A brief chronological Compendium of a Few Banned or Challenged Works, and Censorship and Anti-Censorship Efforts 20th century: 1st to 9th decades

You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. Yet in their hearts there is unspoken -- unspeakable! -- fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts! Words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home, all the more powerful because they are forbidden. These terrify them. A little mouse -- a little tiny mouse! -- of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic. --Winston Churchill

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1902: The Story of Mary MacLane

By an unidentified, privileged, nineteen-year-old girl in Butte, Montana. This work became an instant, nation-wide bestseller. Because of its perceived indecency. The book was banned by The Butte Public Library. Despite that, it sold 80,000 copies in its first month. Dorothy Bryant described the book as an "effusion of adolescent despair and loose sexual energy".

[Ms. Bryant was making a superficial examination of why the book was so popular despite the censorship challenges. She allows that, "it was read as a charming outpouring of youthful exuberance -- before reality sets in." The writers I hang out with in cyberspace would probably call it "adolescent angst". --MN]

By Fillipino rebels. In 1902 the U.S. government passed the Bandolerismo Statute or Brigandage Act; essentially revisionism by fiat. Under this law, any armed actions against the U.S. occupation forces in the Phillipines were to be considered banditry rather than acts of war or rebellion. The Spanish-American war was declared to have been ended on 04 July 1902, but hostilities against Spain had ended by mid-August 1898; hostilities in the Phillipines continued until 1913. Because of this, that episode of American history is mistakenly referred to as The Spanish-American War, dated as 1898-1902. The Phillipine-American War, however, ran on for fifteen years.

1905: Huckleberry Finn

By Mark Twain. Barred from the Brooklyn Library Children's Room because "Huck not only itches but scratches, and says sweat when he should say perspiration."
(see 1885; 1957; 1984; 1994; 1995)

By Mark Twain. This "devastating satire of religious support for war" was rejected by Harper's Bazaar as being unsuitable. Which it might have been as Harper's Bazaar was a woman's magazine. However, Harper and Brothers, which had an exclusive contract to publish Twain's writing, would not allow the piece to appear anywhere else, either, by the simple dint of denying permission for it to be printed under the exclusivity clause of its contract with Twain. The War Prayer was suppressed until 1923.
(see 1962)

By Mark Twain. Librarians at the Charlton, Massachusetts, public library, objected to the full-page illustrations of a sky-clad Eve.

By Margaret Sanger, leading contraception advocate. Her first article, What Every Mother Should Know, was published without incident. What Every Girl Should Know was barred by the U.S. Post Office because it dealt with venereal diseases and used such words as gonnorhea and syphilis. (The Post Office had been tasked with upholding the Comstock censorship law.) The day afterwards, the newspaper the articles had appeared in ran the announcement: What Every Girl Should Know: "NOTHING!" By order of the Post Office.
(see 1917)

A film produced by and starring Margaret Sanger. It was the first film banned under a 1915 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that films did not constitute free speech. The New York Court of Appeals held that the movie, a dramatization of her family planning work, could be censored in the interest of morality, decency, and public safety and welfare.
(see 1912)

By President Woodrow Wilson. It was not used to catch spies but rather to mount a full-scale assault on free speech.

Faced with strong opposition to World War I on the home front, from citizens who believed he was less interested in "making the world safe for democracy" than he was in protecting the investments of the wealthy, President Wilson encouraged "patriotic citizens" to report on neighbors whom they suspected of being disloyal. The DOJ prosecuted more than two thousand critics of the war and judges were quick to hand down harsh sentences.

By prison officals. Beverly Davies of Rock River Times, in a op/ed piece encouraging women to get out and vote in the 2004 election, wrote of this incident:

Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 helpless women wrongly convicted of "obstructing sidewalk traffic."

They beat Lucy Burn, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air. They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack.

Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women. Thus unfolded the "Night of Terror" on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote.

For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slops--was infested with worms. When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

[Woodrow Wilson and his cronies also apparently tried to have Alice Paul declared insane so as to have her permanently institutionalized. The psychiatrist they tagged for the job refused to do it, though, telling the officials that Alice Paul was strong, and brave, but that didn't make her crazy. Quothe he: "Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity." There is an HBO film about the incident titled Iron Jawed Angels. --MN]

By Ambrose Bierce. It was removed from library shelves by edict from the US War Department for "disturbing" and "pacifistic" themes.

A prepublication excerpt in the magazine Little Review caused the U.S. Post Office to confiscate all copies of that issue on the grounds of obscenity. Every last copy of the magazine was burned.

By U.S. Congress. This act restricted criticism of the government, the Constitution, the flag, and the armed forces. An obviously clear and present First Amendment violation.

The Manitoba movie censor board banned comedies, claiming they make audiences too frivolous.

The incredibly turgid stream of consciousness novel by James Joyce. Five hundred copies of the book, which had been printed in London, were burned by the U.S. Post Office. The book was also burned in London. This work is highly significant in that a test case of its censoring broke the back of the Comstock censorship laws in the U.S. in 1933.
(see 1949)

By The State of Amerika.

The First World War came to an end trailing economic and political turmoil, rising dissent, and waves of labor strikes. Along with draconian attempts to suppress the movements.

The strikes finally led to violence, including the explosion of a bomb on the doorstep of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer's Washington townhouse. In response, Palmer lashed out blindly at immigrant communities.

More than 5,000 people in 33 cities were rounded up as suspected "Bolsheviks" over a two month period. The purge was characterized by warrantless (hence arbitrary) arrests, unreasonable searches and seizures, and the wanton destruction of property. Suspects were brutally beaten and detained without being charged for long periods of time. The wartime Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917 and 1918 were invoked to deport residents without a trial; one of whom was anarchist Emma Goldman. She, along with 248 others, was sent to the Soviet Union. Most of those not deported were ultimately released and none were charged in the bombings.

This incident was crucial in one aspect, however. A group of affluent, well-connected, East Coast liberals was radicalized. Appalled at the trampling of civil liberties this group saw the need for permanent vigilance, the price of liberty, so under the leadership of Roger Baldwin they organized themselves as a watchdog group which became the American Civil Liberties Union.

[Compare this to the anti-immigrant hysteria in the aftermath of the World Trade Center Tragedy. Funny how things come full circle, isn't it? --MN]

By Yevgeny Zamyatin. A critique of the totalitarianism that was starting to take shape in the years following the Russian Revolution, this book offended government censors, who managed to suppress it within the Soviet Union until 1988. They were not able to keep it from making a deep impressions elsewhere, however, and We is considered to be the ur-text of science-fiction dystopias; describing an Orwellian world thirty years before Orwell's 1984. In point of fact, Brave New World and 1984 are believed to stem from this work. Orwell himself immediately saw the similarities between Huxley's work and Zaymatin's when he finally got his hands on a copy in 1946. His difficulty in doing so, however, was only because the work was never very popular in the West.

By Upton Sinclair. A crusading writer, he climbed the steps of a platform, in San Pedro, that striking dockworkers had built atop what they named Liberty Hill. As someone held a candle for illumination, Mr. Sinclair began reading the Bill of Rights. He made no reference to the six hundred dockworkers who had been arrested for striking recent to this day. He got as far as the first three lines of the First Amendment before he was arrested. This incident subsequently lead to the founding of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

A test case of a Tennesee law banning the teaching of evolution in schools because religionists did not agree with this scientific explanation of cosmology. It is also noted as being the first case in which the American Civil Liberties Union was involved.

[Addendum (12 Feb 2003): There is a very fine assessment of the secular/religious rivalry in the Scopes Monkey Trial by cultural anthropologist Susan Friend Harding in her work: The Book of Jerry Falwell, ISBN 0-691-09589-6, Dewey # 280.4 H263. This books deals mostly with comparative religion. To focus on the censorial aspects, however, the trial and resulting furor created a chilling affect on the order of absolute zero. For thirty years following the trial, evolution was scarcely taught or not taught at all, and biology was generally not mentioned other than as morphology and taxonomy. This was because textbook publishers with their thin profit margins were not wont to challenge the status quo and they hid behind a self-imposed ban. This situation did not change until the advent of Cold War paranoia and the launch of Sputnik when the United States began a tremendous push to have science -- accurate and factual science -- taught in the school systems in 1958. A third factor was the Darwin Centennial in 1959. --MN]

By Marie Stopes. A self-help sex manual that was popular in Europe, it was stopped from entry into the U.S. by Customs on the grounds that it was obscene. The fact that it was a non-fiction work written by a doctor didn't faze them in the least.

Because of the inclusion of the story Hatrack by Herbert Ashbury. It told about a Farmington, Missouri, prostitute who was shunned locally, even when she went to church to repent, but who, every Sunday evening, would entertain her customers. Ashbury did not deal with the sex graphically other than to report that she entertained her Protestant customers in a Catholic cemetery, and vice versa. The Watch and Ward was incensed by the intertwining of sex and religion.

The Soviet Union ordered the Koran, or Qur'an, removed from small libraries; although it was allowed to remain in the largest libraries. There have been virtually no printings of the book since then in that part of the world. Between 1926 and 1956 the Koran was banned from being imported.

[That might have changed since the fall of the communist bloc, but I haven't heard if it has. --MN]

By the scholar Mardrus. This work was held up by U.S. Customs. Four years later the translation by Sir Richard Burton was allowed into the U.S., but the ban on the Mardrus version was maintained.

By Theodore Dreiser. It was the subject of a major censorship case in Massachusetts.

By Ovid, the 1st century Roman poet. An English translation of this work was banned by U.S. Customs.
(see 0008)

By Radclyffe Hall. Described as a lesbian novel it was prosecuted in Britain because of the line, And that night they were not divided. The Attorney-General, senior law-officer there as in the U.S., led the case himself, asking "whether there could be any doubt that any innocent young man could be corrupted by such a lurid sexual picture."

[Addendum (06 Jan 2005:) David Smith of The Observer had an examination of this incident posted to the Guardian Unlimited web site on 02 Jan 2005. He described the most racy part of the book as: "she kissed her full on the lips like a lover." In his piece he wrote:

Documents show how Sir Archibald Bodkin, Director of Public Prosecutions, feared that the publisher would mobilise eminent writers to defend the book. He wrote to several doctors asking for a clinical analysis of what he called 'homo-sexualists'. In a letter to one of them, Sir Farquhar Buzzard, he explained: 'I want to be able to call some gentleman of undoubted knowledge, experience and position who could inform the court of the results to those unfortunate women (as I deem them) who have proclivities towards lesbianism, or those wicked women (as I deem them) who voluntarily indulge in these practices - results destructive morally, physically and even perhaps mentally.'

To Dr J.A. Hadfield of Harley Street, he wrote that a large amount of curiosity had been excited among women, 'and I am afraid in many cases curiosity may lead to imitation and indulgence in practices which are believed to be somewhat extensive having regard to the very large excess in numbers of women over men.'

Bodkin got the testimony he wanted from Sir William Henry Willcox, consulting medical adviser to the Home Office and physician at St Mary's Hospital in London. '[Lesbianism] is well known to have a debasing effect on those practising it, which is mental, moral and physical in character,' he said. 'It leads to gross mental illness, nervous instability, and in some cases to suicide in addicts to this vice. It is a vice which, if widespread, becomes a danger to the well-being of a nation ...' Publication of the book, he said, would risk its being read 'by a large number of innocent persons, who might out of pure curiosity be led to discuss openly and possibly practise the form of vice described'.

Chief magistrate Sir Chartres Biron ruled the novel was an "obscene libel" and that all copies should be destroyed. The book was released in Britain, after Hall's death, in 1949. What strikes me as bitterly amusing is that the Victorian attitudes of the time are still extent today, seventy-five years later, in the United States. --MN]
(see 1929)

By Jack London. This popular novel was banned in Italy. Yugoslavia also banned all of London's works for being "too radical". In 1932, copies of this and other books by London were burned by the Nazis in Germany.

By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Banned in the Soviet Union because of "occultism."

His books were banned in various parts of the world such as Italy, Ireland, and Germany (where they were burned by the Nazis in 1933).

By Theodore Dreiser. The book was challenged as obscene. The defendant in the case was really Donald Friede, the publisher, and the case was an appeal of a conviction. The conviction was upheld.

By Karl Marx (Das Kapital was co-written with Engels). These books were banned in China.
(see 1950)

By Radclyffe Hall. It was subject to a seizure order in the U.S., and although it escaped destruction, the National Office for Decent Literature of the Catholic Church ordered that homosexual novels should be placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

[It was probably seized under the Comstock law although the source I read did not say. Destruction would have been by burning. --MN]
(see 1928)

By Edgar Rice Burroughs. This book was removed from the Los Angeles Public Library because Tarzan was allegedly living with Jane outside of marriage.

A censorship dragnet in Boston swept up 68 now-classic books by such prominent authors as:

• Sherwood Anderson
• Theodore Dreiser
• Ernest Hemingway
• Aldous Huxley
• Sinclair Lewis
• Bertrand Russell
• Upton Sinclair
• H.G. Wells

By Ernest Hemingway. This was banned in Boston in this year.
(see 1953; 1960)

Shortly before 1930 actually. American Customs Services met with the U.S. Post Office and the two departments worked out a list of 700 titles to keep out of the hands of the American people.

