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Book censorship is the suppression of books considered, by the censors, as objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient for a variety of reasons. It has been carried out in several localities in the United States by parents, school boards, lobbying groups, and other stakeholders in education. In response, several professional organizations such as the American Library Association, the Freedom to Read Foundation, and the National Coalition Against Censorship have employed various initiatives to help combat book censorship in all its forms. Combating book censorship with their advocation for First Amendment Rights, these long-standing organizations have been at the center of multiple Supreme Court cases spanning from the 1970s.

Origins of Book Censorship

The origins of Book censorship in the United States do not commence until the mid-nineteenth century. One of the first cases in America that was publicized was the banning of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species in Trinity College and Cambridge. The piece contains Darwin’s theory of evolution and has been banned in other parts of America, such as Tennessee, in the early twentieth century. The practice of banning books becomes more prevalent in the mid-twentieth century as progressive writers such as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and T.S. Elliot began their literary careers. These men were all modernists and did not refrain from revealing their opinions about controversial subject matter. For example, Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms depicts the grim realities of World War I. The toils of the two lovers, Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley, include the graphic detailing of a childbirth gone awry. This story strays greatly from traditionalist literature, the majority of American literature at the time, which depicts good prevailing over evil. Cities such as Boston banned this novel in 1929, labeling the book "salacious". In addition, Boston in the 1920s brought the censorship of other novels such as The American Mercury, Elmer Gantry, An American Tragedy, Strange Interlude, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The rise of censorship in Boston spurred gripes from people in area. The Harvard Crimson in 1929 once wrote, "it has become so tiresome to reproach Boston for their constant repression of creative work, that we are beginning to surrender in despair." However the censorship in Boston was all justified because according to the U.S. federal political system, it is the duty of the states to implant their educational policies. The texts selected for the schools are ultimately approved by the state. School board’s, as part of the Tenth amendment, do have the right to select which state-approved text should be placed in the libraries. Over the years, parents on the school board have challenged their state’s selection of certain books for their libraries. The parent's and school board's main reason is in an effort to protect children from content deemed by them as inappropriate. Supreme Court cases have derived from this subject matter such as Board of Education, Island Trees School District v. Pico in 1982. This case represents the school board’s desire to emplace certain values in the children versus the students’ First Amendment rights. The court came to the conclusion that, "The First Amendment imposes limitations upon a local school board's exercise of its discretion to remove books from high school and junior high school libraries." The result of the Supreme Court case has not, to the present day, ceased the protests of parents and school boards to protect children from content they believe to be “anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic and just plain filthy."

Organizations that Oppose Book Censorship

Established in 1876, The American Library Association, the world's largest and oldest library association, holds an annual event on the last week of September called Banned Books Week. The intention of this event is, “bring together the entire book community; librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers of all types, in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.” The organization also provides information on the main reasons for book banning. The American Library Association on their website has noted the top three reasons for book censorship in the United States. The motives for this controversial practice are as following: the material was considered to be "sexually explicit”, the content contained "offensive language”, and the book was "unsuited to any age group." The Freedom to Read Foundation focuses more on the legal issues regarding book censorship. One of their main objections is to, “to supply legal counsel, which counsel may or may not be directly employed by the Foundation, and otherwise to provide support to such libraries and librarians as are suffering legal injustices.” Founded on November 20, 1969, the association made it’s first U.S. Supreme Court appeal in Kaplan v. California. The case involved an “adult” bookstore owner who was convicted of, “violating a California obscenity statute by selling a plain-covered unillustrated book containing repetitively descriptive material of an explicitly sexual nature.” The Freedom to Read Foundation brought the case before the Supreme Court and filed, “a motion asking the Court to consider an amicus brief addressing constitutional questions posed by the new three-prong test for obscenity in Miller v. California.” The motion was ultimately denied as the Court ruled that First Amendment rights only applied to, “serious literature or political works”. 

More specific cases

• In August 1939, the Board of Supervisors of Kern County, California passed a resolution to ban The Grapes of Wrath from county libraries and schools. The head librarian of the Kern County Free Library, Gretchen Knief, despite personal protest to the supervisors, complied with the ban. The ban is said to have been largely a product of the infrastructure of a county whose economy relied heavily upon agriculture, and Knief’s compliance, a contemporary lack of official support from the field of librarianship. The ban was rescinded in 1941.
• Between 1961 and 1982, The Catcher in the Rye was the most censored book in high schools and libraries in the United States. In 1981 it was both the most censored book and the second most taught book in public schools in the United States. According to the American Library Association, The Catcher in the Rye was the tenth most frequently challenged book from 1990–1999. It was one of the ten most challenged books of 2005 and although it had been off the list for three years, it reappeared in the list of most challenged books of 2009. The challenges generally begin with Holden's frequent use of vulgar language, with other reasons including sexual references, blasphemy, undermining of family values and moral codes, Holden's being a poor role model, encouragement of rebellion, and promotion of drinking, smoking, lying, and promiscuity. Often the challengers have been unfamiliar with the plot itself. Shelley Keller-Gage, a high school teacher who faced objections after assigning the novel in her class, noted that the challengers "are being just like Holden... They are trying to be catchers in the rye." A reverse effect has been that this incident caused people to put themselves on the waiting list to borrow the novel, when there were none before.
• Flowers for Algernon is on the American Library Association's list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–1999 at number 43. The reasons for the challenges vary, but usually center on those parts of the novel in which Charlie struggles to understand and express his sexual desires. Many of the challenges have proved unsuccessful, but the book has occasionally been removed from school libraries, including some in Pennsylvania and Texas.
• In October 2006, a resident of Marshall, Missouri attempted to have the graphic novels Fun Home by Alison Bechdel and Blankets by Craig Thompson removed from the Marshall Public Library. These challenges are significant because the fact that they are filled with illustrations make them more likely to be accessible to younger children, and therefore, more susceptible to challenges when the content is considered mature for the audience.
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) by Mark Twain was listed by the American Library Association as the 5th most commonly banned book in the U.S. due to supposed racism in 2007. NewSouth Books received media attention for publishing an expurgated edition of the work that censored the words nigger and Injun. A parent in a school district in Arizona attempted to have the novel banned in a case that reached the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in the case Monteiro v. The Tempe Union High School District (1998)

See also

• Censorship in the United States
• List of books banned by governments
• List of most commonly challenged books in the U.S.
• List of proposed anti-gay book bans in the United States
• Banned Books Week
• National Organization for Decent Literature
• Island Trees School District v. Pico
• Challenge (literature)
• Wilhelm Reich
• Book censorship

External links

• List of Banned & challenged books at the American Library Association