Book censorship in the United States

Based on Wikipedia: Book censorship in the United States

The Paradox of Forbidden Pages

Here's an irony that has played out across nearly four centuries of American history: the surest way to make people want to read something is to tell them they can't.

In 1920s Boston, publishers discovered this marketing goldmine. When the city's censors banned a book, savvy sellers elsewhere would slap "Banned in Boston" on the cover and watch sales soar. The forbidden fruit effect proved so reliable that some authors probably hoped for a ban.

But behind this dark comedy lies a persistent tension at the heart of American democracy. A nation founded on principles of free expression has never quite decided what to do about books it finds dangerous, immoral, or simply uncomfortable.

America's First Banned Book

The story begins in 1637, in what would become Quincy, Massachusetts. A man named Thomas Morton had written a book called "New English Canaan" and published it in Amsterdam. The Puritan authorities were not amused.

Morton's crime was straightforward: he had criticized Puritan customs and questioned their power structures. In a community that had crossed an ocean to build a godly society on their own terms, such heresy could not stand. They banned the book.

Thirteen years later, in 1650, the authorities in Boston went further. When William Pynchon published a pamphlet called "The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption," they didn't just ban it. They burned it. This act is often called the first book burning in America, though of course the practice of destroying dangerous ideas by destroying the paper they're written on is far older than any European presence in the Americas.

These early cases established a pattern that would repeat for centuries. Books get banned not because they're poorly written or factually wrong, but because they challenge the values or authority of whoever holds power.

The Comstock Era

For most of American history, book censorship remained sporadic and local. That changed dramatically on March 3, 1873.

On that day, President Ulysses S. Grant signed into law "An Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use." This mouthful of Victorian propriety is better known as the Comstock Act, named after Anthony Comstock, the anti-vice crusader who lobbied for it.

The law was sweeping. It criminalized using the postal service to send erotica, contraceptives, sex toys, abortion-related materials, or even personal letters that mentioned sexual topics. Half the states in the union passed similar laws targeting possession and sale.

The consequences extended far beyond pornography. Medical journals couldn't discuss contraception. Doctors couldn't mail information about reproductive health to patients. The law conflated scientific information with smut, and enforcing it required someone to decide exactly what counted as "obscene."

That question would bedevil American courts for nearly a century.

The Modernist Explosion

The early twentieth century brought a literary revolution. Writers like James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Theodore Dreiser, and John Steinbeck began producing work that abandoned the comfortable morality of Victorian fiction.

Traditional American literature had generally shown good triumphing over evil, virtue rewarded, and vice punished. The modernists had different ideas. They wrote about war without glory, sex without shame, and moral ambiguity without resolution.

Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms" depicted World War One not as a noble crusade but as senseless slaughter. It included a romance between its protagonist and a nurse, complete with frank details of a childbirth that ends in tragedy. Boston banned it in 1929, calling it "salacious."

Boston, in fact, became the censorship capital of America during the 1920s. The Watch and Ward Society, a private moral reform organization, wielded enormous influence over what Bostonians could read.

Banned in Boston

The Watch and Ward Society had been operating since the nineteenth century, but it reached peak power in the 1920s. Its first major target was Robert Keable's "Simon Called Peter" in 1922. After that success, the society went after book after book.

Sinclair Lewis's "Elmer Gantry," a satirical novel about a hypocritical evangelical preacher? Banned. Theodore Dreiser's "An American Tragedy"? Banned. D.H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover"? Banned. Even Eugene O'Neill's play "Strange Interlude" couldn't be performed in Boston.

The censors went after magazines too. "The American Mercury," one of the most prestigious literary magazines of its era, was banned from sale in Boston.

But opposition was growing. A 1929 article in The Harvard Crimson captured the exhaustion of Boston's intellectual class: "It has become so tiresome to reproach Boston for their constant repression of creative work, that we are beginning to surrender in despair."

They didn't have to despair for long.

The Ulysses Decision

In 1933, Judge John M. Woolsey made a ruling that would reshape American censorship law. The case involved James Joyce's "Ulysses," a modernist masterpiece that had been banned in the United States since its publication in 1922.

"Ulysses" is a difficult book. It follows a single day in Dublin through stream-of-consciousness narration, literary parody, and experimental techniques that still challenge readers today. It also contains frank depictions of bodily functions and sexuality that scandalized early twentieth century sensibilities.

