Banned Books Awareness: The Censored Side of Black History

Books, and the ideals and questions they can present, are banned for personal, ideological, political, or religious reasons. It is often said that to the victor goes the spoils; so, too, do the victors write the history books. When that “truth” is threatened the rhetoric and polemic monologues overpower the intellectual dialogues.

Which is why it remains important for the light to shine upon the authors who have had their work threatened by censors. Their words speak of survival during slavery; of the struggle during the 1920s and 1930s; and the search for an identity at the close of the century.

In honor of Black History Month, we look to ten books which have faced harsh criticism and attempts to remove them from the public consciousness.

Some of these titles will be familiar, as they have already been discussed here. Works such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved and The Bluest Eye, Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, and Alice Walker’s iconic American novel The Color Purple.

The Library of Congress, the world’s largest collection of knowledge, began a multiyear “Celebration of the Book” with an exhibition on “Books That Shaped America.” The initial books in the exhibition can be seen at http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/books-that-shaped-america/.

It is a testament to the literature and culture of the American people that has been gifted to the world. It is also a sad commentary on that same culture when some of these books are banned or challenged in their own country.

Critics of The Autobiography of Malcom X have referred to his philosophy on black pride, Black Nationalism, and Pan-Africanism a “how-to-manual” for crime and decried the book for its “anti-white statements.” Whatever may or not be true of the man, Malcom X’s legacy teaches us about the importance of standing up for civil rights and the necessity of courageous protest at a time when merely walking on the same side of the street could get you beaten or killed.

It is interesting that the same anti-government ideals held by Malcom are also used by white supremacy groups. Politics, it seems, really does make strange bedfellows.

In 2014, a teacher in Queens, New York, forbade his fourth-grade student from writing about Malcom X for a report on Black History Month, referring to the activist as “bad” and “violent.” The parent had her son write the paper anyway and turned it in to the principle, stating, “That’s called learning.”

43% of the nearly 500-member student body are black. The school earned a “C” on its most-recent city report card at the time of the incident.

Previous cases included parents of Duval County, Florida, students challenging the book in 1993, calling it “disruptive of racial harmony”. In Jacksonville, Florida, access to the book was restricted during the 1994 school year and only teens with parental permission slips could check the book out.

The violence of a novel’s fictitious villain is one thing, but when that violence and racism is historical fact we owe it to the future to not close our eyes to the dark deeds of the past.

Such is the case with another real-life narrative, Richard Wright’s 1945 book, Black Boy. In most respects a typical coming-of-age tale, it details his tortured years under the Jim Crow laws of the South and his time in Chicago, where he begins writing and joins the Communist Party.

His book was immediately demonized as being anti-American, anti-Semitic, and anti-Christian, as well as for its sexual content and unrelenting snapshot of race relations- topics which should be presented in a wholesome and bright light, it would seem, instead of showcasing the stark truth that despite our many accomplishments we can be selfish, childish, and cruel.

Parents of a student in a Huntsville, Alabama, school objected to A Lesson Before Dying, by Ernest J. Gaines (1993), as a summer reading suggestion back in 2008, prompting a letter by the NCAC in response.

It has been challenged in several AP English classes across the country as well as at the college level, notably when the president of a Louisiana college removed the title from campus bookstores because he believed the love scene clashed with the school’s Christian values.

In the fall of 2000, surgeon Dr. James Moore and his wife Minnie appealed the Savannah-Chatham County Public Schools Board of Education’s use of it at Windsor Forest High School. A reversal of the previous year’s successful campaign by Moore to remove three books, a decision that was the result of heavy media attention condemning the situation.

Students of the school now need permission slips for Shakespeare thanks to Doctor Moore.

Last on the list is a novel that was assigned reading when I was in school, Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe. This was one of the rare assigned-reading titles that I loved and still own that very copy purchased for the class.

The 1958 critically-acclaimed novel explored the negative effects of white rule on a fictional village during British colonialism and extensive missionary expeditions across Africa. It has been challenged in Texas schools and banned in Malaysia and Nigeria, where it takes place.

The main character, Okonkwo, decides to commit suicide rather than be tried in a biased colonial court.

In researching, there were many comments online related to not just a misunderstanding of African culture but a revulsion to it based not on the cultural aspects itself but from the very same arrogant and egocentric viewpoint that Achebe wrote against. It is a mindset that insists that African nations are primitive and violent, needing to be led by outside [white] hands.

Achebe is the essential novelist on African identity and, while Achebe favors the African culture of a pre-western time, he attributes its destruction to the “weaknesses within the native structure.”

It is in these tales- fictional or factual- of a recent past that must be shared, that must be discussed. For in understanding their stories we understand the writer; we then understand each other. Once we recognize what lead us down the wrong, separate path we can walk together down the right one to a better, shared future.