 On August 21, 1939, several young African American men, in a strategy devised by attorney Samuel Wilbert Tucker (who grew up about two blocks from the new library), staged a peaceable sit-in at the library to enable African Americans to use that public facility in the first known non-violent sit-in of the Civil rights movement in America.Although they were arrested, charges were ultimately dropped by city attorney Armistead Boothe, and a branch library was built in 1940 for African Americans and named after Robert H. Robinson, which closed circa 1960 and now houses the Alexandria Black History Museum.Today the library consists of a new central building (built in 2000 and named for mayor Charles E. Beatley Jr.) and four branch libraries, and includes two special divisions