Carla Hayden

[rock music] Tonight's Nightlight is about a person who's dedicated her life to helping us see ourselves and our nation more clearly.

10 years ago today, a librarian named Carla Hayden made history.

She was sworn in as the 14th Librarian of Congress, becoming the first woman and the first Black person to lead the institution since it was established in 1800.

Uh, now, this is a pretty big job.

But she hasn't stopped doing the work.

Hayden is now a senior fellow at the Mellon Foundation, where she continues to work on expanding access to libraries, to archives, and American historical documents.

10 years after Carla Hayden made history herself, she's still working to make sure the rest of us have access to ours.

Her light is still shining.

So they changed it so that you could appoint a Librarian of Congress for 10 years and a person could serve those 10 years and then another 10-year term, two 10-year terms, but not lifetime tenure.

President Obama picked as his Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden.

Carla Hayden has been the deputy librarian in the Chicago Public Library System, and then later became the head of the Public Library System in Baltimore and my hometown.

And so Obama had known her and picked her, and she did a great job.

She did it for nine years and really did a wonderful job of opening up the Library of Congress to everybody, not just scholars.