President Lyndon B. Johnson said, “Books and ideas are the most effective weapons against intolerance and ignorance.” Censorship is an extremely controversial issue and has been present in all times and locations throughout history. Advocates of censorship often target materials that discuss sexuality, religion, race and ethnicity—whether directly or indirectly (“Censorship in Schools”). For those against censorship, it all boils down to people choosing what others can and cannot read or write. Freedom of speech, granted to every American by the First Amendment to the Constitution, protects challenged books, or so some think. Ultimately, the rules and exceptions to the precious First Amendment are not spelled out, and therefore, it is interpreted differently among Supreme Court justices, religious and political leaders, and common American citizens. Throughout history, many have become caught up in this never-ending battle of rights and strong opinions.
According to Webster’s Dictionary, to censor means “to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable.” Its main characteristic is the suppression of an idea or image because it offends or disturbs someone, or because someone disagrees with it. In many countries, censorship is most often directed at political ideas or criticism of the government. In the United States, censorship more often involves social issues, and in schools is commonly directed at so-called “controversial” materials (“Censorship in Schools”).
Book banning itself has a long history. In 1529, the Catholic Church issued the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (list of prohibited books). The Catholic Church had a lot of political power in society at the time, so religious leaders basically chose what everyone could and could not read. The list continued to grow for an extensive 437 years until Pope Paul VI abolished it in 1966. Even as the Catholic Church’s political power declined following the Renaissance, European governments continued the practice of book banning (Lankford 7).
Censorship of newspapers has a long history as well. In 1733, John Peter Zenger—a daring, defiant publisher who refused to be intimidated by any royal governor—decided to start a newspaper. The first issue of his New York Weekly Journal appeared on November 5. At this time, there was a lot of controversy surrounding the governor of the New York colony, William Cosby, even though he had only been in charge for one year. Cosby was accused of many wrongdoings, and Zenger told readers all about them in the Journal. His paper was popular from the start (Zeinert 17).
Shortly after the first issue emerged, an embarrassed Cosby began a campaign to shut down the Journal and make an example of Zenger. Cosby ordered James De Lancey, the colony’s chief justice, to get a grand jury to charge the publisher with printing “seditious libel.” That means any statement, true or false, that would encourage disrespect for royalty, a crime under English law. De Lancey assembled a jury, but the jury refused to charge Zenger with a crime (Zeinert 17).
Although Zenger knew he was in great danger, he continued his attacks, and Cosby had the printer arrested on November 17, 1734. After several questionable legal maneuvers on the part of the governor, Zenger was brought to trial on August 4, 1735. His supporters found one of the best lawyers in the colonies, Alexander Hamilton, to defend Zenger. Hamilton was skilled and brave, and he refused to accept the old seditious libel law (Zeinert 18).
Hamilton ignored the chief justice’s arguments that a critical statement about a leader was enough to send a man to prison. Instead, in a courtroom filled with spectators, he told the jury that it should not punish a man because he criticized his ruler—governor or king—if the man told the truth. “The words,” Hamilton said, “must be false, scandalous and seditious or else we are not guilty.” The jury accepted Hamilton’s argument, and they set Zenger free. In doing so, the jury established a precedent that is certainly followed today—American newspapers and magazines can criticize the government. It is hoped that by publishing the good and bad deeds that leaders do, voters will be able to make wise choices when they vote to elect leaders (Zeinert 18).
If it were not for the press, we would not enjoy as many freedoms as we do today. In colonial times, the press helped turn many colonists against the king and his governors. Soon, “No taxation without representation!” was being shouted everywhere. The colonies were so swept up in a spirit of revolt that Parliament was forced to drop taxes. The press greatly contributed to getting the British to back down, and this was all done by a mere twenty-three papers, most with a circulation of two thousand or less (Zeinert 20).
Colonial papers then turned their attention to the whole issue of how the king and the English Parliament governed the colonies. The papers hounded away at the rulers’ mistakes, and many historians believe the press had a lot of influence in rousing the colonists to revolt. After the Revolutionary War ended, leaders in the colonies were very careful to protect the freedoms for which the colonists had fought so hard to obtain. They drafted the Bill of Rights,
The demand to read whatever one wished was as strong as ever after the Revolutionary War. As American newspapers expanded, the question of the invasion of privacy was raised, but when editors were challenged in court, newspapers were usually given the right to print whatever they believed was newsworthy. It was generally agreed, however, that the Constitution did not protect every book or newspaper article. No writer could publish a book of lies about his neighbors, for example, and expect to be protected by the First Amendment. The First Amendment also did not protect obscenity (which was believed to undermine Americans’ morals) or books that might endanger national security. This is where the big debates began because it is difficult to determine what is libelous, obscene, or dangerous. In many cases, the debate was taken to the courts (Zeinert 30).
