- Just ahead on "Black Issues Forum", banned books in North Carolina reflects a broader national trend and highlights an ongoing debate about the role of literature in education and the impact that access to diverse perspectives have on critical discussions of representation.

We'll dive into the history of banned books and just how large its impact is on our Black kids.

Coming up next, stay with us.

- [Narrator] Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.

[upbeat music] ♪ [upbeat music continues] ♪ - Welcome to "Black Issues Forum".

I'm Kenia Thompson.

The history of banned books is a fascinating and often troubling chronicle of society's changing values, fears, and power dynamics.

The practice of banning books has evolved over centuries reflecting shifts in cultural, political, and social landscapes.

But while many argue for the right of this type of censorship, its impact to the Black community is deeper than the eye can see.

To share an overview of how book censorship has developed over the decades and where we are today with recent actions by state government, we welcome to the show, retired North Carolina Central University Professor of History, Jerry Gershenhorn.

Welcome to the show.

- Thank you.

Good to be with you.

- Thank you.

You know, there's been a lot of talk about banned books lately, but we had a discussion before the show, and you've educated me that this isn't the first time we've really talked about banning literature, banning content and censorship.

Kinda give the audience an overview of historical periods of time where we've seen this happen before.

- Yeah, I mean, there's a long history of censorship, not just in the United States, but before that, you can go back thousands of years back to the Roman Empire.

The Christians burned Pagan scrolls in the early Roman Empire, early Christian era, in colonial US, in Boston.

Quaker books were confiscated and destroyed back in the 1600s.

If we move ahead to the 19th century, there's been a long history in this country of subjugating and censoring materials that challenged racism.

Abolitionist materials were burned in Charleston in 1835.

In 1837, Elijah Lovejoy who was an abolitionist in Illinois.

His presses were attacked and destroyed, and he was killed in the process by a white mob.

The Harriet Beecher Stowe's famous book, "Uncle Tom's Cabin", published in 1852 was an anti-slavery book, anti-slavery novel.

And that book was banned in the South.

So there's a long history and censorship and banning of books, even though in the United States under the Constitution, the First Amendment, we have the right of freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, but throughout our history, there have been attempts and often successful attempts to stop the publication of anti-racist literature.

- Now, you know, I can assume that I understand the reasoning behind it as a Black woman, but besides the obvious, what is the reasoning behind it, behind censoring this literature?

- Yeah, I mean, a lot of it's about stopping freedom of thought, controlling, social control.

So if you have religious elites, you know, religious hierarchy, you have racial hierarchy.

So the people in power, the government in the United States, it's been whites, males trying to keep on white patriarchy, white Christian patriarchy in many cases.

And it's about controlling power.

If you can control people's thought, you can control what's going on.

If you can control the schools and the literature that's taught, not just the books, but the curriculum, the textbook, what's in the textbooks, you can control a lot of what's happening.

So it's about political, religious, and social control.

- Have you seen a shift in that rationale?

I mean, you know, as we talked, there's gonna be books that are gonna populate on screen for our viewers, and some of these books I questioned to myself, how do they get on this list?

So let's answer that question first.

How do books get banned specifically for school aged students?

How do they get banned?

- Well, today, what's happening, I think it's about 35, 37 states that have passed laws that have allowed essentially parents to challenge books.

And in many of these states, if a parent challenges a book, that means that the book is taken off the shelf and it's a good possibility that it will not reappear.

And this has been happening more and more.

In 2021, an organization called Moms for Liberty was formed by two former school board members in Florida, and they started to challenge, they formed chapters.

And this has been happening so that the first year in 2021, and maybe in several 100, but in 2023, there were over 4,000 titles, which were challenged throughout the United States.

So many of these books are taking off the shelves, and that means that not just those parents who didn't want their children to read them, but nobody's kids can read them.

- Right.

- So I mean to me, there's nothing wrong if a parent doesn't want their child to read a book.

- Mm-hmm.

- Okay.

But to tell all the other parents and all the other children what they can and cannot read, that is censorship.

That's a denial of the First Amendment and freedom of expression.

- Right.

And so when we look at these books, I mean, some of these books about black hair, I mean, huckleberry Finn is on that list.

And for those that are wondering, the list is some North Carolina books, but then just some books that have been banned nationally as well.

What is your thought behind the specific targeting around those kinds of books?

I mean, a lot of them are character books and you see beautiful images depicted of a young Black girl with beautiful Afro hair and that's being banned.

I can't find rationale behind that.

- Right.

Well, the rationale given is usually one of two things.

Often it can be about sexuality or gender.

So under a 1982 Supreme Court decision, US Supreme Court decision ruled that you can't remove a book from a public school based on some type of discrimination.

But you can remove a book if you can argue that the book is vulgar in some way or can be called pornography or, and this is a very vague concept, if that in some way it is not age appropriate.

