Phil Lapsansky, historian, social activist, and retired curator of African American history at the Library Company of Philadelphia, has died at 83

Phil Lapsansky, 83, of Philadelphia, historian, social activist, former chief of reference and retired curator of African American history at the Library Company of Philadelphia, died Tuesday, April 9, of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at the Penn Medicine Rittenhouse acute care center.

Born in Seattle and actively engaged in the civil rights movement in Mississippi in the mid-1960s, Mr. Lapsansky arrived in Philadelphia in 1966 and spent 41 years, from 1971 to 2012, making the African American history collection at the Library Company into what Inquirer writer Stephan Salisbury called in 2012 “one of the greatest collections of African American archival materials in the world.”

He was first tasked with searching the library’s shelves — he called it “stack ratting” in a 2012 Inquirer article — to uncover items on Black life and history, and he found a treasure trove of documents, letters, pamphlets, newspaper articles, images, rare books, and other items that had long been ignored. So he spent the next four decades organizing the items into a collection that grew to 13,000 titles and 1,200 images, and making it accessible to everyone.

“Mr. Lapsansky changed the way that African American history is studied not only at LCP but in the overall scholarly community,” colleagues at the Library Company said in a 2012 retirement tribute. Carol Smith-Rosenberg, professor emerita at the University of Michigan, told The Inquirer in 2012: “He taught us all to look beyond traditional historical categories, read sources we all too often ignored.”

A voracious reader with a bachelor’s degree in history from Temple University, Mr. Lapsansky was chief of reference and presided over the reading room at the Library Company from 1979 to 2008. He compiled and edited reams of material, wrote dozens of reports and articles on the collection, organized popular public exhibits, appeared on C-SPAN TV, and created history programs that featured research fellows, conferences, and seminars.

He was an invaluable guide to historical information, and many authors credited his contributions in their publications. He became curator in 2008, and more than 50 colleagues, friends, and admirers contributed to a 179-page publication in 2012 called Phil Lapsansky, Appreciations that documented his impact on their work.

Mr. Lapsansky became active in politics and the national labor movement in the 1950s and ‘60s in Seattle, and jumped enthusiastically into the civil rights movement in Mississippi in 1964. He was energetic and passionate about voter rights and other issues, and political opponents vilified him, and he was harassed by the police, FBI, and others.

He wrote stories about his experiences that were distributed around the country and became head of news and tape programs for the Freedom Information Service, a communications clearinghouse he helped create for civil rights groups. Later, he wrote opinion pieces for The Inquirer about bias in art and bans on assault weapons.

“He was kind to the core,” said his daughter Charlotte, ”and he covered it with a sharp wit.”

Phillip Sanders Lapsansky was born March 30, 1941. He attended the University of Washington in Seattle for a time but left to experience the revolutionary world of Latin America and then counterculture life in New York in the 1950s and ‘60s. He earned his bachelor’s degree at Temple in 1973 and lived in West Philadelphia for nearly six decades.

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He met Emma Jones in Mississippi, and they married in 1966, and had son Jordan and daughters Jeannette and Charlotte. They married in Wisconsin because interracial marriages were illegal in Mississippi.

After a divorce, he became partners with Bernice Andrews in 1986, and they married in 2012.

Mr. Lapsansky and his wife were foodies and avid readers, and they roamed the city’s restaurant and bookstore scenes together for years. He was a creative cook, loved all kinds of movies, and watched South Park and Seinfeld on TV.

His family and friends noted his “wit, off-color jokes, and gallows humor” in a tribute, and said: “He had an esoteric vocabulary that would rival the literary giants while also making a sailor blush.”

He said often that he was proud of what he had learned on his own. His former wife said he “combined humor and risk, kindness, fierce loyalty, boundless intellectual curiosity, and creativity.”

He doted on his children and grandchildren, and always chose the perfect gift. His daughter Jeannette said: “He had genuine interest in his family as individuals and frequently could be heard bragging about our achievements and activities.”

In addition to his wife and children, Mr. Lapsansky is survived by three grandchildren, a brother, his former wife, and other relatives. He donated his body for research to the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Medicine.

A memorial party is to be held later at the Library Company of Philadelphia.

Donations in his name may be made to the American Civil Liberties Union, 125 Broad St., 18th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10004; the Southern Poverty Law Center, 400 Washington Ave., Montgomery, Ala. 36104; and the Library Company of Philadelphia’s African Americana collection, 1314 Locust St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19107.