By Heinrich Vierbucher. Published in 1930 in both German and French, it tells the story of the Armenian Genocide as witnessed first-hand by Heinrich Vierbucher, an army translator to General Otto Limon Von Sanders. The general was the military advisor and special commander to Turkish soldiers during WWI, and Armenian Genocide scholars regard him as the "litmus test" general, who proved it was possible for moral military men -- German and Turkish -- to have resisted collaboration and efforts to kill Armenians. In the book, Mr. Vierbucher indicted both the German military establishment and the German press for their complicity in the Genocide. Especially, he debunked two schools of thought commonly cited by Armenian Genocide deniers:

1. That the "fog of war", or the very nature of war, confounded the German's view of what was happening.
2. That the stratagem of resolving the "Armenian Question" through a genocide was first established by the Young Turks when they took power in 1908; Vierbucher states that such plans had been in motion since 1893, with the Armenian and Jewish massacres by Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamitt II and his German military advisors.

After the First World World War Mr. Vierbucher became a legend among the German and European peace movements of the "lost generation". And because he had served in the Imperial German army and was such a vocal Armenian Genocide witness, he was targeted for his writings and activism early on when the Nazis took power. After the publication of this book, he worked as an underground journalist and as a smuggler of banned literature. In 1939 he died from a cerebral hemorrhage after a mysterious visit from a member of the Gestapo. Owning a copy of Armenia 1915 in Nazi Germany could have resulted in imprisonment or the firing squad.

[Adolf Hitler once justified Sonderbehandlung (special handling or treatment of the Jews), by saying, "Who, after all, is today speaking of the destruction of the Armenians?" While it would certainly have been a necessity to silence this one person who was speaking of the destruction of the Armenians, it is more likely that Vierburcher was murdered for a failure to be sufficiently ultra-nationalist. Then, as now, any criticism of the "leaders" or minions of the state, or of their methods, were misrepresented as attacks against the nation itself. --MN]

By Lewis Carrol. It was banned by the governor of Hunan province in China because, "Animals should not use human language."

By William Shakespeare. In what is touted as the first real case of ethnic censorship of Shakespeare, the towns of Buffalo and Manchester, New York, removed this work from high school curricula, because of protests from Jewish groups that it encouraged bigotry.

By James Joyce. In a letter to an American publisher, James Joyce said that "some very kind person" bought the entire first edition of Dubliners and had it burnt.

By James Whale. This film version of by Mary Wallstonecraft Shelly's book, was released in 1931, and shown in Belfast theaters in Apr. On that first weekend, it drew some 10,000 viewers. One of them, Rev Popham Horsford, left the theater without making any complaint, went straight home, and wrote a complaint to the Belfast Police Committee of the City Council. He complained about the film and how horrible it was, and signed the letter as coming from the "Film Committee of the Churches"; a blatant misrepresentation as no such group existed. The Committee asked for and received a private viewing; for which only five of the fifteen members were available. One of the members there was John William Nixon, who was better known for his role in numerous murders during the troubles of the 1920s with the most infamous being the McMahon family killings. He was strongly opposed to the showing of this film and afterwards stated that the movie was "blasphemous and unedifying". After watching the film, this ad hoc committee went to the theather's boardroom to discuss the film, and after a short meeting they came out and informed the picture house manager that they were banning the film and that it was not to be shown. They gave him no reason for the ban and pointed out to him that there is no appeal from the Police Committee’s decision.

This action generated a vigorous response, and on Monday, 02 May, 1932 the city council held a meeting in the City Hall to discuss the ban. Before the meeting, Alderman Nixon gave an interview to the Northern Whig newspaper, mading it quite clear that he was totally against the film. At the meeting, a letter of protest from was presented that had been sent by Mr C McKew, the manager in Ireland for Universal Pictures. In it, he pointed out that there had been only one complainant from the audience of ten thousand. At the end of the meeting the Council Committee issued the following brief statement: "At a meeting of Belfast City Council on Monday 2nd May, 1932, the council decided to enforce the ban of the film Frankenstein. The psychological effect of such films lead to evil." This ban remains in effect as of Aug 2005, despite the film and its sequelae -- such as House of Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein -- having been shown on television in Ireland.

An art history text of the Sistine Chapel was impounded by a U.S. Customs officials for containing "lewd pictures."

The state passed a law saying that it was forbidden to listen to foreign broadcasts and that to so was a crime. The penalty was death.

By Adolf Hitler. Called the Enabling Act for short, it was passed on this day and legally sruck down democracy and installed Hitler as the absolute dictator of Germany. Hitler had been elected legally, and then consolidated and advanced his power essentially through a program of political maneuvering and domestic terrorism. During the speeches by members of the Reichstag (parliament), brown shirted Nazi part members outside the building chanted, "Full powers - or else! We want the bill - or fire and murder!!" During the debate, Hilter garnered the thirty-one non-Nazi votes he needed with a false promise to the Center Party, stating he would restore some basic rights which had already been taken away by decree. The German Social Democrats Party didn't fall for his blandishments, however. Otto Wells, leader of the party, stood and said quietly to Hitler, "We German Social Democrats pledge ourselves solemnly in this historic hour to the principles of humanity and justice, of freedom and socialism. No enabling act can give you power to destroy ideas which are eternal and indestructible." Hilter jumped up, enraged, and replied, "You are no longer needed! - The star of Germany will rise and yours will sink! Your death knell has sounded!" The bill passed with a vote of 441 - 84, with only the Social Democrats voting against it. A flood of the finest minds departed the country in the wake of the event; including over two thousand writers, scientists, and people in the arts. Among them:

• writer Thomas Mann,
• director Fritz Lang,
• actress Marlene Dietrich,
• architect Walter Gropius,
• musicians Otto Klemperer, Kurt Weill, Richard Tauber,
• psychologist Sigmund Freud, and
• Albert Einstein, who was visiting California and simply never returned to Germany.

A series of massive bonfires in Nazi Germany burned hundreds of thousands of books, most written by Jewish and communist authors. Included were the works of:

Georg Bernhard Albert Einstein Sigmund Freud Ernst Glaeser Werner Hegemann Ernest Hemingway Franz Kafka Erich Kästner Karl Kautsky

Helen Keller Alfred Kerr Lenin Jack London Emil Ludwig Heinrich Mann Thomas Mann Karl Marx Vladimir Mayakovski

Karl Ossietzky John Dos Passos Erich Maria Remarque Upton Sinclair Stalin Leon Trotsky Kurt Tucholsky Friedrich Wilhelm Theodor Wolff

The Nazi indexes of forbidden literature were eventually applied in all German occupied, as well as allied, countries:

Denmark Norway France

Luxembourg Belgium Netherlands

Lithuania Latvia Estonia,

Belarus Poland Yugoslavia

Greece

[I wonder if Hemingway, London, and Sinclair were Jewish or communist. --MN]

[Addendum (24 Mar 2003): See my commentary on the issue of contemporary book burning. --MN]
(See 1937)

The Reich Literature Chamber, three steps down the table of organization from Goebbels's Office of Propaganda, had been given executive power to prohibit books and to punish authors, publishers, or booksellers who failed to abide by its dictates and directives. Various documents it had published became laws to the German State. On this day a decree was passed requiring everyone in Germany to submit to the Chamber's screening process, everything having to do with, "the creations, reproduction, recital, spiritual or technical interpretation, distribution, maintenance, trade or sale of cultural goods." One such document, dating from 1935, conveys a sense of the all-pervasive nature of censorship.

The Reich Literature Chamber issues a list of harmful and undesireable literature containing all works of literature opposed to the cultural and political goals of the National Socialist State. It is prohibited by law to publish, sell, lend, borrow, issue, advertise, sell, or store these books. This prohibition applies to works of authors of Jewish or semi-Jewish origin, even if their works are not included in the above mentioned list, and it is also applicable to the literature in the newly acquired territories in the east.
--Reich Lierature Chamber document, 1935, and reprinted in
Children's Literature in Hitler's Germany, pg 236

[Yes, the quotation in Children's Literature has the word "sell" twice. If you're wondering why that quote should have anything to do with us in this day and age, consider recasting it with the Bush regime in mind: The Republican National Guard issues a list of harmful and undesireable literature containing all works of literature opposed to the cultural and political goals of the Holy American State. It is prohibited by law to publish, sell, lend, borrow, issue, advertise, sell, or store these books. This prohibition applies to works of authors of homosexual or non-Christian origin, even if their works are not included in the above mentioned list, and it is also applicable to the literature in the newly acquired territories in the Middle-East.

Well, . . . perhaps that's a bit fanciful. So far. --MN]

During this period there were massive book burnings in New York City of works declared "obscene" by courts. The burnings took place at New York Police Headquarters.

By Felix Salten. Born Siegmund Salzmann in Budapest, he wrote Bambi in 1923. Salten first came to notice in 1902 after writing a moving and well received obituary of Emile Zola. Salten eventually made a career for himself as a writer in Vienna where he became one of the leaders of the Young Vienna movement; a group of antinaturalistic writers. During his career he produced a variety of different works -- fiction, poetry, essays and travel writing -- and penned the pornographic fictional Memoirs of Josefine Mutzenbacher, a Viennese prostitute whom Salten follows through adventures in and about the streets of his adopted town. The Nazis banned Bambi in 1936. Austria, of course, proved no haven when the Germans marched in and Salten fled to Switzerland, where he died in 1945.

It should be noted that this novel is nothing like the sanitized Disney animation:

Gobo was standing boldly on the meadow looking around for the alders. Then he seemed to see them and to have discovered Him. Then the thunder crashed. Gobo leaped into the air at the report. He suddenly turned around and fled back to the thicket, staggering as he came. They stood there, petrified with terror, while he came on. They heard him gasping for breath. And as he did not stop but bounded wildly forward, they turned and surrounded him and all took flight. But poor Gobo dropped to the ground. Marena stopped close to him, Bambi and Faline a little farther off, ready to flee. Gobo lay with his bloody entrails oozing from his torn flank. He lifted his head with a feeble twisting motion.

Michael McGrorty, at the Library Dust web log, writes about the novel, "If this is a child's book, it is so only in the same way as Call of the Wild; as a book of life's lessons whose heroes are not men.

"Bambi is a book about animals, but about animals in a world of men: men who bring suffering and death to the forest world. In that sense it is one of the first works of ecological fiction as well as a work of psychology."

By anyone. The Quebec government of Maurice Duplessis had passed the Padlock Act (An Act Respecting Communistic Propaganda), which statute empowered the attorney general to close, for up to one year, any building that was used to disseminate "communism or bolshevism," even though these two terms were left undefined in the act.

The act also empowered the attorney general to confiscate and destroy any publication propagating these ideas, and anyone caught publishing, printing, or distributing such literature could have been imprisonned for up to a year; without any right to an appeal. The Supreme Court of Canada struck down the Padlock Act in 1957, in a case called Switzman vs. Elbling. The court said that the act made the propagation of communism a crime; and that this violated the division of powers between federal and provincial governments. The court declared that the power to pass criminal law belonged exclusively to Ottawa, hence, the Padlock Act was ultra vires and unconstitutional. The issue of censorship was raised by only two justices.

[Addendum (20 Dec 2002): The above is according to the source in which I first saw a report of this incident. However, in his book Yesterday's News, John Miller reports:

The Supreme Court decided that freedom of thought is as important to people's minds as breathing is to their physical existence, and said that no legislature can suffocate it.

I suppose the two justices who raised the issue of censorship might have written a separate opinion. --MN]

By George Orwell. A book based on his six months fighting with anarchists against the Franco forces in the Spanish Civil War. Censorship of this work seems to have begun even before he had written it. In Literary Lynching, Dorothy Bryant states that the reaction to Homage To Barcelona was orchestrated before Orwell even received the gunshot injury that ended his combat fitness. She describes how the communist version of a confrontation between communist and anarchist forces had been given play in international media. In that version of events, the anarchists were portrayed as being thoroughly pro-Fascist. As soon as Orwell was across the French border, The New Statesman newspaper contacted him for an article about his experiences, and then rejected the article. A review he was similarly invited to do was also rejected because it referred to his own experiences with the anarchist fighting brigade POUM. When Orwell arrived back in England, he contacted his usual publisher, Victor Gollancz, who had an option on the next three books by Orwell. The review rejected by New Statesman, however, had been published in New Leader, and Gollancz refused to publish Homage on the grounds that it would harm the fight against Fascism.

Ms. Bryant refers to this type of censorship as pre-lynching; in which a work is killed before it can even be printed. In July, however, Orwell met with Fredric Warburg, of Secker and Warburg, a leftist, albeit non-Stalinist, publishing house and they cut a deal. Homage To Barcelona was published in April 1938. Homage drew four favourable reviews, but the remainder of reviewers followed the lead of The Daily Worker, which Orwell had quoted extensively. The Daily Worker review was a "short, venomous dismissal". Most other reviews were buried in group reviews; which stifled most of the controversy and debate that would otherwise have boosted sales. The greatest stake used to impale Homage, however, was silence. A silence imposed by the center-right mainstream press that apparently feared to upset developing diplomatic relations between the Allies and Joseph Stalin, who this press was attempting to portray as Uncle Joe, Champion of Democracy. In the end only seven hundred copies were sold.

During a Germany-wide conference, the National Socialist Teachers Association finally agreed to establish hard and fast guidelines for the removal of inappropriate books and to implement these guidelines immediately. Among the seventy Jewish writers were:

• Alfred Döblin
• Ludwig Fulda
• Heinrich Heine
• Emil Ludwig
• Arthur Schnitzler
• Georg Simml
• Else Ury
• Jakob Wassermann
• Franz Werfel
• Stefan Zweig.

Among the forty "dissidents" were:

• Erich Kästler
• Jack London
• Lisa Tetzner

(See 1933)

By Mark Twain. It was banned by the government of Brazil as part of a crack down on communist and subversive works.

By Jean Renoir. This film was a dark tragicomedy which exposed the moral weakness rife among the landed gentry and French aristrocracy; those who, in Renoir's estimation, would be most suspected of being nazi collaborators in the event of an attack by Germany. Made in the uneasy period following the Munich agreement, it was released only weeks before the declaration of war and attracted the constant attention of the censors until it was finally banned as too demoralizing to be screened and as a likely cause of social disorder.

