Dr. Mayme Clayton

Diverse Issues in Higher Education, Dec 28, 2006

Dr. Mayme Clayton: The Los Angeles librarian amassed a valuable and eclectic collection of Black history, including a signed copy of the first book published by a Black person: Phillis Wheatley's Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral of 1773. Clayton even obtained the first copy of Ebony, Vol.

1, No. 1, at a garage sale. She bought the inaugural edition for a dime, and it was reported that even publisher John H. Johnson himself couldn't persuade her to part with it, as he hadn't kept a copy for himself. A week before Clayton died, the Mayme A. Clayton Library Museum & Cultural Center opened in Culver City, Calif. She became assistant librarian at the University of Southern California in 1954 and later a library assistant at UCLA's law library, where she stayed 15 years. Clayton died Oct. 13. She was 83 years old.