Judge Woolsey ruled that the book could not be banned simply because it depicted sex. The key distinction was whether the work had literary merit. Serious literature, he held, could address sexual themes in ways that mere pornography could not.

This remained the legal standard until 1957, when the Supreme Court refined it further in Roth v. United States. The new test asked whether a work was "utterly without redeeming social importance." If a book had any value at all beyond titillation, it was protected.

The Watch and Ward Society's power faded. Municipal authorities, more reflective of Boston's changing demographics, took over the city's remaining censorship functions. The era of "Banned in Boston" was effectively over.

The Library's Response

While the courts were sorting out what could be banned, librarians were developing their own response to censorship.

In 1938, Forrest Spaulding, director of the Des Moines Public Library, drafted what he called the Library Bill of Rights. His motivation was "growing intolerance, suppression of free speech and censorship affecting the rights of minorities and individuals."

The American Library Association, known as the ALA, adopted a revised version just one year later. It has since expanded to address book banning, discrimination, and even the use of library exhibit spaces.

In 1953, a group of publishers and librarians went further, issuing a proclamation on "The Freedom to Read." Its central claim was bold: "The freedom to read is essential to our democracy."

This wasn't just idealistic rhetoric. The librarians understood something fundamental about how democracies function. Citizens need access to diverse viewpoints to make informed decisions. A library that carries only approved ideas serves propaganda, not education.

The Confederate Revision

Not all book censorship targeted obscenity. Some of the most organized censorship campaigns of the early twentieth century aimed to rewrite history.

The United Daughters of the Confederacy, often abbreviated UDC, launched systematic campaigns to ban textbooks that portrayed the South unfavorably. Their goal was promoting what historians call the "Lost Cause" narrative, a romanticized version of the Confederacy that minimized or justified slavery.

One of their early targets was "American History" by David S. Muzzey, a textbook that violated nearly every guideline the UDC had published for acceptable Southern history. They began attacking it in 1916.

In North Carolina, the textbook commission approved Muzzey's book in early 1920. By October, the UDC was calling for a statewide ban. When the contract with the publisher came up for renewal in 1922, public pressure ensured it wasn't renewed.

This campaign reminds us that censorship isn't always about sex or violence. Sometimes it's about controlling how we understand our own past.

Georgia's Literature Commission

The state of Georgia created its own censorship apparatus in 1953, calling it the Georgia Literature Commission. Initially, the commission described its role as helping local prosecutors enforce obscenity laws.

But in 1958, it gained teeth: the power to issue subpoenas and injunctions that could stop publication entirely. Over the following years, it censored hundreds of publications.

Court rulings in the 1960s weakened the commission, and it was finally abolished in 1973. Its rise and fall illustrates how censorship machinery, once created, tends to expand its reach until legal limits are established.

The Constitutional Framework

American debates over book censorship inevitably return to the Constitution. Advocates for reading freedom cite several amendments.

The First Amendment, most famously, prohibits Congress from making laws "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." Courts have generally interpreted this to protect most written material from government censorship, though obscenity has historically been excluded from this protection.

The Fourteenth Amendment extended these protections to actions by state governments, not just the federal government. This matters because most book censorship occurs at the state and local level.

The Fourth Amendment, protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures, has also been invoked in cases where authorities attempted to confiscate books.

But constitutional text alone doesn't resolve these disputes. The courts have had to develop frameworks for when the government can restrict reading material and when it cannot.

The School Library Question

School libraries occupy an unusual legal space. They're government institutions, so First Amendment restrictions apply. But they serve children, whom the government has traditionally been allowed to protect from certain materials. And they can't possibly carry every book ever published, so someone must choose what goes on the shelves.

A 1924 case in California, Evans v. Selma Union High School District, established an important principle. The court ruled that merely purchasing a book for a school library doesn't mean the school endorses everything in it. A library is a reference collection, not a statement of approved beliefs.

In 1976, Minarcini v. Strongsville City School District went further. The court upheld a school district's right to exclude certain books from the curriculum. Teachers don't have to assign every book. But removing books from the library was a different matter. The court called the library a "storehouse of knowledge" and found that removing books from it was unconstitutional.

This distinction between curriculum and library would prove crucial.

The Pico Decision

The most important Supreme Court case on school library censorship came in 1982: Island Trees School District v. Pico.