[As if being invaded by the nazis wouldn't have caused social disorder. --MN]

By John Steinbeck. Three copies were burned in St. Louis, Missouri, by official order. It was also banned in Kern County, California, starting that year; a ban that lasted at least thirteen years.

In a 1936 postcard to his friend Wilbur Needham, Steinbeck described this novel as "probably lousy." The book was published in 1939, and many censors have agreed with Steinbeck's assessment -- although for obviously different reasons. One of the most frequently challenged books in American history, Grapes of Wrath has been accused of "indecency" and "obscenity." It has been attacked for being "ungodly," for presenting women badly, and for portraying life "bestially."

On 15 Nov 1939, five out of nine library board members in East St. Louis, Illnois, voted to burn copies of The Grapes of Wrath on the library steps. That vote was later rescinded.

By Hollywood. The depiction of homosexuals in films was expressly forbidden by the Motion Picture Production Code. This ban could be circumvented by showing what Vito Russo, film-historian, called the harmless sissy. An effeminate man that could be only a fantasy creation because homosexuality had no official existance.

By the Franco Government. Spain purged all works by Ibsen this year.
(see 1881; 1890; 1892)

By Josef Goebbels. In taking stock of the system of controls on literature he found this system lacking. In a letter to all offices subordinate to The Reich Literature Chamber he issued an order that all undesireable books that hadn't been removed from libraries due to "oversight" be taken out. In addition to this decree, he included 169 typed pages of titles in a special category entitled: Harmful Books for the Young Person Under Eighteen. Another eleven pages listed publishers whose production had been stopped by the State because they had not been diligent enough in respecting censorship controls.

By DC Comics. This publisher of comic books announced the formation of a body to independently advise it on and approve the content of all DC comics. Although the publisher professed to high ideals and social responsibility, this board was created at least as much to counter the charges of anti-comic book critics, and as such it was a sop to the political correctness of the times.

[...] virtually every child in America is reading color "comic" magazines--a poisonous mushroom growth. [...] The bulk of these lurid publications depend for their appeal upon mayhem, murder, torture, and abduction ... Superman heroics, voluptuous females in scanty attire, blazing machine guns, hooded "justice" and cheap political propoganda were to be found on almost every page ... sadistic drivel ... badly written and badly printed--a strain on young eyes and young nervous systems--the effect of these pulp-paper nightmares is that of a violent stimulant. ... Unless we want a coming generation even more ferocious than the present one, parents and teachers throughout America must band together to break the "comic" magazine.
--Sterling North, 08 May 1940, Chicago Daily News article,
and reprinted in Comic Book Nation, pg 27

[...] the most dismaying mass of undiluted horror and prodigious impossibility ever visited on the sanity of a nation's youth.
--Fank Vlamos, American Mercury

By the U.S. Supreme Court. Considered to be the landmark case defining the free exercise of religion in the United States, it was all about the right of one faith to offend another. Jesse Cantwell, a Jehovah's Witness, was convicted of a crime because he played a phonograph record on the street that offended two Catholic men; the record had some especially nasty things to say about the Roman Catholic Church. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned Cantwell's conviction, ruling that religious liberty and free speech protect the right to offend. Writing for the Court, Justice Owen J. Roberts put the issue this way: "In the realm of religious faith, and in that of political belief, sharp differences arise. In both fields the tenets of one man may seem the rankest error to his neighbor. To persuade others to his own point of view, the pleader, as we know, at times, resorts to exaggeration, to vilification ... . But the people of this nation have ordained in the light of history, that, in spite of the probability of excesses and abuses, these liberties are, in the long view, essential to enlightened opinion and right conduct on the part of citizens of a democracy."

By Hannah Arendt. During the Second World War, this Jewish born activist worked energetically against fascism. However, she seemed to have been opposed to any kind of discrimination. This resulted in a distancing between herself and American Zionists who supported Ben Guiron's idea of a Jewish state. What Ms. Arendt was opposed to was the idea that Palestinians would be made second-class citizens. When she wrote about her opposition to this aspect of Zionism in her column in the German language paper Aufbau, the paper dropped her column.

[I cannot help but wonder in what state Israeli/Palestinian relations would be today if they had listened to her instead. --MN]

By Howard Fast. Banned from high school libraries in New York City because of Howard Fast's alleged Communist sympathies.

[Addendum (15 Mar 2003): Howard Fast died on 12 Mar 2003 in his home in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, at the age of 88. One obituary reported that he was also blacklisted in the 1950's, the McCarthy hey-day, and served three months in a federal prison for contempt of Congress in 1950. He was quoted as saying in a 1972 interview, "Since I believe that a person's philosophical point of view has little meaning if it is not matched by being and action, I found myself willingly wed to an endless series of unpopular causes, experiences which I feel enriched my writing as much as they depleted other aspects of my life." --MN]

By Anne Frank. It was expurgated by Otto Frank, her father, and sole surviving member of the Frank family of the concentration camps. (Anne and her sister and mother were forwarded on to the Bergen-Belsen camp by way of Auschwitz; her father seems to have been kept at Auschwitz.) He and the publisher decided to remove parts that they felt were unsuitable for publication. The material, some five pages worth, was finally included in a new edition that came out in the year 2000. The Diary of Anne Frank has faced a number of challenges over the years because of the sexual content. In fact, some of the material excised from the original 1,500 copy print run dealt with Anne's sexual awakening. Other excised content dealt with her Jewish identity and her ambivalence about the loveless marriage of her parents. By the time the new edition was released the book had sold some twenty-five million copies in fifty-five languages.

[It seems likely to me that Otto Frank excised the sexual and personal material to avoid embarrasment, and the material about Anne's Jewish identity was excised, perhaps, because he could not deal with what he perceived as a lack of faith. This, however, is just a non-opinion off the top of my head. --MN]

By anybody. In this year, a number of observers operating under the apprehension that there was an upsurge in juvenile delinquency, and noting a rise in the number of crime comic books at the newstands, branded comic books a serious menace. According to my source on this particular movement:

In August of that year the Faternal Order of Police publicly criticized those comic books that "glorify criminals." At their convention in Indianapolis, the police condemned such comic books as being "one of the contributing factors to the cause of juvenile delinquency and urged citizens to fight for the abolition of this "unrestrained, bold, vicious, salacious, and immoral" literature that was "detrimental to the youth of the nation." Law enforcement officials and court judges around the nation echoed this call to civic action.
--Bradford W. Wright, Comic Book Nation, pg 87/88

(See the entry on juvenile delinquents in the Encyclopedia Michael Nellis.)

By James T. Farrell. On the grounds that it was obscene.

By Leon Trotsky. It was banned in Canada

This was a difficult year for comic books with a censorship movement gaining national momentum.

• May: In Indianopolis civic groups and city officials gained the cooperation of local magazine distributors to effectively ban twenty-five titles from newsstands; police and community leaders in Detroit effected a ban of thirty-six titles;

• June: Frederic Wertham reported to the New York Times that the most articulate and vigorous efforts to control the industry were gathering sup port in San Diego County, California; the National Congress of Parents and Teachers planned a country wide publicity campaign against the medium, recommending a code of standards for publishers and encouraging city officials to enact controls on the product;

• October: fifty cities had enacted measures to ban or censor comic books, which measures ranged from voluntary community efforts to enacting ordinances and which threatened to lock comic book publishers out of substantial local markets, and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors made it illegal to sell crime comic books to minors and Chigaco, Hartford, Topeka, Des Moines, and Birmingham adopted similar measures;

• January 1949, to carry this movement over into the new year, the U.S. Army Character Guidance Council advised army puchasing officers to refuse to sell those comic books which went "beyond the line of decency", although they did permit discretion to local officers.

One good note for publishers that year was the U.S. Supreme Court ruling of Winters v: New York, in which that court struck down a state statute prohibiting the distribution of those magazines primarily composed of criminal news, bloodshed, or lust, as too vague and overbroad. Justice Reed, who wrote the majority (6 - 3) opinion called into question claims by the defense that such massed materials incited criminal tendencies in the consumer. That ruling killed the momentum of this movement and other bills still in the pipeline simply died in session.

[You know, it's kind of funny how the more things change the more they stay the same. In the material from which I got the above, for the October timeframe, Mr. Wright wrote:

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors lauded an ordinance that made it a misdeameanor, punishable by a $500 fine or up to six months in jail for anyone to "sell, give or in any way furnish to anyone under eighteen a book, magazine or other publication" that depicted "an account of crime ... through the use of drawings or photographs."

That sounds a lot like the censorship legislation meant to fight kiddie-porn. Of course, there's only so many ways you can write up the language in a bill, and courts require that laws be very specific. Also similar to contemporary movements is the dubious claims Justice Reed called into question that are still being used today by anti-T.V. violence advocates; and these recent claims are just as dubious. --MN]

By Joseph Stalin. In this year Trofim Lysenko's ideas were proclaimed to be official state teachings. Lysenko's critics were purged, journals were subjected to censorship, and textbooks were rewritten to bring them into line with state dogma. Hundreds of Soviet scientists were demoted or dismissed, although some few received prison sentences. Among other things, those imprisoned were accused of the following:

Morganism (genetics)	Weissmannism (genetics)	Mendelism (genetics)
Anti-Michurinism	Anti-Marxism	Anti-Darwinism
Idealism		Formalism
Mechanism	Racism	Cosmopolitanism
Sabotage	Unproductiveness	Metaphysics
Alienation from practices	Reactionary views	Groveling before the West

In reality, the only thing they had done was to oppose the folly of Lysenko's anti-intellectualism.

[That charge of anti-Darwinism was a nice touch of double-think, given that Lysenko at least partially embraced Lamarkianism. --MN]

By high school students. Under the auspices of parents and teachers, some two thousand copies of various comic books were piled in the courtyard at St. Patrick's Parochial School, Binghamton, New York, and set ablaze. The event had been staged by community leaders as part of a boycott against comic books in which the focus was on sex and crime. Elsewhere in the state, the Bishop of the Albany Catholic Diocese encouraged all catholics to boycott dealers selling graphic novels with "sensational details" of crime and sex.

Other bonfires followed soon after that at the Peter and Paul Parochial School, Auburn, NY, and St. Cyril's Parish School in Chicago.

[I can sort of see their point in this one. According to:

Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America
Bradford W. Wright -2001
ISBN 0-8018-6514-X
Dewey # 741.5 W947C

. . . the comic book industry underwent a post-war growth spurt in which everybody and his dog was jumping on the bandwagon. Superheroes had become passé and the new fad was crime comics. Some issues of which featured violence literally on half the pages. Not even I am going to pretend that such gratutitous depictions of violence can possibly be for any artistic purpose. It was, however, free enterprise. --MN]

By the United Nations. Although the Soviet Bloc, South Africa, and Saudi Arabia all abstained from voting, the motion to adopt passed without a dissenting vote.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration o f the common people, . . .

Now, therefore, The General Assembly

Proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations . . .

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights . . .

Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the security of person.

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude . . .

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law. . . .

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile.

By Norman Mailer. Banned in Canada by personal order of the Minister of National Revenue, who admitted that he had not read the book through. "I read the parts my staff had marked. I thought they were disgusting." The book had been a best seller in Canada for ten months before the banning.

James Joyce is allowed into Canada for the first time after 26 years on the prohibited importations list, and 16 years after it was cleared of obscenity charges in the U.S. But 505 books remain banned, including short stories by de Maupassant.
(see 1920)

By Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare, respectively. Some Jewish parents, protesting that Oliver Twist violated their children's rights to an education free of religious bias, sued to have both books removed from New York City public schools. The suit failed. During the challenge, opponents suggested Oliver Twist offered an opportunity to discuss the pervasive anti-Semitism in England during Dickens's lifetime, and which was beginning to fade before his death.

By James Baldwin. Randall Kenan wrote of this incident in the biography James Baldwin, on pages 80 and 81,

Though perhaps not Baldwin's best novel, this somewhat melodramatic story of male sexual love and betrayal required considerable artistic and personal courage on his part. Daring to write from the perspective of a white American and to portray gay love in exactly the same way that straight love was dealt with in the novels of the day, Baldwin found himself rejected by both his agent and his publisher. Helen Strauss advised him to "burn" the mansuscript--the two never worked together again--and Knopf rejected the novel as "repugnant." Even by the considerably more restrained standards of the 1950s, the book is discreet; it conains no explicit sex scenes, but apparently just the concept of a love story between males was too much for the Knopf editors to bear. To Baldwin, the contretemps was proof that the United States was, as he would put it in "Down at the Cross," an "antisexual" nation and confirmation of the accuracy of his portrayal of David, the blond, all-American narrator of the story, who rejects any hope for his own future happiness and (indirectly and albeit unintentionally) helps sentence Giovanni to death because of his inability to admit to himself that he is attracted to men.

Although this might have been just a business decision keeping with the mores of the time, it appears very much to amount to a literary lynching. For a look at how homosexuality was portrayed and regarded during that period, I reccommend:

Homosexuality on Stage Nicholas de Jongh -1992 ISBN 0-415-03363-2 pbk 0-415-03362-4 Dewey # 822.9109353 D327

Lives of Notable Gay Men and Lesbians: James Baldwin Randall Kenan -1994 ISBN 0-7910-2301-X Dewey # 818.5409 B181K

By Karl Marx (Das Kapital was co-written with Engels). From 1950 to 1953 Marx's works were heavily criticised in the United States. The Boston Public Library faced challenges to get their copies removed but the trustees kept the books by a 3-2 vote.
(see 1929)

By J.D. Salinger. In what would prove to be the first among many challenges to this work, The New Yorker magazine refused to print excerpts from this yet to be published book; even though it had published a number of Salinger stories and would print others in the future.

