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This infographic on this page is courtesy of the American Library Association (ALA) located at the page linked below.
While LGTBQ+ themed book challenges and bans are nothing new, there is in 2022 an alarmingly high demand by individuals and groups across the United States to ban children's and teenager's access to these books.
Below are some of the books that are currently most commonly challenged, calling for public and K-12 school library bans. The books listed below are held in the TCC Library. Check one out today!
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Established December 1, 1967, the Office for Intellectual Freedom is charged with implementing ALA policies concerning the concept of intellectual freedom as embodied in the Library Bill of Rights, the Association’s basic policy on free access to libraries and library materials.
Studying book challenges and banning is peering into cultural and social change and the backlashes against it - particularly the challenging of children's or young adult books.
Look to what is changing in our country and you can see what quickly follows will be challenges to books that represent, intentionally or unintentionally, our cultural and social shifts. Many of these books are children's or young adult books, or books that people are worried children will have access to.
The intent of this section is to look back at one of the earliest children's book challenges to understand current book challenges in context.
From the late 1940s to the early 1960s there were a relative rush of US states that repealed "anti-miscegenation" (anti-interracial marriage) laws bringing the number of states that repealed (or never had) those laws to 33.
Sixteen states, mostly in the Southern US, were holdouts until the US Supreme Court struck down anti-miscegenation laws as unconstitutional in 1967 (although it was years before some of those states removed the laws from their books, one as late as 2000). Prior to civil rights decisions from the Supreme Court, most of these states' lawmakers, law keepers, and some citizen groups openly fought desegregation, so it is no surprise that a year after the publication of "Rabbit's Wedding" by Garth Williams (1958)* an Alabama white citizens group and a state senator interpreted the book as "propaganda for integration and intermarriage". They placed immense pressure put on Alabama libraries to ban this book as a result of this interpretation.
While not all book challenges and bans are triggered by backlash against social change, enough of them are to make them worthy of our attention in helping us to understand our collective history and the times we live in now.
Mildred and Richard Loving, a BIPOC woman and a White man, were legally married in DC and then arrested in their home state of Virginia in 1958. The case Loving v. Virginia led to the 1967 Supreme Court decision striking down anti-miscegenation laws as unconstitutional.
Anti-miscegenation laws in the United States. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-miscegenation_laws_in_the_United_States [this provides an excellent listing of the timeline of both the legislation of and the repealing of anti-miscegenation laws across the US]
1958 Rabbits’ wedding: Children’s book removed from circulation.(n.d.). Civil Rights Heritage Museum Online. https://civilrightsheritage.com/2016/06/15/1958-rabbits-wedding-childrens-book-removed-from-circulation/
Head, T. (2021, June 11). Interracial marriage laws history and timeline. Thought Co. https://www.thoughtco.com/interracial-marriage-laws-721611
Loving v. Virginia. (2021, January 5). History. https://www.history.com/topics/civil-rights-movement/loving-v-virginia
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