Born into a prominent white southern family, Juliette Hampton Morgan was an unlikely but important civil rights activist. She advocated for racial equality and abolition of the poll tax throughout her adult life. In Montgomery, she disrupted bus service whenever she witnessed a driver mistreating an African American passenger. Through letters to legislators and newspaper editors, Morgan advocated for anti-lynching legislation. She temporarily stopped writing her letters under threat of losing her job at the Montgomery library. When she resumed writing them, many patrons boycotted the library where Morgan worked. On July 15, 1957, someone burned a cross in front of Morgan’s home. Distraught over the act, Morgan resigned her position at the library and took her own life by overdosing on sleeping pills. 

In 2005, Montgomery’s central library was renamed in her honor

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