Louise Kerr Hines, Date of Birth, Date of Death
TweetLouise Kerr Hines
Date of Birth: 15-Mar-1916
Date of Death: 09-Apr-2007
Profession: librarian
Nationality: United States
Zodiac Sign: Pisces 
About Louise Kerr Hines
- Louise Kerr Hines (born Louise Lyles Kerr) (born March 15, 1916 – April 9, 2007) was an African American Civil Rights activist.
- In 1945, Hines, along with her father, Dr.
- T.
- Henderson Kerr, were plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the Enoch Pratt Free Library for their denial of her application for their library training course. Hines was born in Baltimore and graduated Frederick Douglass High School.
- After graduating from Coppin Normal School (now Coppin State University), Hines was employed as a teacher in segregated Baltimore schools.
- In 1943, after working as a teacher for five years, Hines saw an advertisement in the Baltimore Sun for a position for a "colored" assistant for the library, but she was denied due to her race.
- The Pratt had previously hired two African-American library assistants to work at a branch located in a predominantly African-American neighborhood, however they did not receive training through the library course.
- After being persuaded by Carl J.
- Murphy of the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper and Lillie Mae Carroll Jackson of the Baltimore branch of the NAACP, Hines, along with her father, sued the library.
- They were represented by William A.C.
- Hughes and Charles Hamilton Houston.Hughes and Houston argued that the library, as public institution which received funds from the city, were in violation of the law for barring tax-paying African-Americans from the course.
- The case was initially dismissed because the judge argued that the library was a private corporation, not a governmental agency.
- However, after the case was appealed to the 4th U.S.
- District Court of Appeals, the court ruled that the library was an "instrumentality of the State of Maryland" and had violated Hines' Fourteenth Amendment rights.
- The library appealed the case to the U.S.
- Supreme Court, but it was dismissed.
- The library training course as subsequently opened to all applicants, but was later disbanded.During the case, Hines worked as a secretary for the Baltimore NAACP and a reporter for the Afro-American.
- She would ultimately work as a claims examiner for the Maryland Department of Human Resources, where she retired in 1978.
- Hines was later honored in 1986 at the centennial celebration of the library.
- She died of cancer on April 9, 2007 in Baltimore at the age of 91.
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