In this talk, Stephane Robolin (Rutgers) will explore the role of libraries as institutions central to the circulation of banned literature in apartheid South Africa, as part of a larger inquiry into the clandestine lives of public organizations. The primary focus will be the U.S. Information Service Library in Johannesburg, one of a global network of libraries funded by the United States to wage the Cold War through film, literature, and journalism. This talk will consider how a library designed to disseminate propaganda by the U.S. government in a white minority-governed country could simultaneously serve and transgress the missions of both states. What was the function of African American literature in its stacks? What role could, say, The Autobiography of Malcolm X play in downtown Johannesburg? And what does it tell us about how the careful curation of culture works (and doesn’t) in contexts of political resistance? And what, if anything, does it reveal about the nature of cultural institutions?