this, I hope all your dreams come true.”

When La Grange’s Patty Reid was 10 years old, she remembers saying ‘Yes, sir’ to a black man, and then promptly being told by a white adult that wasn’t something she was supposed to do.

“It was at that point I knew something was wrong,” Reid said. “I’m an old lady now, but I still want to make a difference.”

Reid helped start The Lamplighters, a group of local women who organized to promote positivity in the community. The Little Free Library at Randolph Center in La Grange was sponsored and developed by the group. Reid gets newsletters from the national Free Little Library organization and recently one newsletter called on little libraries to devote some of their resources to help promote learning about diversity.

“They suggested now would be a good time to do something like this,” Reid said.

So the Lamplighters have devoted an entire shelf of their little library to books that “help people understand other cultures,” Reid said. “This diversity project is to encourage understanding and acceptance of different cultures. It was inspired by The Black Lives Matter protests. Our hope is for more unity not division in our community.”

Reid is a former special education school teacher, who said she always tried to teach her students empathy and understanding.

She is also an avid book collector, so she went through her collections to supply some titles for the diversity shelf on the library and also ordered some suggested by the national Little Free Library organization.

“Even though inspired by BLM, we wanted to include all cultures in our community. Our books include understanding of many different cultures-Latino, Asian, American Indian and African American. Also there will be books on how to develop an understanding of how diversity benefits a community,” Reid said.

She has also included book marks in all the books that say “You are loved.”

Amidst the pandemic, Reid also said she has been regularly sanitizing the books and the library box itself.

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