Felton Thomas, Jr.

Library director Felton Thomas, Jr. was born on December 18, 1965 in Las Vegas, Nevada to Virginia Ann Rainey and Felton Thomas, Sr. He received his B.A. degree in psychology from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 1990. He went on to earn his M.L.I.S. degree from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1993.

Thomas began his career working at the West Las Vegas Library as the youngest library page in the Las Vegas-Clark County District. Then, Thomas was hired as a circulation clerk at the West Charleston Library. After graduating from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, he served as a library assistant in various libraries before enrolling in the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where he interned at the William S. Richardson School of Law Library. In 1996, Thomas joined the Rainbow Library in Las Vegas, Nevada as a librarian before returning to the West Las Vegas Library as the assistant branch manager. In 2004, Thomas became the regional branch services director at the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District, where he worked for four years while also serving as president of the Nevada Library Association. In 2009, he was hired as the executive director and CEO of the Cleveland Public Library system, one of the largest library systems in the United States.

In 2022, Thomas was the president of the Cleveland School of the Arts’ board of directors, and he also served as the board president of the Greater Cleveland Food Bank. He has served on the boards of the Aspen Institute Task Force on Learning and the Internet, The Cleveland Museum of Art, DigitalC, the Downtown Cleveland Alliance, Lyrasis, the Sisters of Charity Foundation, the United Way of Greater Cleveland, University Circle, Inc., the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland, the Public Library Association, and the Digital Public Library of America.

Throughout his career, Thomas received numerous awards and honors including the Isaiah Award for Human Relations from the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the Mover and Shaker Award from the Library Journal in 2002, the White House Champions of Change Award in 2016, the Community Leader of the Year Award from Cleveland Magazine in 2019, the Homer C. Wadsworth Award for Exceptional Community Leadership from The Cleveland Foundation in 2023, and the American Library Association (ALA) Equality Award in 2024.

Thomas resides in Shaker Heights, Ohio with his wife, Linda. They have two daughters.

Felton Thomas, Jr. was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on December 9, 2024.