One of the best known crusaders for censorship in the 1800s was Anthony Comstock. Being conservative, he followed very strict standards, and expected everyone else to live the same way. Comstock was extremely appalled by literature he considered obscene. He set out to rid the country of such obscene books, devoting forty years of his life to the task (Zeinert 32).
Comstock viewed the mail as the main source of material he found disgusting. A law banning obscene materials from the mail had been passed in 1865. Still, officials could do little unless the person who ordered the material complained to postal authorities, which was not likely to happen. In 1872, Comstock began a successful campaign for a national law—The
The Comstock Law also forbade the distribution of birth control information. In 1915, Margaret Sanger’s husband was jailed for distributing her Family Limitation, which described and advocated various methods of contraception. Sanger herself had fled the country to avoid prosecution, but returned in 1916 to start the American Birth Control League, which eventually merged with other groups to form Planned Parenthood (Ockerbloom).
In the many cases, the U.S. Supreme Court seems to side with school boards, administrators, and teachers, but the Court also acknowledges the importance of community values. In the 1988 Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier decision, the court sided with the school in censoring a student-written article in the school paper. The Court cautioned, however, that the educators’ authority does not justify school action “to silence a student’s personal expression that happens to occur on school premises…It is only when the decision to censor a school-sponsored publication, theatrical production, or other vehicle of student expression has no valid educational purpose that the First Amendment is so ‘directly and sharply implicated’ as to require judicial intervention to protect students’ constitutional rights” (Foerstel).
“The list of books challenged or removed from public and school library shelves include those by authors living and dead, with characters real and imagined, intended for audiences from young children to adults. Some are new to this list and many others are ‘repeat offenders.’ It doesn’t seem to matter whether the offense is talking to God or believing in the devil, using language that’s either out-of-date or too up-to-date, or something as simple as not wearing pajamas” (Doyle).
The incredible range of challenged or banned books includes Leaves of Grass—Walt Whitman’s famous collection of poetry, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Diary of Anne Frank, James and the Giant Peach, The Da Vinci Code, Animal Farm, Doctor Zhivago, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Tropic of Cancer, Lois Lowry’s The Giver, and The Adventures of Captain Underpants. Censored authors include Shakespeare, Adolf Hitler, Thomas Paine, Voltaire, J.K. Rowling, George Orwell, William S. Burroughs, D.H. Lawrence, Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, Judy Blume, and countless others.
Ulysses by James Joyce was barred from the United States as obscene for 15 years, and was seized by postal authorities in 1918 and 1930. The lifting of the ban came only after advocates fought for the right to publish the book. Ulysses was also selected by the Modern Library as the best novel of the 20th century (Ockerbloom). Ironically enough, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury also maintains a spot on the censored list. It’s about book-burning and censorship in a futuristic American city. In the book, authors attempt to write books that will not offend anyone. The objections of special-interest groups to certain books leads to the leaders’ decision that the only way to avoid all objectionable content is to simply burn all books.
Thomas Bowdler’s efforts in his 1818 Family Shakespeare gave rise to the word bowdlerize [to cut indecent parts from (a book)]. Another term is expurgation. Bowdlerism and expurgation still exist today, but nowadays cleaning up sexual references is decreasing in popularity (Ockerbloom).
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain has been challenged and banned in numerous locations and times because of its incessant use of radical slurs including the “n” word (Kelly). Jamey Fletcher writes: “Even to the present day, we often condemn books that were written to fight the very things we claim to be fighting. Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is so often cited as being racist, when it was written against slavery and racism” (“Quotations on Censorship”).
Other frequently challenged books seem to be the “classics.” The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger uses profanity throughout the book, along with the portrayal of prostitution, depression, and alienation, leading to its banning. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee has been challenged over the years for its use of profanity and racial slurs. William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies has been challenged and in many cases banned because of profanity, sexuality, racial slurs, and excessive violence. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck has been banned because of its use of profanity. Often cited are the use of the Lord’s name in vain and the use of racial slurs (Kelly).
Alice Walkers’ Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Color Purple has been targeted and banned because of its explicit [straightforward/clear] sexuality, profanity, violence, and use of drugs. Slaugterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut has been addressed because it depicts sex and, frankly, it is realistic—American soldiers behave as soldiers, they swear and curse like men. In fact, it was one of the first literary acknowledgements that homosexual men, referred to in the novel as “fairies,” were among the victims of the Nazi Holocaust. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, which deals with profanity, racism, incest, and child molestation, was one of the most challenged books in 2006 (Kelly).