By Ernest Hemingway. The book was banned in Ireland in this year.
(see 1930; 1960)

A comic book, for a depiction of Santa Claus flying in his sleigh which was being pulled by a cupid and a ballet dancer. A placard on the sleigh read: Just Divorced. The Attorney General of Massachussetts said of it, "In my opinion it desecrates Christmas." He threatened newstand owners with prosecution if they sold the issue and it disappeared from the newstands.

The following works were banned for immorality:

• Anatole France's A Mummer's Tale,
• Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, and Across the River and Into the Trees,
• John Steinbeck, all his works (also for subversion),
• Emile Zola, all his works,
• William Faulkner, most of his works.

By Communists and Communist sympathizers. Between March and July 1953, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations held extensive hearings that focused on the U.S. Information Libraries around the world. At the same time, the U.S. State Department ordered books removed from the Information Libraries' shelves that had been written by Communits or sympathizers. Hundreds of works, both fiction and non-fiction, were removed and some of them were burned. This was part of the movement referred to as McCarthyism.

By Walt Disney. They were banned in East Berlin because Mickey was said to be an "anti-Red rebel."

By Aristophanes. Banned in the U.S. for "indecency".
(see A.D. 66, 1967)

The University of Toronto shuts down its "Art Room," where for years students had had to certify that they were free of "mental problems" before reading works such as Ulysses and Such is My Beloved by Morley Callaghan or books by Havelock Ellis, or the Marquis de Sade. The books were moved to the open stacks or the rare-books room as appropriate.

By Mary Shelley. South Africa's apartheid regime banned a number of classic books; including this one. The book was banned there as "indecent, objectionable, or obscene".

[Having read it, and just recent to this writing, I can testify that by contemporary standards it is absolutely not indecent or obscene. Objectionable? Well, there is nothing that cannot be found offensive by someone, somewhere. --MN]

Customs banned Peyton Place from entering Canada. Dell Books appeals the ruling to a tribunal of the Tariff Board, which agrees it isn't immoral. The Tribunal suggests that Customs can't do the job properly and that the task should be given to another body.

[A bone of contention that still crops up today in anti censorship-by-Customs polemics. The only thing Customs can say in reply is that they don't make the rules and have no authority to interpret them, they can only enforce them. This -- however true and correct it might be -- does not explain the selective prosecution of homosexually slanted bookstores while mainstream stores are left alone. --MN]
(see 26 Feb 1989; Feb 1992; 1993; 1993; 15 Dec 2000; 04 Mar 2002; 23 Mar 2004)

Banned from Toronto public schools. Not, it seems, due to the text, but rather because of the illustrations. At least according to a study done by Daniel Braithwaite. A few samples of those illustrations can be seen here.

The Alabama chapter of that organization was sued by the state Attorney General's office to try to prevent them from operating in Alabama. The suit was filed under a state law that required certain information to be filed with the government, including a list of members. During the course of the hearing, the NAACP refused to produce the demanded records and was held in contempt of court. The conviction was reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court in a unanimous ruling, which was important for two reasons: First, it established that an organization could defend the constitutional rights of its members; second, it equated the right to "freedom of association" to other First Amendment rights.
(see 1959; 1966)

Publisher. He was convicted on four counts by the District Court for the Southern District of New York for sending "obscene" material through the mail in violation of Federal laws. This was the start of a long saga of persecution and court challenges derived from censorship and harassment by the U.S. Post Office.

By Lawrence Ferlinghetti, owner of the City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco. Allan Ginsberg had written this poem during 1955, and it came to define the Beat Generation; breaking with contemporary literary tradition in form and subject matter, it had repetitive, run-on sentences, discussed drug use, homosexuality, and an alienated generation. Mr. Ferlinghetti published the book on this day with the British printer Villiers. The American Civil Liberties Union assured him that they would defend him in court if the government challenged the book.

Word about the controversial poetry collection spread, and a government crackdown began in Mar 1957, when Chester MacPhee, San Francisco Collector of Customs, seized more than 500 copies of the book. He was quoted saying in Howl on Trial: The Battle for Free Expression, as saying: "The words and the sense of the writing is obscene ... you wouldn"t want your children to come across it".

To avoid Customs' jurisdiction, Mr. Ferlinghetti had the next edition printed in the United States, and Customs dropped its case. In Jun 1957, undercover inspectors bought copies of it from City Lights Bookstore clerk Shigeyoshi Murao and arrested him, although they later dropped his charges. Mr. Ferlinghetti was out of town at the time, but turned himself in after the Juvenile Bureau of the San Francisco Police Department issued a warrant for his arrest. People v. Ferlinghetti went to trial in late Aug, Judge Clayton W. Horn presiding, without a jury, in San Francisco Municipal Court. Mr. Ferlinghetti was charged with willfully and lewdly printing, publishing, and selling obscene writings. His lawyers had to prove the book had literary merit as a whole and did not appeal to "prurient interest," as per the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Roth v. United States. The defense team called nine expert witnesses, including literature professors, editors, and book reviewers from the San Francisco Examiner and The New York Times. They testified that the work was a significant and enduring contribution to society and literature, calling it a "prophetic work" and "thoroughly honest." Three witnesses took the stand for the prosecution: a San Francisco police officer, an English professor, and a teacher who found the poetry had no literary merit. On 03 Oct 1957, Mr Ferlinghetti was acquitted; Judge Horn ruled that Howl and Other Poems was not obscene, but contained "redeeming social importance" and was therefore protected by the First Amendment.
(see 03 Oct 2007)

By Mark Twain. Originally expected to be banned by Twain because he poked fun at Victorian morality, this book was challenged for reasons altogether unforseeable from 1885. In the 1950s it was being challenged for being racist. In '57, the book came under fire from the NAACP which brought pressure to bear against a New York City high school to have it removed from the school's shelves. In doing so, they brought up a radical new argument to use in the arsenal of censorship: It demeaned the stature of the black man. Black author Ralph Ellison explained: "Jim's friendship with Huck comes across as that of a boy for another boy rather than as the friendship of an adult for a junior; thus there is implicit in it not only a violation of the manners sanctioned for relations between Negroes and whites, there is a violation of our conception of adult maleness."
(see 1885; 1905; 1984; 1994; 1995)

By D.H. Lawrence. Another long time target of the censors. The U.S. Post Office had declared the novel obscene and non-mailable. A federal judge overturned the Post Office's decision and questioned the right of the postmaster general to decide what was or was not obscene. This same year, the book was censored in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, when police seized copies of the book because it was obscene. At the time it was also barred from entry into the U.S. The seizure was part of an action that brought the book to trial in an effort to have a similar ban implemented in Canada. It was three years before the book could be printed in Canada.
(see 1960)

A picture book for children. After protests by the White Citizens' Council it was put on the reserved shelf in Alabama public libraries because it was thought to promote racial integration. In the story, a white-haired rabbit is due to wed a black-haired rabbit.

By Edward Albee. It opened without problem in Germany but met resistance in the U.S. when Rockport, Massachussetts, vilified the play for its violence and homosexual overtones.

By Hannah Arendt. Asked to do an op/ed piece by Commentary about the forced desegregation of white-only schools in the American south, Ms. Arendt focused on reports of children, particularly little girls, being spat on. Ms. Arendt's commentary was critical of the administration for selecting children to run the gauntlet of hate and intolerance. As a result, her commentary was not printed. Ms. Arendt's opposition you must understand was not to desegregation, but to the choice of victims selected to be the targets. Despite support for her piece by Norman Podhoretz, then editor for the magazine and who considered her ideas "brilliant and original", publication was delayed and delayed again by his colleagues; while a smear campaign was started involving leaked gossip about her "racist" opinions. The article was finally printed in Dissent; and won a Longview Foundation Award. In spite of which reaction to it was extremely vitriolic. Some so abusive that Ms. Arendt refused to address it.

By Adolf Eichmann. He began this work while he was in prison in Israel. It was sequestered in Israeli archives by David Ben Gurion at the motion of the prosecutor at the trial of Adolf Eichmann. The document was unsealed and made public forty years later in August 1999. As in 1959, there were protestations against releasing it because it might elicit sympathy for Eichmann.

[Shit. Release it in 1959 or 1999; what's the difference? Eichmann was executed, dummy! You think all the sympathy in the world is going to bring him back? Or legitimize the monstrosity of the Holocaust? Grow up, fool! --MN]

The Florida chapter came under investigation by the Legislative Investigation Committee to investigate various organizations for Communist infiltration; as authorized by the Florida legislature. The Miami branch of the NAACP was specifically selected along with other groups. The president of the Miami NAACP refused to produce the membership records or to himself cross-check names of members against a list of suspected Communists and was convicted of contempt. This conviction was reversed by a 5-4 vote of the U.S. Supreme Court.
(see 1956; 1966)

By Egyptian writer and Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz. Alternative titles for the work are: Children of our alley and Children of the Alley; the work is described thusly at Wikipedia, circa Oct 2006:

The story recreates the history of the monotheistic Abrahamic religions, allegorised against the setting of an imaginary Cairene alley. Gabalawi being an allegory for God, the first four sections retell, in succession, the stories of Adam (Adham) and how he was favored by Gabalawi over the latter's other sons, including Idris (Iblis), Moses (Gabal), Jesus (Rifa'a) and Muhammad (Qasim). Families of each son settle in one part of the alley, symbolic for Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The protagonist of the book's fifth section, Arafa, who symbolises modern science and, significantly, comes after all prophets while all of their followers claiming Arafa as one of their own.

It was originally published in serialised form in the Cairo daily Al-Ahram in Arabic, but met with severe opposition from religious authorities, and publication in book form was prohibited in Egypt. It was first printed in Lebanon in 1962, with an English translation by Philip Stewart being published in 1981.

By D.H. Lawrence. This novel was the subject of a trial in England. Penguin Books was prosecuted for publishing an obscene book. Penguin won the case, and the book was allowed to be sold in England.
(see 1959)

By Ernest Hemingway. Banned from schools in San Jose, California, and all Hemingway's books were withdrawn from Riverside school libraries.
(see 1930; 1953)

By Disney Films. A minor character in the 1940 release of Fantasia, this centaur was cut from the 1960 re-release. Sunflower was a negro centaur depicted in a prejudicial Aunt Jemima stereotype, and shown acting as a maid-servant to a white female centaur. Whereas the three scenes with Sunflower were no doubt removed because this depiction was patently racist, in subsequent years Disney was to deny the scenes ever existed at all. The one screen shot available through the link above was eventually recovered by The Memory Hole website.

By Henry Morris and John C. whitcomb Jr. It was Mr. Morris who seemed to bear the greater consequences of writing this work although I have seen no mention of it being challenged or banned. The book was an argument against the progressive creationist view and asserted that the chronology of Bishop Ussher was basically correct. The progressive creationist view was one which attempted to reconcile biblical accounts with scientific accounts of stellar, solar system, and human evolutionary systems. The Ussher system was based on strict biblical literalism. The Genesis Flood accounted for the fossil record by relying on the work of George McCready Price who maintained that the geologic column was laid down by the Noahic flood.

When the book came out, Morris's pastor sensed in the work the potential for great controversy in the congregation, and Morris was removed from his position as Sunday School teacher and essentially thrown out of the church. Eventually, the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, where he was employed, also brought pressure to bear against Morris to leave his teaching position there. He did leave that institute in 1970.

A group called Texans for America opposed textbooks that referred students to books by the Nobel Prize-winning author.
(see 10 Nov 2003)

His writings in support of the Anti-Imperealism League and critical of U.S. foreign policy and warfare had been suppressed since 1901 at least. Many of his satiric polemics were subjected, first: to literary lynching by his publisher, Harper and Brothers, and second: revisionism, effected after his death by Albert Bigelow Paine and Clara Clemens, his daughter. This was done out of commercial considerations.

Censorship of Twain's anti-imperealism writings began to unravel in 1959-60 under the stinging lash of censorship charges levied by, of all institutions, the Soviet Union. A number of anthologies were released to refute the claims.

However, it was only after Ms. Clemens passed away and Twain's documents and manuscripts were willed to the University of California and full access was granted to academics that the full scope of the half-century of censorship was revealed. The revisionism in particular was insidious and tainted the use of Twain's material as recently as 1995, at least, when The War Prayer was incorrectly attributed to his Civil War memoirs in the Ulster Choral Society of Kingston presentation of the musical adaptation by Herbert Haufrecht, The War Prayer Oratorio. Probably as a result of the 1980 misattribution in the television adaptation of "The Private History of a Campaign that Failed", to which The War Prayer had been appended. The War Prayer was a commentary on the religious support of war and was written with anti-imperealism in mind.
(see 1905)

By James Baldwin. Banned in New Orleans as obscene. Despite that, it topped the hardcover best-seller lists for weeks at a time. When the paperback version was released in 1963 it became the second largest-selling book for that year.
(see 1963)

Challenged by Max Rafferty, then California's Superintendent of Public Instruction. His followers combed through the book and found 150 "dirty" entries of the 8000 in it. It was banned in some communities and even burned in one.
(see 1987)

By North Carolina. The state legislature passed the Speaker Ban Law which barred communists from speaking on the campuses of the state. It was declared unconstitutional by a federal court in 1968.

