10 Black Books You May Not Have Known Were Banned or Challenged

Native Son, Richard Wright, 1940 Richard Wright’s landmark novel, according to pbs.org, "paints a brutal picture of a young, poor Black man, 20-year-old Bigger Thomas, incited to murder by the oppression and hatred of the white world. It explores inequality, racial conflict, and Wright's belief at the time that Communism was Black Americans' best hope for equality." The book has been challenged or removed in at least eight different states because of objections to “violent and sexually graphic” content. Some of the cases where "Native Son" was banned or challenged: **1978: Challenged in Elmwood Park, N.J., because of "objectionable" language. **1981: Challenged in North Adams, Mass., because of the book's "violence, sex, and profanity." **1988: Challenged at the Berrian Springs, Mich., High School in classrooms and libraries because the novel was deemed "vulgar, profane, and sexually explicit." **1998: Removed from Irvington High School in Fremont, Calif., after parents complained the book was unnecessarily violent and sexually explicit. **1998: Challenged in the Hamilton High School curriculum in Fort Wayne, Ind., because of the novel's graphic language and sexual content. Beloved, Toni Morrison, 1987 American novelist Toni Morrison has won several awards over her prestigious writing career, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for "Beloved," but she also owns the honor as the Black writer with the most banned and challenged books. The Daily Beast describes "Beloved," as "a classic that explores the legacy of slavery not with reductive moralizing, but with psychological and narrative depth and complexity. But its frankness with race, violence and sex has made it a controversial choice in school curricula." Some cases where "Beloved" was banned or challenged: **1997: Challenged by a member of the Madawaska, Maine School Committee because of the book's language. **2008: Pulled from the senior Advanced Placement English class at Eastern HS in Louisville, Ky., because two parents complained that the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about antebellum slavery depicted inappropriate topics of bestiality, racism and sex. **2011: Challenged at Plymouth-Canton Schools in Michigan after a family launched an official complaint to have the novel banned from the AP English curriculum due to racial themes, sexual content, and passages about ghosts. A nine-member committee voted to keep the book. **2013: Challenged, but retained as a text in Salem, Michigan High School AP English courses. The complainants cited the allegedly obscene nature of some passages in the book and asked that it be removed from the curriculum. Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison, 1977 As mentioned before, for every accolade author Toni Morrison has achieved, there have been countless objections to teaching her novels in schools. Her 1977 classic, "Song of Solomon," which tells the story of Macon "Milkman" Dead, a young man alienated from himself and estranged from his family, his community, and his historical and cultural roots - is no different. Some cases where "Song of Solomon" was banned or challenged: **1994: Removed from required reading lists and library shelves in the Richmond County, Ga., school district (1994) after a parent complained that passages from the book were "filthy and inappropriate." **1998: Removed from the St. Mary's County, Md., schools' approved text list by the superintendent overruling a faculty committee recommendation. Complainers referred to the novel as "filth," "trash," and "repulsive." **2009: Banned by a Shelby, Mich., high school after parents complained of its profanity, sexual references and violence. **2010: Students of Franklin Central High School in Indiana had to return the novel halfway through reading it because administrators were offended by its "sex, violence, and profanity." It was later reinstated. The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X and Alex Haley, 1965 The "Autobiography of Malcolm X", which told the life story of Malcolm X, was considered too radical for high school classrooms for allegedly serving as a “how-to manual” for crime, based on its anti-white rhetoric. Some cases where the "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" was banned and, or challenged: **1993: Parents of Duval County, Fla., students challenged the book, calling it disruptive to racial harmony. **1994: Jacksonville library in Florida only allowed teens with parental permission slips to check the book out. It was restricted due to its “anti-white racism." **2014: Teachers at Public School 201 in Flushing, Queens, attempted to bar fourth graders from completing reports about Malcolm X's life calling the activist "bad" and "violent." Black Boy, Richard Wright, 1945 The book is semi-autobiographical, describing the Wright's own experiences growing up poor and Black in Mississippi in the 1920s. The author shines a light on some of the darker recesses of recent American history, painting a gloomy picture of race relations and economic opportunity or lack thereof, that is unflattering to all. Within the first year of its release, it was challenged. Some cases where "Black Boy" was banned or challenged: **1945: U.S. Senator Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi called for the book to be banned. His remarks in the U.S. Senate as is recorded in the congressional record June 27, 1945, 79th Congress, 1st Session, Congressional Record Volume 91, page 6808: "There is another book which should be taken off the book racks of the nation; it should be removed from the book stores; its sales should be stopped. It is the recent book of the month, which has had such great sale. . . . It is entitled "Black Boy," by Richard Wright. . . . He wrote the book "Black Boy" ostensibly as the story of his life. Actually, it is a damnable lie from beginning to end. It is practically all fiction." **1970s: The Island Trees School Board in New York tried to remove the book along with others from its school library. The board characterized "Black Boy" and a handful of other books as "anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic,and just plain filthy," and they stole into the