So what happens is those two concepts are used.

So for example, in Tony Morrison's books, two of her books are often banned.

"The Bluest Eye" and "Beloved."

And there's violence in those and there's sexual violence and rape.

Well, why are they in there?

Well, they're about the history of race in this country.

In the case of "Beloved," about slavery.

And slavery, obviously was a very violent institution.

And Black women were raped.

So she tells that story, but that is used to ban these books.

And so usually, what's targeted in the United States is books by Black authors, books about race, racial issues, about Black history, books about LGBTQ topics, books about sexuality, books about abortion.

And so you have kind of the subjugation of books that are representational of people who have less power in this country.

People of color, Black people, Brown people, Native Americans, and LGBTQ people.

And so it's an attempt of the people in power, the most powerful people in this country, to deny those who have less power to see representations of themselves and to see an accurate history and representation of this country and in all of its facets.

- It kind of reminds me of pulling down of the Confederate statues, you know, almost erasing that that even happened.

And while we have sides on both arguments on both sides, you know, why do we need to live in the past versus can we just move forward and not think about those bad things that happen?

But for many Black people, that is part of the identity and the core and the threads of what make us who we are.

And when, again, I can't help but go back to a book that just says, "I love my hair."

How is that threatening to anyone?

In my opinion, it just doesn't make sense.

When we talk about legislation though and government, is there anything in place to help challenge, I guess, what the states are doing?

Because I think when we talked, you said like a school board for example, or even I guess the county's library board would determine if this book should be pulled or not.

Is there any way to, are there any laws in place to help kind of challenge these parents who are making these claims that books are not appropriate?

- Well, it depends on the state's situation.

There are a lot of organizations that challenge that, but let me just go back to the case of the Confederate statues because those Confederate statues were promoted by an organization called the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

And what they were trying to do was, once again, to control the history and control the thought.

And by putting all these monuments that glorified the Confederacy, which was about perpetuating the institution of slavery and expanding the institution of slavery, enslaving people of African descent.

- Right.

- At the same time, they were publishing textbooks that perpetuated a kind of white supremacist history that argued that slavery was a benign institution.

So that was difficult to challenge during that era when whites controlled the south and largely and essentially the country with regard to challenging these types of laws.

It was actually a law that was, a bill that was put before Congress to try to reverse these types of censorship that has yet to pass.

And most likely, you would need a Democratic Congress to do that because it's the Republicans who are behind most of these laws of censorship.

But you do have organizations like the American Library Association, and also civil rights organizations, the NAACP has said about this type of censorship and book banning that it essentially, much of it codifies anti-blackness, - Right.

- You have the National Urban League, which has also spoken out and lobbies against these types of laws.

Pan America, which is an organization of authors fighting for freedom of expression.

So there are a lot of challenges and people at the local level.

Now in North Carolina, my understanding is that it's a little bit different because books that are challenged are not automatically taken off the shelf.

- Right.

- So it to a large extent depends on the local school leadership and the local school board.

- Yeah.

- But in some states, they immediately take the books off the shelves.

And some of the books have, I mean, some of the states have enacted anti CRT laws, anti critical race thinking, but the Republicans are equating critical race thinking, critical race theory with basically anything that discusses African American history.

- Right?

- So they're trying to basically destroy the teaching of African American history and they've stopped, you know, AP African American history classes and stuff like that.

This is going on in places like Texas and Florida in particular.

- Last question to you, before we move on to our next guest, what's the long-term impact that this can have and how do we, how do we challenge it?

You know, if I, if I want a book to be in the library, if I want, "I love my hair" to be in my child's elementary school library, how do I challenge that?

- Well, I think one of the most important things, and I guess a lot of people have said this, and we have a presidential election, a congressional election coming up and state legislative elections is to vote.

- Yeah.

- I mean, you need to vote for people who support freedom of expression and then you can get bills passed that will protect students' right to read and students to see themselves represented in books, whether you know, they're black or white.

I mean, I was at a recent program at St. Joseph's AME Church, and one of the speakers brought up the book, the "Dick and Jane" series of books.

And these were books that everybody read, you know, every young children read.

- Yeah.

- And their representation of just white mainstream characters.

So students of color did not see themselves represented in books.

And we know there's tremendous amount of research, and maybe it's just a parent that people, students, and everybody needs to see themselves represented in books, whether it's characters in novels or in historical works.

And so I think, you know, what we could do is make sure that people do not, you know, sometimes people say that, well, they're kids, white kids are ashamed to see what's in historical books or stuff like that.

But the question is, we should teach our students to not identify with the oppressor, but to identify with the oppressed, with those people who are fighting for freedom.

And then it doesn't matter the person reading it is white or black.

- Yeah.

- That they should be identifying with people struggling for freedom.

- Thank you so much, very well said.

Jerry Gershenhorn, thank you for being here with us today.