By James Baldwin. Banned from New Orleans Public Library on the grounds it was obscene. The ban ended in 1964 after a lawsuit.
(see 1962)

By James Baldwin. It was challenged in South Dakota because it "tears down Christian principles." This play was written in response to the lynching of Emmett Till in 1957. This black 14-year-old was kidnapped by two white men, who beat him, shot him, and then mutilated his corpse before throwning it into the Tallahatchee River. All for the high crime of being impertinent to a white woman. On his way out of her store he had said to her, "Bye, Babe."

By George Orwell. A survey revealed that Animal Farm was challenged in the state of Wiscosin by the John Birch Society, on the grounds that it used the phrase, "masses will revolt".
(see 1968; 1979; 1987)

By J.D. Salinger. In Columbus, Ohio, this book was declared "antiwhite" and "obscene". However, a courageous superintendent stood up for the competence of teachers and librarians in deciding what to choose for reading material.
(see 1978)

By students at Berkeley University. The movement got its start in Sproul Plaza in response to suppression of speech.

By Henry Miller. The distributors of Tropic of Cancer were prosecuted in six American states between 1938 and 1961, before the Supreme Court ruled in 1964 that the book was not obscene. Tropic of Cancer and all of Henry Miller's works were banned from entering the United States until 1961 when the ban was lifted. It was also banned in South Africa from 1964 to 1993. Some other Henry Miller novels that were banned are:

• Black Spring: Malawi 1980; South Africa 1991-1993
• My Life and Times: South Africa 1993-1994
• Nexus: South Africa 1991-1993
• Nights of Love and Laughter: South Africa (under Apartheid)
• Quiet Days in Clichy: Australia 1963; South Africa 1968 (Dutch trans); Malawi 1980
• Sexus: Norway 1957; Malawi 1972; South Africa 1991-1993
• The Rosy Crucifixion: South Africa 1964-1994; Australia 1970
• The World of Sex: South Africa 1956 and 1979
• Tropic of Capricorn: South Africa 1957-1993

By the U.S. Supreme Court. Freedom of the press was in serious jeopardy with juries in the deep South having already awarded or being poised to award unprecedented libel judgments in favor of public officials against major news organizations that had reported on the civil rights movement. The Supreme Court, in its decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, reversed one such judgment and boldly trumpeted "the central meaning of the First Amendment"; that the freedom of the press, above everything else, protects the right of the citizenry to engage in "uninhibited, robust and wide-open debate" about the important issues of the day.

Pope Paul VI made substantial reforms to church censorship. He changed the name of the Holy Office to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and abolished the position of censor (established in 1559). It was announced that the Index would not be renewed, that the penalty of excommunication would no longer have the force of law, but that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith would occasionally publish lists of books that were not recommended for reading by Roman Catholics.

[It seems that the Congregation, over the years, has taken upon itself to go much further than merely publishing list of books best avoided by the devout. In 2001 they hounded an authorial priest out of the church. At the same time, they were also persecuting Father Nugent and Sister Jeanine Grammick for respecting the human dignity of fags and lezzies instead of blindly condemning homosexuality and homosexuals as "morally disordered" and "intrinsically evil". --MN]
(see 1542; 1559)

By playwrights. The New York ban of plays dealing with homosexuality was terminated.

By William S. Burroughs. The book was tried in Boston on this day to determine if it was obscene. The book contains the following rude words to a total of 234 times in 235 pages:

• ass,
• shit,
• cunt,
• fuck,
• prick,
• asshole,
• cock-sucker.

Witnesses who testified on behalf of Naked Lunch included:

• Norman Mailer,
• Allen Ginsberg,
• John Ciardi,
• Paul Hollander,
• Gabriele B. Jackson,
• Norman Holland,
• Stanley E. Eldred,
• John B. Sturrock, and
• Thomas H. Jackson.

The book was also tried in Los Angeles two weeks after this case and was cleared by Municipal Judge Allen G. Campbell, who ruled, in part: "It appears to me to abundantly clear that book, in almost every page goes substantially beyond the customary limits of candor can't in its description and representation of nudity, sex an excretion and that applying contemporary standards appeal taken as a whole is to prurient interest, that to such shameful or morbid interest. I cannot say that its predominant appeal is such or that it is matter which is utterly without redeeming social importance, that as a whole. It appears to me, therefore, and I find that the material is not obscene within the meaning of Statute." These were the only two American censorship actions against Naked Lunch up to this particular date.

By the white supremacist state. On this day, some six hundred demonstrators attempted to march from Selma, Alabama to the state capitol in Montgomery to protest racial discrimination at the ballot box. They were brutally attacked by local and state police. This incident was so horrific it is now remembered as "Bloody Sunday"; it ignited public sympathy and led to the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.

By dissenters. Three junior high school students in Des Moines, Iowa, were suspended from school for wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. Several students had worn the armbands to school, but three refused to remove them when ordered to do so by the principal, and they were sent home. One of them, thirteen year-old Mary Tinker, brought a law suit against the school district with the help of the ACLU. In 1969 that suit was heard before the U.S. Supreme Court, and the court handed down the landmark ruling of Tinker v: Des Moines, which is commonly summarized by the quotation, "Students do not shed their contitutional rights to freedom of expression at the schoolhouse gate."

Ms. Tinker's dissent and subsequent lawsuit raised a firestorm of controversy. Ms. Tinker would later detail some of the attacks against her and her family thusly in her book, The Courage of Their Convictions:

• People threw red paint at our house, and we got lots of calls.
• We got all kinds of threats to our family, even death threats. They even threatened my little brothers and sisters, which was really sick.
• People called our house on Christmas Eve and said the house would be blown up by morning.
• One night [a radio talk-show host in Des Moines] said that if anyone wanted to use a shotgun on my father, he would pay for the court costs if anything happened.
• I was leaving for school one morning, on my way out the door, and the phone rang and I picked it up. This woman said, Is this Mary Tinker? And I said yes. And she said, I'm going to kill you!

By Harper Lee. The Hanover County School Board got more than it bargained for after deciding to censor Harper Lee's classic novel of Southern race relations. The novel was decribed as "immoral" and "improper" and was removed from the shelves of county school libraries by unanimous vote in 1966. the Richmond News Leader, in response, offered to send free copies of the book to the first 50 school children who asked for one. These books were paid for out of the Beadle Bumble Fund. This newspaper fund takes its name from Dickens's Oliver Twist character and was formed to redress the stupidities of public officials. All 50 copies were given away.

To add to the embarrassment of the Hanover School Board, Harper Lee wrote a letter to the editor of the News Leader condemning the censorship.

Tibet was occupied by Communist China in 1950. In 1966, the Cultural Revolution wrought havoc in this country by having the Red Guards invade the leading monastery in Tibet and destroy frescoes and irreplaceable historic manuscripts. Heavy damage was inflicted elsewhere in the country, as well. Including the burning of manuscripts both religious and historic.

By John Maclelland. Written in 1749, this book was finally cleared of obscenity charges by the U.S. Supreme Court.

This Indonesian writer found out from a newspaper fragment that was making the rounds of Tangerang prison that all of his writings had been banned by the government. He would eventually spend more than fourteen years in prison for writing critically of the political situation in post-colonial Indonesia. His works were still banned by the time he was released from prison in 1981, although he was never told why they were banned in the first place. In late 1980, when Index On Censorship was going to press with the essay of his time in jail, the staff also learned that 10,000 copies of his novels had been publicly consigned to the flames.

This time the chapter in Claiborne County, Mississippi. It had launched a boycott of local businesses because it felt members were being treated unfairly by local government and businesses. The boycott mainly involved picketing and speeches; there was, however, some violent acts and threats. A number of white business owners banded together to sue the organization and various other boycotters on the grounds the action interfered with their businesses and caused monetary losses. The Mississippi Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision which ruled the boycott illegal. That decision was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court which recognized that the non-violent tactics were protected by the First Amendment.
(see 1956; 1959)

By Aldous Huxley. A teacher in the state of Maryland, U.S., was fired for assigning the book as required reading. It was also described in one a challenge during this year as "sordid, immoral, and obscene," and was challenged for "vilifying the family" and encouraging students "to adopt a lifestyle of drugs, sex, and conformity."

By Nathaniel Hawthorne. A school principal mounted a successful challenge after ruling that the book was too "frank" and "revealing".
(see 1850; 1852; 1977)

By the Beatles. After John Lennon stated "We’re more popular than Jesus now", hundreds of people gathered to burn Beatles albums. His statement had been misinterpreted as irreligious; Lennon had been referring to the decline of spirituality in American teens.

By Aristophanes. Banned by military dictatorship in Greece.
(see A.D. 66, 1955)

By the African Ballet. This troupe was prohibited from dancing in Montreal because they performed bare-breasted.

By George Orwell. A survey indicated that Animal Farm was frequently challenged in the state of New York because "Orwell was a communist".
(see 1963; 1979; 1987)

By Eldridge Cleaver. It was banned from black studies courses in California public schools. The grounds cited for the challenge were offensive language, sexual content, and anti-American sentiment. The work was reportedly also challenged during this year in three other unspecified locations.

By Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia. On 18 Mar the U.S. began a campaign of "secret bombings" in Cambodia, ostentibly against Viet Namese forces supposedly hiding there in the jungles of the border region. On 26 Mar the government of Cambodia publicly condemned the bombing and strafing of Cambodian peasants, and on this day, Prince Sihanouk repudiated American propagana within the U.S. and asked the press to tell the world of the military misadventurism. Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman wrote of this incident in Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media:

Prince Sihanouk called a press conference on March 28 in which he emphatically denied reports circulating in the United States that he "would not oppose U.S. bombings of Communist targets within my frontiers." "Unarmed and innocent people have been the victims of U.S. bombs," including "the latest bombing, the victims of which were Khmer peasants, women, and children in particular." He then issued an appeal to the international press: "I appeal to you to publicize abroad this very clear stand of Cambodia -- that is, I will in any case oppose all bombings on Cambodian territory under whatever pretext."

It will come as no surprise that his appeal went unanswered. Furthermore, this material has been suppressed up to the present time [1988], apart from the dissident literature. The standard position within the mainstream, adopted by defenders of the bombing and critics as well, is that "Sihanouk did not protest" (William Shawcross). When the "secret bombings" became public knowledge in 1973, it was claimed that Sihanouk had privately authorized bombing of Vietnamese bases near the border areas. True or false, that is irrelvant to the suppression of Sihanouk's impassioned appeals, which referred to the bombing of Khmer peasants. Furthermore, as we observed in earlier discussion, "while commentators and media analysts may draw whatever conclusons they please from the conflicting evidence available, this does not entitle them to suppress what is, by any standards, crucial evidence, in this case, Sihanouk's attempt to arouse international protest over the U.S. bombings of the civilian society."

By Dick and Tommy Smothers. This was the first day of their show not airing due to censorship. Although popular, they were controversial, and had lampooned the Lyndon Johnson administration and the Vietnam War, and had begun to satirize Richard Nixon, the new president, as well. However, the show had generated some complaints from viewers over the years, and CBS, who had gotten fed up with fielding the complaints from affiliates, took it upon themselves to enact a policy of prior restraint. The Smothers would be required to send their show to the network for approval several days before airing. When the 06 April taping supposedly arrived at the network late, they cancelled the show. Some people speculated that CBS had caved in to political pressure, however, in a bid to curry favour with the Nixon administration. The banned taping apparently included a skit deriding congressional hearings about television content.

[Or were they popular because they were controversial? --MN]

By Pierre Vallieres. This political tract about Quebec politics and society was written while he was in jail in the U.S. The book was confiscated when the writer was accused of sedition, and an edition published in France was not allowed into Canada. A U.S. edition was published in English in 1971.

By Kurt Vonnegut Jr. A teacher was fired for assigning this collection of short stories to her eleventh grade English class; because the book promoted "the killing off of elderly people and free sex." The teacher sued and won in Parducci v. Rutland (M.D.Ala 1970).

By Stanislaw Baranczak. This poem was to appear in a volume of poetry being published, but the editor responsible for the ideological profile of works being published suggested to Mr. Baranczak that he alter the poem. The reason for the demand was that Poland was suffering from a shortage of meat and liver-sausage was the cheapest thing available in the pork-butcher shops. The editor insisted that the poem suggested that the average Pole often ate liver-sausage and that people might believe from reading the poem that there was a shortage of meat. Mr. Baranczak replied that there was indeed a meat-shortage. The editor remained adamant, however, and he pulled the poem rather than alter it. In an essay written for Index On Censorship Magazine in 1981, Mr. Baranczak wrote:

Rather than allow myself to be persuaded to replace liver-sausage with something like salami or steak, I withdrew the entire poem from the volume.

For me, this whole story of the liver-sausage embodied the symbolic beginning of my writing career in the 1970s -- years which, whether I liked it or not, were dominated by censorship problems: coping with the censorship, bypassing the censorship, and, finally, open confrontation with the censorship.

By Zoia Horn. Ms. Horn is, "the first librarian who spent time in jail for a value of our profession," according to American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom director Judith Krug. Her case began when she was unexpected visited in her home by FBI agents who asked her to answer some questions and to look at some photographs. She refused and was given a subpoena from the grand jury. At the time she was the chief reference librarian at Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. She subsequently testified before the grand jury, later describing it the incident in her memoirs by writing that she had felt, "nasty, ugly and alone, watching myself being turned into an informer on neighbors and friends."

In 1972, she was required to testify in the trial of The Harrisburg Seven; anti-Viet Nam war activists who had been accused of plotting to blow up tunnels under Washington D.C., as well as to kidnap Dr. Henry Kissinger, then President Nixon's national security adviser, to hold him for a ransom of an end to bombing in Southeast Asia.

Ms. Horn, an anti-war activist herself, decided that she could not be a part of the trial in good conscience and took a stand on the First Amendment, refusing to testify about what material they had been accessing. She was jailed for twenty days. Her time in jail was cut short from the three months it was expected to be when the defense was forced to rest its case prematurely.

