June 26, 2015

Charleston Library renamed for Cynthia Graham Hurd

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cynthiahurdcloseupYesterday the Charleston City Council voted to rename the St. Andrews Library for librarian Cynthia Hurd. Hurd was the longest-serving part-time librarian in the county.

“People will look up and see her name and remember her every day,” her husband Arthur Stephen Hurd said to Post and Courier. As we wrote last week, Hurd was one of nine people lost in Mother AME Emanuel Church.

She was the regional manager at St. Andrews, and had worked as a librarian for 31 years. The library system closed all 16 locations to honor her.

“She was kind and loving. She would bend over backwards to help you. And she was very patient,” said Hurd’s fellow librarian Alyce Houston.

In addition to the change in the name of the library, the board of trustees at the College of Charleston, Hurd’s alma mater, voted to change the name of its Colonial Scholarship to the Cynthia Graham Hurd Memorial Scholarship. Her family is also starting the Cynthia Graham Hurd Fund for Reading and Literacy as a part of Freedom School Partners.

“The fund will ensure that children have access to books that strengthen their literacy skills and access to the support of a community that believes in them, which are values Cynthia Hurd held closely to her heart,” her brother, former North Carolina Senator Malcolm Graham, told the Charlotte Observer.

 

 

Kirsten Reach is an editor at Melville House.

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