These classics have been challenged and banned all throughout the years since their publications. More recent favorites have also been targeted. J.K. Rowling’s immensely popular Harry Potter Series has become a frequent target. The most common reason cited is its use of witchcraft and the fear that fantasy and reality could become confused for children. Also, some challenges have arisen over the violence it portrays. Bridge to Terebithia by Katherine Paterson was recently turned into a Disney movie. It has been challenged or banned because of the disrespect the children show to adults, the confusion of combining fantasy with reality, and profanity (Kelly).
Jack London’s writing was censored in several European dictatorships in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1929, Italy banned all editions of his Call of the Wild, and that same year Yugoslavia banned all his works as being “too radical.” The Nazis also burned some of his socialist-friendly books like The Iron Heel, along with the works of many other authors (Ockerbloom).
Throughout history and the world, governments have controlled the acceptable material available to its citizens. South Africa’s apartheid regime banned a number of classic books. In 1955, for instance, the New York Times reported that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was banned there as “indecent, objectionable, or obscene.” At one time, the regime also reportedly banned Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, a story about a horse (Ockerbloom).
In 2003, Cuba jailed 75 people who were involved in the U.S.-backed “independent library movement, which distributes literature to interested citizens outside the state-funded library system.” In the court hearing that followed, many of these people were then sentenced to jail for distributing “subversive content,” which was then ordered destroyed. Among the content was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the U.S. Constitution. Sixty-nine prisoners of conscience remain in jail for non-violent political views and activities (Ockerbloom).
In nervous times, politically motivated censorship has occurred in the U.S. as well. In 1954, the Providence, RI, post office attempted to block delivery of Lenin’s State and Revolution to Brown University, citing it as “subversive” [trying to destroy the authority of (the government)]. The major exception to the government issuing censorship rules is during wartime. In 1918, the U.S. War Department told the American Library Association to remove a number of pacifist and “disturbing” books, including Ambrose Bierce’s Can Such Things Be? from camp libraries. This order was taken to also apply to the home-front. Censorship in libraries run by the federal government continued afterwards as well. In the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy had overseas libraries run by the U.S. Information Service pull an anthology of American literature from the shelves because it included Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience. During World War I, the U.S. government jailed those who were distributing anti-draft pamphlets. Most Americans used self-censorship and were content with the orders because they wanted to protect their country and uphold national unity. Some convictions, however, were upheld by the Supreme Court (Ockerbloom).
E for Ecstasy was seized by Australian Customs in 1994, and may still be banned today. In the 1999-2000 sessions, the U.S. Congress quietly slipped similar bans for “dangerous” information on drugs and explosives into various bills. The Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act had a section 9 outlawing certain dissemination [act of spreading news around] of information on explosives that was signed in 1999. Given that conspiracy or solicitation to commit federal crimes was already illegal, it was hard for some to see what practical effect was intended by these bills other than to censor the open dissemination of information deemed too dangerous for the public to learn. Anti-drug-information bills have not yet made it to a full vote in Congress, so E for Ecstasy is still legal in the U.S. for now (Ockerbloom).
While censorship is considered relatively mild in most Western democracies, many governments around the world openly ban books. Many editions of The Bible have been banned and burned by civil and religious authorities throughout history. The Bible and The Quran were both removed from numerous libraries and banned from import in the Soviet Union from 1926-1956. The Bible is banned in many Muslim countries, though Saudi Arabia has allowed tourists to carry a personal copy (Lankford). On July 1, 1996, Singapore convicted a woman for possessing the Jehovah’s Witness translation of The Bible. Burma (also known as Myanmar) bans all Bible translations into local indigenous languages. (The military dictatorship of that country also requires modems to be licensed, so because their internet is also censored, they have no way to access certain resources like The Bible) (Ockerbloom).
Judy Blume, a popular author of young adult books including Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, is also one of the most censored authors. Her books have been banned for reasons such as the use of profanity and situations such as menstruation. Judy Blume is a leader in the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC). Judy writes:
“…Censorship grows out of fear, and because fear is contagious, some parents are easily swayed. Book banning satisfies their need to feel in control of their children’s lives. This fear is often disguised as moral outrage. They want to believe that if their children don’t read about it, their children won’t know about it. And if they don’t know about it, it won’t happen” (Blume).
“Today, it’s not only language and sexuality (the usual reasons given for banning books) that will land a book on the censors’ hit list. It’s Satanism, New Age-ism, and a hundred other isms, some of which would make you laugh if the implications weren’t so serious. Books that make kids laugh often come under suspicion; so do books that encourage kids to think or question authority. Books that don’t hit the reader over the head with moral lessons are considered dangerous. Censors don’t want children exposed to ideas different from their own. If every individual with an agenda had his/her way, the shelves in the school library would be close to empty. I wish the censors could read the letters kids write.