By George Carlin. When Mr. Carlin delivered this comedy piece at a show in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he was arrested on charges of disturbing the peace. He was exonerated when a Wisconsin judge dismissed the case on the grounds that while the words cited in the routine were indecent, the routine was also free speech; that and the lack of any disturbance. The routine was later broadcast by a New York City radio station, and that incident resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, in 1978, that upheld the government's authority to punish indecent speech aired outside of the safe harbor.

For the record, the seven dirty words cited by Mr. Carlin are: piss, shit, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits.

By Kurt Vonnegut. The book was burned in Drake, North Dakota. It was also banned in Rochester, Michigan because the novel 'contains and makes references to religious matters'.
(see 1985)

By Boston Women's Health Book Collective. Originally published in 1970 under the title Women and Their Bodies, this was the first commercial edition of the book. The confrontational language of the 1970 edition, such as this extract:

We as women are redefining competence: A doctor who behaves in a male chauvinist way is not competent, even if he has medical skills. We have decided that health can no longer be defined by an elite group of white, upper-middle-class men. It must be defined by us.

. . . launched the women's health movement. The book's bracing candor and graphic sexual content spurred the Rev. Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority to denounce it as "obscene trash" in the early 1980s.

These were muzzled on British campuses by the British National Union of Students. The resolution they adopted was to prevent the representatives of such groups from speaking on campus using whatever means necessary.
(see 1988)

By Victor Marchetti, and John D. Marks. This book revealed some of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's dirty tricks and failures overseas and in the United States. Marchetti, a former senior analyst for the CIA, and Marks, a former U.S. State Department official, were told by a U.S. court that they would have to submit their manuscript to the CIA before the book was published. The CIA subsequently demanded the removal of 339 passages from the text. Eventually, however, the publisher won the right to retain 171 of those in the first edition of the book. By 1980, the publisher had won the legal right to publish an additional 25 passages, but the 1989 edition still indicated numerous censored passages.

By André Brink. This work has the dubious distinction of being the first Afrikaans novel to have been banned. Its English translation, Looking On Darkness, was also banned. Mr. Brink was a member of a literary movement of young writers known as Sestigers, or Sixtiers. The members of the group were branded by Authority as "traitors of the people". In his essay published in Index On Censorship in 1980, he pointed out that white writers under attack still had it much easier than black writers.
(see 1979)

By various authors, it appears. Although who wrote the books and what they were about seems to be largely irrelevant to the greater scheme of things in this affair.

This is probably the ugliest incident of censorship and religious intolerance in the 20th century history of the U.S. It began with calls to reject the adoption of some new school books that were vilified as "irreligious", "immoral and indecent", and as having "the most vulgar, vile, and filthy words". Reporters who later who read the books were unable to find any such words. At the time, the books were adopted by the school board and the situation escalated out of control. This escalation consisted largely of the following sequence of events:

• "True Christians" were urged by religious leaders to keep their children at home rather than send them to school;

• schools were surrounded by mobs and bus garages were blocked;

• those teachers and parents who did not join the boycott were threatened;

• about 3,500 coal miners walked out on strike in sympathy for the good Christian parents;

• mob violence reached the point where some people started carrying firearms out of fear for their safety;

• both school buses and regular city buses were stopped completely, leaving some 11,000 poor people without any transportation;

• court injunctions against the protestors didn't help so the superintendent had to close all the schools because he couldn't guarantee the safety of the children from the christians;

• a cameraman, one of the reporters who were attracted to the story, was beaten by a mob of fundamentalists at a rally;

• the schools were reopened with tighter security, but the protests continued;

• pro-boycott ministers prayed to God that the board members who dared to vote for the books be killed;

• a molotov cocktail was thrown against an elementary school;

• five shots hit a school bus [empty at the time, I think];

• another grade school was damaged by a dynamite blast;

• and a bigger explosion damaged the school district's central office.

Eventually, church minister Marvin Horan was indicted along with three of his followers for the bombings; and it is fortunate they were caught as they had planned to wire bombs to the car gas tanks of those families who drove their children to school during the boycott.

By Dee Brown. It was banned in Wild Rose, Wisconsin, although I do not know if it was banned from schools or the library. The basis for the banning was that the book was "slanted". An administrator was quoted as saying, "if there's a possibility that something might be controversial, then why not eliminate it."

[Because there is nothing that cannot be found offensive by someone somewhere, and that means that all things are controversial. Which is probably the basis for the recent (circa 1990s) saying that goes: Save the easily offended: ban everything. --MN]

By various authors:

• Slaughterhouse Five: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
• Down These Mean Streets: Piri Thomas
• The Naked Ape: Desmond Morris
• Best Short Stories by Negro Writers: ed. Langston Hughes
• Go Ask Alice: anonymous
• Laughing Boy: Oliver LaFarge
• Black Boy: Richard Wright
• A Hero Ain't Nothing But a Sandwich: Alice Childress
• Soul on Ice: Eldridge Cleaver
• The Fixer: Bernard Malamud
• Go Ask Alice: authorship anonymous
• A Reader for Writers: ed. Jerome Arche r

Seven members of the school board in the Long Island town of Island Trees in New York State, ordered the books removed from school libraries on the grounds they had been listed as "objectionable" by a local group of conservatives. School district policy required the school superintendent to appoint a review committee upon a receipt of a complaint,but the board members arranged to have the books "unofficially" removed from the libraries without appointing one. When word of that reached the news media, the board issued a press release characterizing the books as "anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic and just plain filthy." They said the books contained: "obscenities, blasphemies, brutality and perversion beyond description," and concluded that "it is our duty, our moral obligation, to protect the children in our schools from this moral danger as surely as from physical and medical dangers."

A committee later appointed by the superintendent determined that several of the books should be returned to the shelves. The board rejected this recommendation and again ordered the books to be removed. At this point, 17-year-old Steven Pico led a group of students who sued the board in U.S. District Court. The district court found in favor of the board, the students appealed to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which reversed the decision and sent the case back, and the school board appealed that decision to the Supreme Court. A closely divided court ruled 5 to 4 in favor of the students.

This incident is best known for being one of the few school-censorship cases heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in a lawsuit filed by a student.
(see 25 Jun 1982)

By Margaret Laurence. An Ontario high school principal pulled the book from classrooms.
(see 1978; 1994)

By Anthony Burgess. It was removed from high school classrooms in Westport, Rhode Island, for "objectionable language".
(see 1977; 1982)

By Adolf Hitler. A ban of the book was imposed in Poland this year and not lifted until 1989.
(see 1999; 01 Dec 2000; 25 Feb 2002)

By The Boston Women's Health Book Collective. Phyllis Schafly's conservative Eagle Forum sought to have this work banned. It was apparently angered by the increasing availability of the book in small town libraries. Eagle Forum claimed that it encourages masturbation, lesbianism, premarital sex, and abortion. In Helena, Montana, the Eagle Forum succeeded in having the work removed from school libraries until the ACLU intervened. The work had already been attacked by fundamentalists and conservatives for being too explicit and filthy. Those attacks failed because the book clearly does not constitute proscribable obscenity.

By Frank Snepp, a former CIA employee. This memoir U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, the CIA, and Henry Kissinger. Snepp succeeded in getting his book published before the CIA knew about it. The government filed a lawsuit even though it admitted that no classified information appeared in the book.

In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Snepp. The government subsequently seized all profits from the book and imposed on Snepp a lifelong gag order. He would be required to submit everything he might write to the CIA for review -- fiction, screenplays, non-fiction, or poetry. The CIA won the right to cut any classified or classifiable information within 30 days of receipt of Snepp's work.

By Maurice Sendak. This picture book was removed from the Norridge, Illinois, school library because of "nudity to no purpose." The cover art depicts a bare-bummed child. The book was expurgated elsewhere when shorts were drawn on the nude boy.
(See 1992)

By Louise Meriwether. It was removed from Oakland, California, junior high school libraries because of its depiction of inner-city life.

By Margaret Walker. Challenged by the Ku Klux Klan, in Greenville County, South Carolina. The Klan sought to have the book removed from school libraries because the book promotes, "racial strife and hatred."

[Oh! please tell me that you haven't failed to see the irony in this situation. --MN]

By Anthony Burgess. It was removed from high school classrooms in Aurora, Colorado, for "objectionable language".
(see 1976; 1982)

By Nathaniel Hawthorne. It was unsuccessfully challenged in Missouri when a parent objected to "four-letter words" and "other undesirable content".
(see 1850; 1852; 1966)

By Margaret Laurence. An Etobicoke school-board trustee unsuccessfully tried to have A Jest of God banned as a high-school text. In Elgin County, Ontario, 125 parents submitted a list of offensive books to the local school board, including Who Has Seen the Wind. And an Etobicoke trustee unsuccessfully tried to have The Country Girls and the frequently challenged The Catcher in the Rye banned as a high-school text.

By George Eliot. It was banned at the Union High School in Anaheim, California.

By Louis Malle. This film, starring Brooke Shields as a child prostitute, was banned in Ontario, Canada.

By J.D. Salinger. Challenged in Issaquah, Washington, where the leader of a protest group asserted it was part of a communist plot to take over the schools.
(see 1963)

By Margaret Laurence. The Huron County Board of Education, in Ontario, pulled this book from Grade 13 reading lists.
(see 1976; 1994)

By André Brink. This work was used as a tool to fight government censorship. When it seemed certain the apartheid regime of South Africa was going to ban this work, Mr. Brink very quietly had a print run of two thousand copies done, and these were sent to Taurus subscribers. A week later a second printing was issued. By the time the regime banned the work there were enough copies in circulation to ensure the censorship would be ineffective. It was also at this time that South African writers threatened the government with full samizdat (underground) publication if it did not change its censorious policies. This threat might or might not have been a factor in the "unbanning" of A Dry White Season a few months later.
(see Jan 1974)

By Lorraine Hansberry. The Ogden School District, in Utah, restricted circulation of this play in response to criticisms by an anti-pornography group.

By Aldous Huxley. In Virginia state, U.S., a teacher was fired for assigning this book to his class after his principal asked him not too.
(see 1966; 1980; 1988; 1993)

By George Orwell. This book was challenged in De Kalb County, Georgia, from 1979 through 1982 because of its political theories.
(see 1963; 1968; 1987)

By Jeanne Layton. Ms. Layton, a librarian in Davis County, Utah, was fired for refusing to pull Americana from the library shelves. The Davis County Commission labeled the book, written by Don DeLillo obscene. Ms. Layton argued that library patrons had a right to choose what they read and brushed aside demands that the novel be banished. The county's Library Board, which included County Commissioner Morris F. Swapp, asked for her resignation, which she refused to hand in. Over the summer, the commission voted to change her employee status from "merit" to "exempt", which meant she could be fired without cause. In September, the Library Board demanded that Americana be removed, and when Ms. Layton again said no, she was summarily dismissed. She sued in federal court to get her job back and, in Dec 1979, U.S. District Court Judge Bruce Jenkins ordered that the Davis County Merit Council hear her case. During a high-profile hearing before that council in Jan 1980, Mr. Swapp testified that she had been insubordinate, but the panel found unanimously that she was fired without sufficient cause, and she returned to work on 15 Jan 1980.

The novel remained on the library shelves throughout the entire affair.

By Deborah Davis. A biography/exposee of Katherine Graham, owner of the Washington Post newspaper. The method of censorship was almost certainly corporate pressure against Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. The book was cancelled and distributed copies were recalled after a private meeting between Graham and the publishers. The threat was probably that works published by HBJ would no longer receive equitable treatment in the pages of the newspaper. Essentially, HBJ caved in under threat of economic sanction. The period of censorship lasted six years until a small independent house, National Press, published the work.
(see 10 Jan 2003)

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich edition; in which some ten percent of the text was expurgated due to being, "trivial or ribald wordplay and especially difficult, static passages of poetry." Two thirds of the removed material had sexual connotations.

[Thereby carrying on a long tradition started by Thomas Bowdler in 1823. Equally disturbing is the implicit contention that the readers are too stupid to understand or deal with "especially difficult, static passages of poetry." --MN]

By William Shakespeare. Due to objections of purported anti-Semitism, it was banned from classrooms in Midland, Michigan.
(see 1996)

By Aldous Huxley. It was removed from the curriculum in Miller, Missouri.
(see 1966; 1979; 1988; 1993)

By Frank Snepp. He was a CIA agent who had signed an agreement with the agency, "not to disclose any classified information relating to the Agency without proper authorization." After he was sent to Vietnam, he was horrified by what he'd seen and wrote a book called Decent Interval. The book did not cast the CIA in a positive light.

The significance of the case is that government prosecutors said the book did not divulge classified information and never accused Snepp of disclosing any secrets, but charged, instead, that Snepp was guilty of "faithlessness" to the CIA, and of destroying the agency's "appearance of confidentiality." In 1980 the Supreme Court agreed ruled the Snepp was.

The CIA alleged that Because of Snepp's book it was harder to recruit new agents, so Random House had to call back and destroy all remaining books, and Snepp had to give the U.S. Treasury any profits he had made from the work.

Ronald Reagan was elected president and used the Supreme Court's Snepp decision to force CIA agents to submit all the writings and speeches they would ever make for their entire lifetime for prior review so that the government could cut out all the "sensitive compartmented information". Or anything else it wanted to censor.

