8 / Membership Directory GREENVILLE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
It quickly became apparent to the women’ s groups primarily that Greenville needed its own library with its own building and around that time, steel magnet Andrew Carnegie was providing funding for local communities around the United States to build libraries. W. N. Williams, president of the then Greenville National Bank contacted with Carnegie to solicit funds to build a library.
The quick response from Carnegie was an offer of $ 15,000 to build a library but only under the following conditions: the community had to provide a suitable site and the chosen city had to maintain an annual library budget of at least $ 1,500 to maintain their free public library. At that time, the city of Greenville did not have a sufficient tax base to either purchase property or provide the expected level of financial support for the library.
May Harrison was president of the Greenville Federation of Women’ s clubs and adopted the library movement as their major project, putting together a marketing plan that impacted every man, woman and child in Greenville and resulted in raising the funds to purchase a suitable piece of land and provided the necessary required level of support.
Mrs. Harrison and the women’ s clubs were very successful in meeting the requirements of the Carnegie Foundation and purchased the land needed to build the library at the northeast corner of Stonewall and Crocket, where the Greenville Chamber of Commerce is located today. They also continued to support the library to keep it operating.
As a result, Carnegie was contacted and sent the money needed to construct the library and the people of Greenville had a full-fledged library. Greenville school children pro-