‘Dear Judy,
I don’t know where I stand in the world. I don’t know who I am. That’s why I read, to find myself. –Elizabeth, age 13’
Ultimately, I disagree with censorship. In schools, the best thing is for the school to adopt a policy on the matter of censorship before any complaints are made. I understand that parents have a right to say what they approve and disapprove of, but let them have that authority at home. Don’t ruin it for the rest of us! Walter Lippmann said, “Where all men think alike, no one thinks very much” (Doyle).
So did Disney get it wrong? With its choice to turn Bridge to Terabithia into a movie, Disney did nothing but continue what it’s done for decades. Confuse fantasy with reality? If we were so afraid of this confusion, with what Disney movies would we be left? We’d be without Cinderella, Finding Nemo, Toy Story, Peter Pan, and any other Disney/other book or movie with imagination, magic, and talking characters who aren’t human.
There is much to be learned from literature, and I do think teens are mature enough to read the classics. If we are given a chance to think and analyze a complex idea, we will do so willingly. In this day and age, with MySpace, TV, and video games, adults should applaud those young people who enjoy reading and challenging their imagination. Give us credit; if we, as teens, are not exposed to these ideas now, how else are we going to become adults who can make informed decisions on these issues? Help us understand the topic and then let us make our own decisions. No matter what the author says, we can still come to educated conclusions. Woodrow
When educators make curriculum choices, they should absolutely take grade and maturity level into account. Obviously, it wouldn’t be very smart or productive to introduce The Catcher in the Rye to fourth graders, for example. When a book is introduced that includes advanced topics, parents (and teachers) should talk to their kids. If examples aren’t allowed to be studied, how are we supposed to learn right from wrong? Communication is all it takes for a parent to teach his/her child that the “n” word in To Kill a Mockingbird is only used in context to illustrate the wrongs of the time period. John Morley said it well when he said, “You have not converted a man because you have silenced him” (“Quotations on Censorship”).
“Did you ever hear anyone say, ‘That work had better be banned because I might read it and it might be very damaging to me’?” (Joseph Henry Jackson). When I read about some of the censorship cases, I laugh and wonder to myself: have advocates of censorship been in a high school hallway recently? Or anywhere, for that matter? Banning a book because of sexual references will not keep us in the dark! Think of movies, television, video games, the internet, and just old fashioned gossip! The magazine Cosmopolitan is a very popular racy and revealing magazine that all my underage friends purchase monthly and without question. We certainly do not need protection from books!
Margaret Bald said, “When you look back over centuries at censorship and see the incredible range of books and authors whose works were suppressed, you can only be struck by how absurdly ineffective and useless it has been in the long run.” Plus, it is proven that controversy over a book sparks curiosity and sales of that book shoot up drastically. Just like when Christmas is nearing, you cannot tell a child not to look in the back closet and honestly expect him not to peek!
What if Anthony Comstock and all the other “hardcore” censors had destroyed all the great classics? Imagine the significant and remarkable amounts of wisdom that we would lack today! Hanif Kureishi said, “You can never know what your words may turn out to mean for yourself or someone else; or what the world they make will be like. Anything could happen. The problem with silence is that we know exactly what it will be like.”
Works Cited
Histories of World Literature. New York: Checkmark Books, 1999.
Blume, Judy. “Judy Blume Talks About Censorship.” 23 October 2008. <http://judyblume.com/
censorship.php>.
“Censorship in Schools: Learning, Speaking, and Thinking Freely: The First Amendment in
Schools.” Web Junction—Intellectual Freedom. National Coalition Against Censorship
(NCAC). 24 September 2008. 23 October 2008. <http://www.webjunction.org/home/articles/content/15151992>.
Doyle, Robert P. Banned Books: 2007 Resource Guide. Chicago, IL: American Library
Association, 2007.
Foerstel, Herbert N. Banned in the U.S.A.: A Reference Guide to Censorship in Schools and
Public Libraries. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994.
Kelly, Melissa. “Top 10 Banned Books.” About.com: Secondary Education. 23 October 2008.
<http://712educators.about.com/od/bannedbooks/tp/banned_books.htm>.
Lankford, Ronnie D. (editor) Book Banning. Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press, 2008.
Ockerbloom, John Mark. “Banned Books Online.” The Online Books Page. 23 October 2008.
<http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/banned-books.html>.
“Quotations on Censorship.” Books A to Z. 23 October 2008. <http://www.booksatoz.com/censorship/quote.htm>.
Zeinert, Karen. Free Speech: From Newspapers to Music Lyrics. Springfield, NJ: Enslow
Publishers, Inc., 1995.