The Reagan administration soon became what is today called a "Gag Regime". It required next that Department of Justice employees, then that all executive branch workers, something like 100,000 employees, sign "secrecy contracts." By the time George H. Bush was president, "secrecy contracts" had been mandated for millions of government employees -- and civilian contractors. In Holt Uncensored # 388, the source for this entry, Ms. Holt wrote of the media reaction:

The media knew that the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations were gutting the Constitution's measures against "prior restraint" - i.e., censorship before the fact, which is protected by the First Amendment. And they knew that Reagan cared less about national security than White House secrecy to cover up such covert military operations and illegal activities as Iran-Contra, for example.

But the American press did very little to stand up for itself or its audience. Even when Freedom of Information procedures got scuttled, little was said. Even when private companies like Brown and Williamson used the Snepp decision to create similar non-disclosure agreements with employees, nothing was said.

That issue of Holt Uncensored contains a media criticism focusing on why various news outlets were apologizing for falling down on the job during 2004.

Killed by accident or assassinated? Ilhan, a Turkish publisher, and his brother Muzaffer Erdost had been arrested on 05 Nov 1980 for possessing banned publications. Because having banned publications was not a criminal offense they had expected to be released. On 07 Nov, however, at 17:30, they were told they were going to be detained. They drove to the prison with their uncle under the escort of a police officer. After the initial processing on their arrival, they were escorted within the prison toward their assigned cellblock by soldiers in a van. The soldiers began beating the two of them viciously before the van even began to move. Muzaffer later estimated this beating to have lasted half an hour When the van arrived at the cellblock, they were ordered out and beaten again for approximately five minutes. Ilhan died shortly after that second beating.

In an essay called Eyewitness To Death which was published in Index On Censorship in 1981, Muzaffer wrote that he was taken to the prosecutor's office the next day in a van much smaller than the one in which he and his brother had been beaten, a van much too small to allow such a beating, and that, further, he was handled according to proper security procedures for transporting prisoners; which procedures had not been used during the beating. It is Muzaffer's contention that having been placed in handcuffs for the transfer from the prison administration to Block C would have afforded them some protection from being beaten around the head. He wrote in the essay that his brother died from head injuries.

This one by the Moral Majority.

By George Orwell. This book about a totalitarian society was subjected to totalitarianism itself in Jackson County, Florida, where it was challenged for containing procommunist and explicitly sexual material.

By Beatrix Potter. During its examination of school learning materials, the London County Council in England banned the use of the children's classics sometime during this decade, from all London schools. The reason: the stories portrayed only "middle-class rabbits."

The Khomeini regime of Iran rounded up a number of writers and imprisoned them. Baraheni was a poet and was reportedly tortured in 1973 by the Savak secret police of Shah Reva Pahlavi; a testimony of this torture was printed in the New York Times. Mr. Baraheni had moved to the United States while the Shah was still in power, and returned to Iran when Khomeini overthrew the Shah's regime. He had since moved to Canada where he has been active in PEN Canada.

By ancient Tamils. A group of racists -- reportedly instigated by the Union National Party and with the support of uniformed police -- set fire to the Jaffna Library and destroyed priceless and irreplaceable documents of Tamil culture. Literally irreplaceable, as some of the documents were unique. The library had one of the finest collections in South Asia. It was burned as a deliberate and calculated political act to inflame the community.
(see 26 Aug 1992; 14 Feb 2003; 15 Apr 2005)

By James Bradford. Bradford wrote of the incident, "It [The Puzzle Palace] is the only book in history to have been totally unclassifed as it was being written, yet top secret by the time it was published." Moreover, not only was the book subject to censorship but so was the research material Bradford used. The reason is that the work was unauthorized and the National Security Agency did not want its dirty laundry aired in public. The focus of this censorship campaign was the George C. Marshall Research Library at Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, Virginia. Agents of the NSA visited the library and asked to see the documents Bradford had worked from, then informed the staff that, by grace of a recent presidential order permitting such an action, the material was being reclassified. The fact that the material in question had been declassified and available to the public for more than twenty years did not impress them.
(see 19 Jun 2001; 10 Jun 2002)

By a high school in St. David, Arizona. The required reading lists were eliminated under lobbying by Phyllis Schafly's Eagle Forum. The banned titles included Of Mice and Men and Lord of the Flies, and works by

• Homer,
• Edgar Allan Poe,
• Nathaniel Hawthorne,
• Robert Louis Stevenson, and
• Ernest Hemingway.

By Dudley Randall. Banned from classrooms in Tinely Park, Illinois, because of depictions of illegal acts.

By Anthony Burgess. It was removed from high school libraries in Anniston, Alabama, for "objectionable language.
(see 1976; 1977)

By Doris Day. An Alabama censor banned this book, claiming that it conflicted with Day's "All American Image".

By Jim Miller, editor. Challenged in Jefferson, Kentucky, because it "will cause our children to become immoral and indecent."

By an El Salvadoran death squad. Shortly before the American backed 1982 election, a death list with the names of thirty-five journalists was circulated by a death squad. On 18 Mar, the bodies of four Dutch journalists were found. Aside from having been murdered, they had also been mutilated. According to Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky in 1988, in their book Manufacturing Consent, no murder of a journalist in El Salvador was ever "solved", since these murders were carried out under the auspices of the state.

Case Name: Board of Educ., Island Trees Union Free School District. No. 26 v. Pico, by a narrow margin of 5-4. A New York school board had removed nine books from the local high school and junior high school libraries on the basis of they're being: "anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and just plain filthy."

Five students claimed that this violated their First Amendment rights and sued. The U.S. District Court had granted a summary judgment in favor of the school board, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed that decision and remanded the case for trial. The school board appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. At issue was the legal principle of balancing the broad discretionary powers of local school boards against the First Amendment rights of students.

The Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment places limitations on when school officials can remove books from libraries; that, while school boards do have discretion in determining the content of their libraries, they may not exercise that discretion "in a narrowly partisan or political manner." The Court concluded that school boards may not remove books because they find them offensive or because they disagree with the ideas contained in those books.

Island Trees v: Pico is the first and only time the U.S. Supreme Court has addressed the question of when school authorities can remove books from school libraries. The ruling enhanced the First Amendment rights of students by finding a "right to receive information and ideas" and prohibiting the "suppression of ideas."
(see 1975)

By Anne Frank. Members of the Alabama State Textbook Committee called for its rejection because it is a "real downer." It has also been challenged for offensive references to sexuality.

A Sowetan reporter, he was sentenced to two and a half years in jail for possessing a banned book.

By Cathy Kuhlmeier, Leslie Smart and Leann Tippett, at Hazelwood East High School, St. Louis County, Missouri. These three students generated the First Amendment suit Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, which resulted in the ruling known as Hazelwood. This case got started when their journalism teacher and adviser left the school to take a job in the private sector and a new adviser, Howard Emerson, was appointed. At that time the April issue of The Spectrum was ready to be put to bed. That issue included an article on teen pregnacy and another about the impact of divorce on teenagers. Emerson decided that the articles need the approval of the principal, Robert Eugene Reynolds. Reynolds objected to references to sexual activity and birth control, and said that the parents of the student mentioned in the article on divorce should have their say in the article. He subsequently deleted two pages of the paper.

The student staffers objected to this action and called their former adviser, Robert Stergos, who advised them to contact the ACLU, who told them they could sue under the First Amendment. So they filed.

[And ultimately lost when the Supreme Court handed down a flawed ruling. At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it. You can read more about this case at the Freedom Forum Online site. This case is best known as one of the first student newspaper cases to make it to the Supreme Court.]
(see 1988)

By James Baldwin. This work was reported as "Rejected by the Alabama State Textbook Committee in 1983 because it preaches 'bitterness and hatred against whites.'" on the ABBFE Black History Month web page. The page does not specify whether this rejection was the result of considering a purchase of the book or if the work was already in the school system. If this decision was the culmination of a review process, then the work was clearly passed over for the wrong reasons.

By Shel Silverstein. Its presence in school libraries was challenged in Xenia, Ohio. Silverstein's silly poetry is commonly seen as undermining parental, school, and religious authority.
(see 1986)

By Mark Twain. Removed from the reading list of a public high school in Waughegan, Illinois. A black alderman found the language offensive.
(see 1885; 1905; 1957; 1994; 1995)

By Alice Walker. The filming of this book took place in the face of stiff opposition. Walker was basically excoriated as a male-bashing, self-loathing black. A diary entry for June 1984 reads: Robert called to say there's a group that wants to ban The Color Purple. Banning The Color Purple would be like banning the color blue -- you'd miss it. Whereas -- why don't they ban nuclear power?

[Read Walker's The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult. It is an amazing eye-opener and puts paid to all the bullshit by the hypersensitive snivelers. --MN]

By Harriet Beecher Stowe. It was challenged in the Waukegan School District, Waukegan, Illinois, because it contains the word "nigger."

[Never mind that it is a true to life depiction of the near schizophrenic rationales and mind sets that favoured slavery and the emotional affects that it had on the enslaved. This is probably part of the same effort to ban Huck Finn. --MN]

By Kurt Vonnegut. It was challenged at a high school library in Owensboro, Kentucky, because of "foul language", a reference to Magic Fingers attached to the protagonist's bed to help him sleep, and the sentence: "The gun made a ripping sound like the opening of the fly of God Almighty."
(see 1973)

By Madeleine L'Engle. Challenged in Polk City, Florida because it "Promotes witchcraft, crystal balls, and demons."

This collection of ancient tales from the Middle East was confiscated in Cairo, Egypt, on the grounds that it contains obscene passages that posed a threat to the country's moral fabric. The public prosecutor demanded that the book be "burned in a public place" claiming that it was the cause of "a wave of incidents of rape which the country has recently experienced."

By Shel Silverstein. It was challenged at the Cunningham Elementary School. Beloit, Wisconsin, on the grounds that it "encourages children to break dishes so they won't have to dry them."

By Howard Stern. The Reagan administration mounted a concerted campaign againt "obscenity" and "pornography" and which was exploited to attack Howard Stern. Donald Wildmon, who was president of the National Federation for Decency at the time, filed a complaint against Stern with the FCC. Shortly afterward, the Federal Communications Commission announced that it was expanding the definition of "indecent" speech. This expanded definition would include "patently offensive" speech, as well as talk about "sexual or exrectory activities and organs." Judged by the standards of the community of course.

Led by Alfred Sikes, the then FCC chairman and Republican, the Commission appeared to single out Stern under the new standard. Censorship advocates from other groups soon joined the fray, including Americans for Responsible Television, under the leadership of Michigan activist Terry Rakolta, and the Washington based African-American Business Association. A single individual, Al Wescott of Los Angeles, bombarded the Commission with tapes and transcripts.

Stern's employer, Infinity Broadcasting, resisted paying the fines, which would eventually amount to $1.7 million over the course of almost ten years.
(see Sep 1995)

An unflattering review of the school system had been printed in an editorial. By the time the principal, Myrl Massie, found out about it, the yearbook had been printed and delivered. The work was bowdlerized by having the offending page cut out of every copy.

By William Faulkner. It was removed from the curriculum of the Graves County High School, Graves County, Kentucky, by a hasty and illegal vote at a meeting of the school board; illegal by the rules of parliamentary procedure. There was nothing about the issue on the agenda. The book was thrust forward by an outraged loud-mouth who was in the habit of dominating the plan or agenda of someone else, although he never initiated any programs himself. At the early September meeting he brusquely demanded that the book be removed immediately on the basis of his having found seven (7) places in the book with reference to God or abortion, or curse words. The book had been brought to his attention by a parent who was truly concerned about what her son was reading. The school board caved in to pressure from the ACLU with a series of face-saving measures that included putting the book back on the shelves. The incident lasted about two weeks, the rescinding of the ban being announced on September, 18th and the book being replaced on the 19th.

By Shel Silverstein. Public school libraries in Minot, North Dakota, pulled the book from the shelves for review.
(see 1983)

Banned by the Anchorage School Board, Alaska.
(see 1963)

By Geoffrey Chaucer. The Columbia County, Florida, School Board barred students from reading the story in a humanities textbook. Community members denounced this story as "pornography and women's lib." Chaucer died in 1400.

By Maya Angelou. It was removed from the required reading list for Wake County, North Carolina, high school students because of a scene in which the author, at the age of seven and a half, is raped.

[As if it was her fault; or as if she wasn't allowed to admit that it happened. --MN]

By Christopher Reeve. Dictator Augusto Pinochet had sentenced seventy-seven actors, directors, and playwrights to death in Chile for criticizing his regime in theatrical works. Mr. Reeve, best known for his portrayal of Superman in the film series, led a rally in their support; which rally was punctuated by government machine-gun fire. The next day, Pinochet canceled his execution order. Mr. Reeve is quoted in a biography: "As a private citizen in a country where we take freedom to perform for granted, I went to help fellow professionals in a country where they don't."

By Terry Wallace. This work was reportedly banned from a Spring Hill, Florida, middle school library because of offensive language.

By George Orwell. It was one of sixty-four works banned from two high schools in Panama City, Florida, by school superintendent Leonard Hill.
(see 1963; 1968; 1979)

By Peter Wright. After retiring from 20 years' service with Britain's MI5 counterintelligence agency, Peter Wright moved to Australia and wrote his autobiography; in it, he blew the whistle on how British security services tried to topple Harold Wilson's 1974-76 Labour government. The book was banned in Britain and the British government also waged a lengthy and expensive legal battle to prevent its publication in Australia. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said that if Wright ever returned to Britain, he would be prosecuted for breaching the country's Official Secrets Act. Mr. Wright died in 1995 but got the last laugh; his body was cremated and his ashes were scattered over the waters of the Blackwater Sailing Club in southern England.

By Jack L. Chalker. In a forward to the third book in the series, Mr. Chalker wrote that this series had the dubious distinction of being the first set of his books to be banned in the United States. He wrote that a few distributors, particularly in the Southern states, had refused to distribute it because, "the overtitle appears to be sacrilegious to them or they fear reader reaction for that reason."

