Mayme Agnew Clayton (1923–2006)

A librarian, historian, and prolific collector of African American materials, Mayme Agnew Clayton spent much of her career in the western United States.

Mayme Agnew was born on August 4, 1923, in Van Buren (Crawford County) to Jerry Modique Agnew and Mary Dorothy Knight Agnew. She had an older brother and sister. The Agnew family operated a store in Van Buren, the only business owned by African Americans in the community. Both of her parents were of mixed heritage with some Native American ancestry, and her father was a graduate of Arkansas Baptist College in Little Rock (Pulaski County).

At an early age, Agnew realized that the small library at her school in Van Buren did not have books that contained stories about people who looked like her. Her parents wanted their children to learn about their history and took them to see civil rights and education activist Mary McLeod Bethune speak at an event. Agnew graduated from Frederick Douglass High School and attended Arkansas Baptist College for a year before transferring to Lincoln University in Missouri.

Dropping out of Lincoln during World War II, she moved to Baltimore and then New York. She worked as a photographer and visited the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, part of the New York Public Library. She married barber Andrew Lee Clayton in 1946, and they moved to California, eventually having three sons: Avery, Renai, and Lloyd. After they divorced, she returned to work.

Obtaining a position at the Doheny Memorial Library at the University of Southern California in 1952, Mayme Clayton moved to the law library at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) five years later. While at UCLA, she was active in creating the Afro-American Studies Center Library. Completing her undergraduate degree at the University of California, Berkley, Clayton continued her education via correspondence, earning a graduate degree in library science at Goddard College in Vermont. In 1985, she completed a doctorate in humanities from Sierra University.

Remembering that as a young girl, she could not find materials related to African Americans, Mayme Clayton collected books, films, and other objects related to the Black experience in America. By the end of her life, her collection included more than 30,000 books, including many rare and out-of-print titles. These included a signed copy of Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects Religious and Moral, published in 1773. The collection also included more than 10,000 sound recordings, 1,700 films (including some that dated to 1916), and more than 75,000 photographs. The collection also had artifacts related to the African American experience, such as more than 350 movie posters and numerous historical documents, many of which were handwritten.

In 1972, Clayton began working at Universal Books on Hollywood Boulevard, which contained a large collection of African American books. The business failed within two years, and in lieu of payment, she took the inventory and combined it with her growing collection. Clayton created the Western States Black Research and Education Center in 1975 to house and preserve the collection. The collection continued to grow, and she and her sons worked to find a permanent home for the items.

Mayme Agnew Clayton died of pancreatic cancer on October 13, 2006. Her remains are interred at Inglewood Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. Shortly after her death, the Mayme A. Clayton Library & Museum opened in Culver City, California, in a county-owned building. It operated for more than a decade before closing due to reported issues related to funding and climate control in the facility. In 2020, California State University, Dominguez Hills agreed to take the collection. It became part of the Gerth Archives and Special Collections in the University Library. The Mayme A. Clayton Film Collection is held at UCLA.

For additional information:
“CSUDH in Talks to House the Mayme A. Clayton Library & Museum.” California State University, Dominguez Hills. https://news.csudh.edu/mayme-clayton-library/ (accessed February 28, 2025).

“CSUDH to Receive Mayme A. Clayton Collection of African American History and Culture.” California State University, Dominguez Hills. https://news.csudh.edu/clayton-collection/ (accessed February 28, 2025).

El-Etreby, Ramy. “Preserving African-American History: The Legacy of Mayme A. Clayton.” PBS SoCal, June 30, 2016. https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/lost-la/preserving-african-american-history-the-legacy-of-mayme-a-clayton (accessed February 28, 2025).

Mayme A. Clayton Film Collection, UCLA Library Film and Television Archive. https://www.cinema.ucla.edu/collections/mayme-clayton (accessed February 28, 2025).

David Sesser
Southeastern Louisiana University