The facts were straightforward. A school board on Long Island had removed nine books from school libraries after a challenge from a group called Parents of New York United. Five students sued, arguing their First Amendment rights had been violated.

Justice William Brennan wrote the opinion. He acknowledged that school boards have "broad discretion in the management of school affairs." They can choose what textbooks to use. They can decide what to include in the curriculum.

But libraries are different.

"Local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books," Brennan wrote. The First Amendment "imposes limitations" on a school board's discretion to remove library books.

The library, Brennan explained, serves a special role. It represents the First Amendment's function of "affording the public access to discussion, debate and the dissemination of information and ideas."

There were limits to this protection. School boards could still exercise discretion over what books to acquire. They could remove books they considered "pervasively vulgar." What they couldn't do was remove books "in a narrowly partisan or political manner" simply because they disagreed with the ideas inside.

The Current Wave

For decades after Pico, book censorship in American schools remained relatively stable. Challenges occurred, reconsideration committees met, some books were removed and others kept. The system, while imperfect, functioned.

Then came 2021.

Since that year, the United States has experienced what the American Library Association describes as unprecedented levels of book censorship. Their 2022 report found a dramatic increase in challenges, with many targeting books featuring LGBTQ characters or themes, or books addressing racial issues.

The numbers are striking. Between 2022 and 2023, reported censorship cases rose by sixty-three percent. Perhaps more significantly, the nature of challenges changed. Instead of individual parents objecting to individual books, organized groups began filing challenges to hundreds of books at a time.

Organizations like Moms for Liberty have built national networks to coordinate book challenges. They provide lists of books to target, template challenge letters, and support for parents navigating the reconsideration process. What was once a scattered phenomenon of individual complaints has become an organized movement.

About three-quarters of challenged books in recent years have been aimed at children, pre-teenagers, and teenagers. The targets include books with LGBTQ themes, books addressing racism, and books containing any sexual content.

The Chilling Effect

Legal scholars use the term "chilling effect" to describe how fear of consequences can suppress speech even without formal censorship. You don't have to ban a book if librarians are too afraid to stock it in the first place.

The current wave of challenges has produced exactly this effect. Many school districts have begun self-censoring, removing books preemptively rather than defending them against challenges. Some have stopped acquiring certain categories of books entirely.

Librarians report harassment and intimidation. Some have quit rather than face organized campaigns against them. In an era when "groomer" has become a political epithet, simply doing one's job as a school librarian can attract personal attacks.

State legislatures have responded to the movement as well. As of 2024, numerous states have passed laws that make it easier to remove books from libraries, or that establish new categories of restricted material. Some laws criminalize providing certain books to minors, putting librarians at legal risk.

Texas Takes the Lead

According to the American Library Association, Texas led the nation in book challenges in 2022. School districts across the state, particularly in the Houston area, have removed books from shelves pending review.

The challenges have extended beyond libraries. Book fairs held in Houston-area schools have seen their available materials restricted. Publishers and vendors have begun self-censoring what they offer to Texas schools.

A federal lawsuit filed in May 2023 against the Escambia County School District explicitly invoked the Pico precedent, arguing that recent book removals violated students' First Amendment rights. How courts apply the forty-year-old Pico framework to today's circumstances remains to be seen.

Beyond Schools: Prison Censorship

While school library battles dominate headlines, another form of book censorship affects far more people. According to PEN America, the literary and free expression organization, carceral censorship is the most pervasive form of literature restriction in the United States.

Prison systems have broad authority to restrict what incarcerated people can read. Policies vary wildly between states and between individual facilities. Some prisons ban books about the legal system. Some ban books about prison conditions. Some ban books with any sexual content, which can include novels assigned in high school English classes.

The federal government doesn't require prisons to report what they censor, making this form of restriction difficult to track or challenge. Incarcerated people have limited ability to fight restrictions, and few organizations have the resources to litigate on their behalf.

This represents a significant gap in American free expression. The approximately two million people in American prisons and jails often have less access to books than any other population in the country.

The Four Types of Censorship

Scholar Emily Knox has developed a useful framework for understanding how book censorship actually works in practice. She identifies four types of "active" censorship.

The first is removal, the complete elimination of a book from library shelves, classrooms, or bookstores. This is what most people think of when they hear "banned book."

The second is relocation. The book isn't removed entirely, but it's moved somewhere harder to access. Creating an "adults only" section in a library, for instance, makes certain books available only to some patrons.