A text book. It was challenged at the Plymouth-Canton school system in Canton, Michigan, because: "[it] teaches the theory of evolution exclusively. It completely avoids any mention of Creationism...The evolutionary propaganda also underminds {sic} the parental guidance and teaching the children are receiving at home and from the pulpits."

By the U.S. Supreme Court. The court upheld two previous decisions striking down Louisiana's "Creationism Act". This law made it illegal to teach evolution without also teaching "creation science" in Science classes (and vice versa). A District Court granted summary judgment to the appellees, holding that the Act violated the Establishment Clause. The Court of Appeals affirmed, writing in part:

The Act is facially invalid as violative of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, because it lacks a clear secular purpose. Pp. 585-594. (a) The Act does not further its stated secular purpose of "protecting academic freedom." It does not enhance the freedom of teachers to teach what they choose and fails to further the goal of "teaching all of the evidence."

For more on the issue of scientific creationism and creationism vs: evolution, see the Stephen J. Gould, Niles Eldredge, Isaac Asimov, and Susan Harding quotations, or read the Supreme Court ruling.

The Chinese Communist government dramatically increased its censorship of books and magazines with Western political and literary messages. It condemned the works as obscene, pornographic, and bawdy. This is a common practice in places where real pornography is conspicuously absent. It was also done by the governments of White supremacist South Africa, Nazi Germany, and the Communist Soviet Union. (At the moment, AD 2000, the possession of real erotica is a capital crime in China.)

University of Michigan adopted a hate speech code in April which was in force until October of 1989. It was ruled unconstitutional in the face of a challenge by the ACLU. Although enacted to protect or benefit racial minorities, women, or any other group that has traditionally suffered discrimination, the consequences of it rebounded to their detriment; typical of such censorship efforts. It resulted in twenty charges being laid by white students against blacks; the only student who was subjected to a full-fledged disciplinary hearing was black, and the only others punished were several Jewish students and one Asian-American. Enactments of a similar code at the University of Connecticut and Trinity College had similar consequences in 1989.
(see 1974)

[And blew it big time, in my not so humble opinion. --MN]

In 1984 three students in the Journalism II class at Hazelwood East High School sued the school and several officials for First Amendment rights violations. When the case got to the Supreme Court the argument used in favor of the students was that their rights were protected under Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 1969. The court rejected that argument and ruled that school officials had a right to control student expression in activities that are, "an integral part of the school's educational function". This overturned a 1986 Court of Appeals decision that itself had overturned the 1985 District Court decision against the students. The case was lost in a 5-3 decision. (There was only eight justices because Warren Burger had just retired and the new appointee, Bork, had not yet been confirmed.)

Justice Byron White in writing the majority opinion, wrote: "... we hold that educators do not offend the First Amendment by exercising editorial control over the style and content of student speech in school-sponsored expressive activities so long as their actions are reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns." White reasoned, broadly, that schools are allowed to censor student expression "that might reasonably be perceived to advocate drug or alcohol use, irresponsible sex ... or to associate the school with any position other than neutrality on matters of political controversy." In the dissenting opinion, by justices Brennan, Marshall, and Blackmun, Brennan wrote, "the case before us aptly illustrates how readily school officials (and courts) can camouflage viewpoint discrimination as the 'mere' protection of students from sensitive topics." He also accused the majority of approving of "brutal censorship." In making this ruling, the Supreme Court created a new and lower first amendment standard for student newspapers than they had previously enjoyed under Tinker, which allowed for greater freedom of expression.

[You can read more about this case at the Freedom Forum Online site. --MN]
(see Apr 1983)

By Roald Dahl. The Boulder, Colorado Public Library removed this book from a locked reference collection. The book had originally been locked away because the librarian thought the book espouses a poor philosophy of life.

By Hugh Lofting. The version from the 1960s was silently "cleaned up" from the 1920 original, in which Polynesia the parrot occasionally used some impolite terms to refer to blacks. In 1988, after the book had fallen from favor enough to have dropped out of print, the publishers issued a new edition. In this one, they removed nearly all racial references, also cutting out a plotline involving Prince Bumpo's desire to become caucasian.

By Aldous Huxley. In Yukon, Oklahoma, some parents demanded the book be removed because of its "language and moral content".
(see 1966; 1979; 1980; 1993)

By Ahmad Shamlu (1925-2000). Regarded as one of Iran's most important contemporary poets, he:

• published more than 30 poetry collections;
• founded and edited a number of literary and cultural journals;
• wrote short stories and fairy tales;
• published studies on ancient Persian themes;
• worked as a translator (including poems by Mayakovsky, Rilke, and Lorca).

As an early opponent of the Shah regime, he was repeatedly prohibited from publishing and was arrested several tim es. After the revolution he maintained a critical distance toward the new rulers. In protest against human rights abuses by the Shah regime, Shamlu left Iran in 1976 and lived in exile until 1979. Later he lived a secluded life in Karadj in the Elburs mountains west of Teheran. In the series of books named Kitab-e Kouche (The book of the street), he collected some of Iran's great cultural treasures: folktales, fables, games, and plays. This series was banned in Iran in 1988.

By Myanmarese. Mostly students and young people. The pro-democracy movement was viciously suppressed when a military junta took control of the government. It is reported that thousands of pro-democracy advocates were killed. The junta came to call themselves the State Law and Order Restoration Council; SLORC.
(see 1990; 27 Mar 1999; 05 Jun 2003; 14 Apr 2004; 27 May 2006)

The American version is titled Where's Waldo? It was challenged in 1989 at the Public Libraries of Saginaw, Michigan, because in the scene by the seashore there is a topless woman lying on the beach. One of her breasts is in view. The size of the breast is approximately the size of this letter: e.

[Yeah, yeah, but, see, they didn't want a bra painted on the offending young woman (which would have been expurgation, anway), they wanted the whole book banned. --MN]
(see 1993)

By Doctor Seuss. It was challenged in the Unified School District of Laytonville, California, because it "criminalizes the foresting industry."

Congress continued to hamstring this organization by imposing unprecedented restrictions because of its objections to funding for sexually oriented art.

By J. D. Salinger, and a long time target of suppression. This time in Los Angeles County, California, for blasphemy.

By George Bush Sr. He was badly stung by the reality of warfare while president during the 1989 American invasion of Panama. President Bush had been holding a news conference at the White House to boast about the dramatic assault against General Manuel Noriega. He was with reporters and joking in a happy mood when two major networks shifted to cover the arrival ceremony at the Air Force Base in Dover, Del., for the American soldiers who had been killed in Panama.

Millions of viewers watched as the network television showed a splitscreen of President Bush joking around with the press while flag-draped caskets were carried off Air Force planes. The Pentagon banned news coverage of such ceremonies on Bush's orders. Which ban was continued by President Bill Clinton.

[Addendum (02 Jan 2004): I might have that date wrong; I've seen the date for the media banning also set in 1991. --MN]
(See 22 Oct 2003; 20 Dec 2003)

Seized by the Metro Toronto Police. Their morality squad raided a comic store on the rationale that the comic "glorified bestiality." Which same comic had received a G-rating in New Zealand because of a "responsible depiction of sexuality." The comic featured humanoid cats, dogs, and other animals as characters.

By William Shakespeare. It was banned from a detention camp for Palestinians by Israel; because of Hamlet's soliloquy in which he opines about whether, "'Tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them."

By Ralph Abernathy. This book was burned in protest in Denver, Colorado, because it alleged Martin Luther King, Jr. was an adulterer.

By James Baldwin. Removed from an Oregon high school library due to offensive language and depictions of sexual activity.

By Paul Valadier. No leading religious figure spoke out in favour of Salman Rushdie during the witchcraze against his book. Valadier, however, the editor of a French, Jesuit magazine, wrote an article on "Religion and Violence" in which he wrote, "religions contribute to maintain tensions and to revive violence between men." He lost his position as editor as a result. He was almost the only religous voice to condemn the death edict.

[I'm not sure if that means that he was demoted or fired, the source was no more specific than that. --MN]

By Lisa Appignanesi and Sara Maitland. This was a compilation of documents ordered by Willian Collins Sons during The Rushdie Affair. Three weeks after commissioning the work the publishing house cancelled the project. At first Collins used the excuse that it did not wish to make matters worse for Viking, but Viking made it perfectly clear that it had no objections to the project. Collins then offered the excuse that bookstores would boycott the work and that it would never be commercially viable. When people failed to buy that argument, it said the book was not "objective". At this point a small press called the Fourth Estate took on the job. It retitled the work The Rushdie File and pubished it in July. The book did not prompt any threats against the press and the first print of seven thousand was almost sold out in three weeks.

By Salman Rushdie. This book was declared blasphemous by the Ayatollah Khomeini and a death sentence was passed against the author. For more details on the "Fatwah" see Appendix A.

During Freedom to Read Week, Canada Customs made this country the only western democracy to seize The Satanic Verses. After 48 hours, the ban is rescinded. For more details on the "Fatwah" see Appendix A.
(see 1956; Feb 1992; 1993; 1993; 15 Dec 2000; 04 Mar 2002; 23 Mar 2004)

Encouraged by the Khomeini death edict and student activism in Beijing, thousands of Muslim Chinese took to the streets on this and following days to protest the publication of this book. They objected to the scurrilous treatment Muslims received in the book.

By Rick Veitch. A six hundred pound pile of swamp stuff (sentient & mobile vegetation in humanoid form), this creature, featured by DC comics, lives in a swamp which contains the nexus of all realities. As a result, he has the ability to time travel and meet with historic figures. In this issue, the story line was that he met Jesus Christ, but because of the ultra-religious hysteria created by Khomeini's death edict against Salman Rushdie, DC Comics decided the story shouldn't be published and suppressed it, and issue # 88 was not released. Mr. Veitch quit in protest.

By the People's Republic of China. Perhaps the most eloquent and moving condemnation of this monstrous suppression is from a letter by Dr. Jiang Yanyong, from 24 Feb 2004. It reads, in part,

In 1989, students in Beijing, in view of the corrupt government at that time, voiced their just demand for fighting corruption and bureaucratic racketeering and for promoting clean and honest government. The students' patriotic acts had the support of the overwhelming majority of people in Beijing and the country. However, a small number of leaders who supported corruption resorted to means unprecedented in the world and in China. They acted in a frenzied fashion, using tanks, machineguns, and other weapons to suppress the totally unarmed students and citizens, killing hundreds of innocent students in Beijing, and injuring and crippling thousands others.

Then, the authorities mobilized all types of propaganda machinery to fabricate lies and used highhanded measures to silence the people across the country.

You can read a copy of the entire letter here. Most of the Tiananmen Massacre occured on 04 Jun, but the shooting broke out around 2200 (local time), on the evening of 03 Jun.

[That letter was copied from the China Digital News web log at journalism.berkely.edu, and is mirrored here without permission. It has been reproduced verbatim, although HTML formatting has been added to conform to the editorial formatting for this site. --MN]

By J.R.R. Tolkein. Plus record albums, audio tapes, Harlequin Romances and other books, at a public book burning hosted by Rev. D.M. Huston, Morgantown, West Virginia.

By Grapetree Products. A children's joke book, it was removed from the McKinleyville California Elementary School library for its "demeaning" manner toward individuals who read the riddles and could not figure out the answers.

By Mary O'Hara. It was removed from the optional reading lists for the fifth and sixth grade in Clay County schools, Florida. The removal was because the book uses the word "bitch" in reference to a female dog. It also has the word "damn."

[Bitch would be absolutely unacceptable because of its use to denigrate women, even though it is the correct technical term for a female dog. --MN]

By Progress Publications. Challenged in schools in Mena, Arkansaw, due to "violence, voodoo, and cannibalism."

By Aung San Suu Kyi (pronounced Soo Chee), et al. Democratic elections were held in which opposition parties were permitted to run against the ruling junta; the State Law and Order Restoration Council. When the Council lost it unilaterally invalidated the election and placed the opposing candidates under house arrest. Despite the limitations imposed, Ms. Kyi continued to agitate for a democratic state, and in 1991 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
(see 18 Sep 1988; 27 Mar 1999; 05 Jun 2003; 14 Apr 2004; 27 May 2006)

By the brothers Grimm. A reprint, I assume, was banned from Culver City and Empire school districts, California, because an illustration showed her basket with a bottle of wine with the fresh bread and butter. The book was banned because the wine might have been seen as condoning the use of alcohol.

By John Bellairs. Access to it was restricted in the libraries of the Dysart Unified School District in El Mirage, Arizona. It includes two uses of profanity and a link to magic. It is the second book in a series which starts with The House With a Clock in its Walls.

By Robert Mapplethorpe. Police closed the Cincinnati Art Center and arrested its director, Dennis Barrett, for pandering, obscenity, and child pornography in connection with the retrospective exhibition of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe. For these crimes, both the director and gallery were brought to trial, though a jury found them not guilty.

By an otherwise honest businessman. E-C Records owner Charles Freeman was arrested for selling the album "As Nasty As They Wanna Be," by the Miami-based rap group 2 Live Crew. The sale was to an adult undercover officer of the Dade County Sheriff's Department. The group's label, Skywalker Records, had voluntarily placed the words "Warning: Explicit Language Contained," on each album. Sales of the record were banned on the 7th of June by U.S. District Court Judge Jose Gonzalez, who said that the music "is an appeal to 'dirty' thoughts and the loins, not to the intellect and the mind."

[How the hell would he know? There's a recent saying that pornography is anything that will give the judge an erection; however, I am increasingly of the opinion that judges who would censor haven't got the capacity to get an erection. --MN]