MAURICE BROADDUS NEVER planned to be a librarian. “When my boys were in The Oaks Academy, I sort of shadowed them as a substitute teacher, partly as support for them but also because I knew who I was raising and that the system was not going to be ready for them,” he laughs. One day he was called to the principal’s office. “My youngest pulled some antics,” he says. “I figured I was going to be fired, but instead he says, ‘The way you work with kids can’t be taught. Can you teach for us full-time?’”
Shortly after, he was asked to cover the school librarian’s maternity leave. She passed the job to him permanently. Broaddus, who’d spent 20 years as an environmental toxicologist and 20 more as a writer, found himself reviving a piece of history: the Paul Laurence Dunbar Library at The Oaks Academy Middle School in the Hillside neighborhood. “It was the first library to serve the Black community in Indianapolis,” he says. Built in 1922, it had fallen into disuse until Broaddus restored it to its former glory.
“Now we have three special collections,” he says. “A Harlem Renaissance collection, an Afrofuturism collection, and a Black Arts Movement collection.” Also, the library hosts the Mari Evans Residency for Authors and Artists of Color, drawing creatives from across the country in honor of the lauded Indianapolis poet who played a major role in the Black Arts Movement.
Broaddus says Afrofuturism, a cultural and artistic movement blending sci-fi, history, and fantasy to explore the experiences and futures of the African diaspora through a Black cultural lens, ties his work with students together. “It’s imagining ourselves into the future but being rooted in our history.”
He doesn’t plan to leave his impromptu role anytime soon. “I’ve come to adore this library space,” he says. “It’s a vibrant community. I don’t give up on important work very easily.”
