Book banning (or burning) has been around for almost as long as human history has been recorded. In the past, books have been banned largely for the same reason some are banned today: for political or “moral” reasons usually, but not always, related to religion. For the purpose of this article, I will be focusing mainly on the history of book bans in the United States.
Tomas Morton’s New English Canaan was banned by the Puritan government in 1637 in what is known now as Massachusetts. The piece was very critical of the Puritan’s actions and practices. While a vast majority of us have not read Morton’s work (myself included) he currently maintains the position of being the first known person to author a banned book in North America.
Jumping forward a little more than 200 years into the future, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published in 1852. The book depicts slavery as a brutal and inhumane institution, that depiction did not sit well with Southern slave owners. The book itself was banned in many communities throughout the South and was considered to be culturally unacceptable by a vast majority of Southerners. It should be acknowledged that while Uncle Tom’s Cabin plays a role in American history, it does contain racist depictions of Black people.
Shortly after the Civil War in 1873, Congress passed what would later be known as the Comstock Act. The law was not well defined and resulted in the banning of materials that contained anything that could be considered “obscene” or “immoral,” the Act specifically outlawed the mailing of any materials that fell into these categories. The Comstock Act continued to be enforced for nearly a century, and during this time thousands of people were arrested, and millions of pieces of literature were burned by court order.
In the U.S. there is a long history of people not reading or not even having an understanding of the books that they are trying to ban. For example, Animal Farm by George Orwell was banned in many places in the U.S. for promoting communism. For those who have not read Animal Farm, it is a story about a group of anthropomorphic animals that overthrow their human master, only for most of the animals to end up in the same situation they were in before. Orwell wrote the book as a critique of the Russian Revolution and Stalin’s totalitarian regime.
Recently, the U.S. has seen a major uptick in book bans. Many of the books that are being banned today are books with themes involving race, gender, sex, and sexuality. These book bans are considered to be a part of the American “culture wars” occurring at this time, the movement is mainly led by White, Christian, conservative parents. The books being banned include books describing pregnant male seahorses to books about Ruby Bridges, the first child to desegregate a previously all-white school in the South. Ultimately, book bans are about fear and control. They foster fear in those who consume, teach, produce, or wish to produce works that may be seen as controversial. When book bans are successful, they effectively control the curriculum that the next generation of Americans are educated on. Shall we ban the teaching of slavery and the Civil War since it might make a White child feel bad? Shall we ban the teaching of phenology since it might make children confused about sex and gender? Book bans are not a parent’s rights issue, they are a threat to the First Amendment and the future of democracy.“Our Constitution does not permit the official suppression of ideas… The First Amendment… does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom.” – Justice William J. Brennan Island Trees School District v. Pico (1982)