The third is restriction. The book remains in the collection, but accessing it requires special permission. A student might need a parent's signed note. A patron might need to request it from a librarian who keeps it behind the desk.

The fourth is redaction, physically altering the book by striking through or covering passages. This is relatively rare in libraries but has occurred in some school settings.

Knox also identifies "passive" censorship, which includes the self-censorship that occurs when institutions avoid controversy by simply not acquiring challenging materials in the first place. This form of censorship leaves no records and generates no headlines, making it nearly impossible to measure.

The Reconsideration Process

Most libraries and school districts have formal policies for handling book challenges. These "reconsideration policies" exist to make the process transparent and consistent.

Typically, a person who objects to a book files a formal challenge. An administrator or committee then reviews both the challenge and the book itself. They consider factors like the book's literary merit, its appropriateness for the intended audience, and whether the objections reflect the concerns of a single individual or a broader community.

If the committee supports the challenge, the book is removed. If not, it stays.

This system works reasonably well when challenges come one at a time from individual community members with genuine concerns about specific books. It works less well when organized groups file hundreds of challenges simultaneously, overwhelming staff capacity and turning the reconsideration process into a bureaucratic weapon.

What Censorship Means

A crucial distinction separates book censorship from personal choice. Censorship means restricting access for a whole population. When a parent decides their child shouldn't read a particular book, that's parenting. When that parent demands the book be removed from the library so no child can read it, that's censorship.

The difference matters because it reflects fundamentally different views of how decisions should be made. In the first case, each family decides for itself what's appropriate. In the second case, one family's standards are imposed on everyone.

This is why "freedom to read" advocates often emphasize that they're not arguing children should read everything. They're arguing that decisions about what children read should rest with individual families, not with whoever can mount the most effective political pressure campaign.

The Organizations

Several professional organizations advocate for reading freedom. The American Library Association has been central to this effort since the 1930s. The National Council of Teachers of English, known as NCTE, represents educators who want to teach diverse literature. The American Booksellers Association represents independent bookstores that often stock titles chain stores won't carry.

On the other side, organizations like Moms for Liberty have built national networks to coordinate book challenges. They provide lists of books to target, template challenge letters, and support for parents navigating the reconsideration process. What was once a scattered phenomenon of individual complaints has become an organized movement.

Florida and Shakespeare

In August 2023, Florida teachers faced new restrictions on teaching Shakespeare.

This might seem surprising. William Shakespeare died in 1616 and has been taught in English classes for generations. His works are considered foundational to English literature.

But Shakespeare's plays contain violence, sexual references, and crude humor. Under Florida's new laws requiring parental consent for materials with sexual content, some teachers decided the safest approach was not to teach Shakespeare at all.

Whether this outcome was intended by the law's drafters is unclear. What is clear is that laws written broadly enough to capture any mention of sexuality will capture an enormous amount of classic literature. Romeo and Juliet features teenage lovers. Hamlet includes references to sexual betrayal. Othello deals with jealousy and an interracial marriage.

The Florida situation illustrates how censorship can spread beyond its stated targets. A law aimed at contemporary books with explicit content ends up affecting four-hundred-year-old plays that have been taught to schoolchildren for centuries.

The Deeper Question

Behind all the legal frameworks and organizational battles lies a more fundamental question: What are books for?

If books are tools for transmitting approved knowledge to the next generation, then censorship makes sense. You wouldn't let children play with dangerous tools. Why let them read dangerous ideas?

But if books are how we learn to think, to question, to understand perspectives different from our own, then censorship defeats the purpose. A library that contains only safe ideas is a library that can't prepare young people for a world full of unsafe ones.

The American tradition has generally favored the second view, at least in theory. The practical application has always been messier.

Thomas Morton, whose book started this whole story in 1637, was challenging Puritan authority. The Puritans were certain they were right and Morton was dangerous. Nearly four centuries later, we read Morton as a historical curiosity and view the Puritans' censorship as an embarrassing overreaction.

The lesson is humbling. The books that seem most dangerous in any era often seem most important in hindsight. The censors are always certain they're protecting something precious. History usually judges them harshly.

This doesn't mean every challenged book is a misunderstood masterpiece. It does mean that the impulse to suppress ideas we find threatening is not new, has never achieved its goals, and shows no signs of going away. Each generation must decide for itself how much freedom it will extend to the dangerous liberty of reading.