Freed Between the Lines: Banned Books Week 2024
In 1982, the US Supreme Court held that “local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to ‘prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.’”(457 US 853 (1982)). The case, Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District №26 v. Pico by Pico, was one of a number of challenges to books in school and public libraries and bookstores that year. In response, librarian and free speech activist Judith F. Krug joined together with several organizations to create Banned Books Week. Annually held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week was started “both to highlight the fact that literature was being banned, and to celebrate the freedom to read.”
The theme for this year’s Banned Books Week is “Freed Between the Lines.” The theme was chosen by the American Library Association (ALA) to demonstrate that “[w]e can find freedom in the pages of a book — but book bans and censorship threaten that freedom, along with many other rights and institutions.” The honorary co-chairs of this year’s event are Oscar-nominated director Ava DuVernay and Julia Garnett, a young adult freedom to read activist who spoke out about censorship attempts at her local school board meetings.
The past year has been a particularly volatile year in the fight for the freedom to read. In 2023, ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) documented 1,247 demands to censor library books and other materials. Public libraries saw a 92% increase in censorship requests in 2023, while school libraries experienced an 11% increase. “Groups and individuals demanding the censorship of multiple titles, often dozens or hundreds at a time, drove this surge,” according to the OIF.
The ALA also reported that 4,240 unique titles were requested to be removed from school library shelves in 2023, representing the highest level of challenges documented in over 20 years of tracking by the OIF. Almost half of the targeted titles were ones representing the voices and lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC individuals. Six of the top ten most challenged books of 2023 cite “LGBTQIA+ content” as a reason for the challenge. The number one most challenged title of 2023 was Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer, winner of the Stonewall Book Award. George Orwell’s 1984 is considered to be the most banned book of all time. Other famous banned titles include To Kill a Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Harry Potter.
The past two years have not only seen threats to books on library shelves. Librarians and library staff have been the targets of firings, death threats, bomb threats, defunding, and proposed legislation intended to jail librarians who are found to be allowing minors to access material that the state deems “obscene.” As of April 2024, 17 states were considering laws that would result in prison time for librarians. Louisiana Librarian Amanda Jones recently chronicled her own experience in That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America.
There is good news, however. Washington State recently passed legislation to protect libraries. The state passed a bipartisan bill that will make attempts to shut down libraries “much more difficult, requiring more signatures to get potential shutdowns on the ballot and then allowing a broader population of voters to decide a library’s fate.” The bill was introduced in response to a Columbia County city that tried to close its library over the same book banning issues seen across the country. Legislators in Connecticut and Delaware brought forth bills in 2024 to protect libraries from book-banning attempts. The Delaware Libraries for All Act, which designates libraries as places of public accommodation under Delaware’s Equal Accommodations Law, went into effect in August.
To learn more about Banned Books Week, check out the ALA’s BBW website. If you want to help promote BBW and the freedom to read, check out the ALA’s press kit or the Banned Books Week website’s promotional tools. To learn more about how the courts have ruled on censorship issues, check out this article on notable First Amendment court cases. For past posts on intellectual freedom and Banned Books Week, visit the law library’s blog archive. (LE)