library at night and removed them. **2007: Challenged in the Howell Michigan High School because of the book's strong sexual content. The Color Purple, Alice Walker, 1982 Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel focuses on the grim realities of life for Black women living in America's Deep South in the 1930s. Nearly every year since the novel was published, schools across the nation have challenged or banned it for its graphic scenes of violence, descriptions of sexual assault, plus "troubling ideas about race relations, man's relationship to God, African history and human sexuality." Some cases where "The Color Purple" was banned or challenged: **1986: The book was removed from the shelves of a Virginia school library for its “profanity and sexual references” and placed in a special section accessible only to students over the age of 18, or who had written permission from a parent. **1992: Banned in the Souderton, Pa., area school district as inappropriate reading for 10th graders because it is "smut." **1999: Removed from the Ferguson High School library in Newport News, Va., but students could request and borrow the book with parental approval. **2002: Challenged in the Fairfax County, Va., elementary and secondary libraries by a group called Parents Against Bad Books in Schools. The group contends the books "contain profanity and descriptions of drug abuse, sexually explicit conduct, and torture." The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, 1970 Morrison's first novel kickstarted the trend of her novels being challenged or banned. Morrison wrote "The Bluest Eye" while she was teaching at Howard University. The story follows a year in the life of a young Black girl named Pecola who develops an inferiority complex due to her eye color and skin appearance and longs to be a white child with blonde hair and blue eyes. While the book was a popular target for a banned list, it was especially popular in 2013 after it was included in the reading list for 11th graders as part of the new Common Core standards that was adopted by 40 states. Some cases where "The Bluest Eye" was banned or challenged: **2013: Challenged by parents of a Colorado school district who petitioned for the novel to be removed from an 11th grade reading list due to its “explicit sexual scenes, describing incest, rape, and pedophilia.” **2013: Challenged by Ohio State school board President Debe Terhar, who believed the Ohio Department of Education should not allow the novel to be used in Ohio classes under the Common Core Standards. Terhar described the novel as “pornographic” and stated that she did not want her children or the children of others to read it. **2013: Alabama State Senator Bill Holtzclaw called for the book to banned and removed from the required reading list, calling it "completely objectionable, from language to the content." I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou, 1969 Acclaimed Literarian Award -winning poet and author Maya Angelou’s autobiographical, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" was challenged at schools across the nation from 1994 onward. Some cases where "I Know Why Caged Bird Sings" was banned or challenged: **1994: Challenged but remained on the curriculum for sophomores at Dowling High School in Des Moines, Iowa, after a parent objected to the book’s “inappropriately explicit sexual scenes.” **1997: Challenged as part of the optional reading list at the East Lawrence High School in Moulton, Ala., and as part of the Mukileteo, Washington, school district’s high school curriculum. **2002: Banned for language and being too explicit in the book’s portrayal of rape and other sexual abuse. **2006: Removed as required reading from an Annapolis, Md., freshman English class due to mature content. **2010: Restricted to students with parental permission at the Ocean View School District middle school libraries in Huntington Beach, Calif., because the “book’s contents were inappropriate for children.” Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred Taylor, 1976 Taylor's award-winning children's book set in 1933 rural Mississippi, follows the Logan family as they deal with a school year's worth of racial inequality and injustice. "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry" made the American Library Association most challenged book in 2002. Some cases where "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry" was banned or challenged: **1993: A Louisiana high school removed it from its reading list because of "racial bias." **1998: A California middle school challenged it because of "racial epithets." **2000: An Alabama elementary school library challenged it because of "racial slurs." **2004: A Florida school district challenged it because it was "inappropriate" for the age of the group reading it. Also, it uses the word "nigger." **2004: Challenged, but retained as part of the Seminole County, Fla., school curriculum despite concerns of an African-American couple who found the book inappropriate for their 13-year-old son. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison, 1952 A 1995 write-up on Ellison described the novel as a masterpiece, adding it's "a novel that captured the grim realities of racial discrimination as no book had." Yet despite winning the National Book Award a year after its publication, “Invisible Man” has been banned by schools in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Washington for being “too intellectual” for young readers. Some cases where "Invisible Man" was banned or challenged: **1975: Excerpts were banned in Butler, Pa., and removed from the high school English reading list in St. Francis, Wis. **1994: Retained in the Yakima, Wash., schools after a five-month dispute over what advanced high school students should read in the classroom. Two parents raised concerns about profanity and images of violence and sexuality in the book and requested that it be removed from the reading list. **2013: A Randolph County, North Carolina, school board banned the novel because they could not find “any literary value” in the 1952 classic. However, the school board rescinded its ban on Sept. 25, returning it to local high school libraries.

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