- Thank you.

- Well, in a world where knowledge is power, the ability to read has always been a key to unlocking doors and breaking down barriers.

But for black people, the journey with books have been filled with challenges while simultaneously filled with remarkable triumphs.

Here's more about those triumphs in today's Melanin Moment.

[ethereal music] The journey of black individuals with books is not just a tale of literacy, but a testament to resilience and empowerment.

For centuries, access to books was restricted for black people.

Enslaved Africans were prohibited from learning to read, recognizing the potential power of knowledge.

Yet against all odds, black communities persisted in their quest for literacy.

The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and the 30s became a beacon where writers like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston flourished.

Their words, echoing the inspiration and struggles of their times.

During the civil rights movement, books became tools for change.

Martin Luther King Jr. found inspiration in Thoreau and Gandhi, while Malcolm X's transformation was fueled by the power of reading.

Because in the story of black history, reading is not just the pastime, it's a pathway to progress.

[ethereal music] Well, next up, we have our guest here to bring insight into the profound implications of book bans on children and schools.

How book bans affect children's access to diverse narratives, the challenges they pose to educators, and the broader implications for our educational system.

So I want to welcome to the show retired educator and Durham Public Schools Coordinator, Willa Sample.

Welcome to the show.

- Good morning, good morning.

- So we heard Jerry talk about the historical journey, where we are today.

And it doesn't feel like we've come very far.

You know, we've made a lot of strides, a lot of improvement, but we're still struggling with the same things when we talk about more specifically children's access to these books.

And let's talk about your thoughts behind just what's happening in these school libraries.

We've seen school libraries, you know, be challenged as a whole.

And then now we're seeing parents challenge books.

Your thoughts.

- Well, we're in what we call a Sankofa moment, and with that Sankofa moment, it means that you have to look back to your past in order to move forward.

So in our past, the right to read was not given to us.

You could be killed, you could be whipped, you could be taken away from your family if you were caught reading as a Black person.

So now that we have the right to read, our right is being limited in terms of what we are able to read.

So within our historical context right now, within the public schools, within our society, what is available to us is now being limited.

For example, books about Black affirmations, loving my hair, positive affirmation for African-American boys, those books are being frowned upon when in my ethnic group, African American, that is something positive.

It's something that I did not have growing up, but now there are different organizations out there that can go look at that book on the shelf and say, "Oh, that's offensive.

I don't like that," and it can be removed just that easily.

So from a parental context, parents need to know what's available to their children.

They need to make sure that their children, African American children and brown children, period, have things that are positive that they can read and we need to fight back.

- Yeah, and you know, I remember growing up reading many of the stories that didn't really depict someone that looks like me.

You know, I've said it before on the show, I mentioned it to you, my family's from Haiti.

Anything I would hear about Haiti was negative.

If I read about it, it was a bit negative, but there wasn't even much to read about as well, and even just the African diaspora, there wasn't much, and so now when we think about finally having this emergence of books that look like our children, but yet they're being threatened to take away, what does that do?

How does that impact students and kids in general?

- Well, it doesn't present them with the role model.

It doesn't provide aspirations for them.

If every book that you see is someone other than what you look like, then what does that tell you?

That I don't matter, I don't count?

And it presents a privilege over oppressed scenario.

So if I'm talking about history or I'm sitting in that classroom as a student, and the materials that are being presented are, excuse me, it never depicts anything positive that I've grown up around.

It doesn't depict anything positive for my environment.

Then what do I say to myself and how do I move forward?

But if someone brings in James Baldwin and someone talks about writings of Zora Neale Hurston or Alice Walker, or you know, any of the African American authors, Maya Angelou, you know, or even talk about Sojourner Truth, "Ain't I a Woman?"

Okay, then that says, "Hey, I am good.

I can be a black female and I can be bad.

I can do whatever I want."

But if all of that is presented to me in a negative way, or if I never hear about it, if I'm never taught that, I won't know any different.

- You know, one thought that came to my mind as I was prepping for the show is how we've historically heard that Black boys in particular don't read as much as Black girls do.

We, in the Melanin Moment, there was a mention to not being able to read that would get you in trouble.

That was control.

You mentioned it as well.

When we look at this strategic method of pulling these books off, that to me also says, we're gonna keep our kids from reading a lot, right?

And that can also be detrimental to our children.

Are we seeing a decline in Black children reading, their ability to comprehend literature?

Is that a thing that's presenting itself now?

- I don't think it's in the comprehension of literature.

It's what's presented to them, what is available.

Because Black writers write about themselves, they write about the moment in time, they write about the aspirations for the future from a historically Black context.

But if that's not presented, then I won't know.

There are a couple of rappers who are out there who, you know, they were making different statements about African Americans versus the political climate, and I think the person was asked, "So what about this point in African American history?

Wouldn't that make a difference in your response?"

And the response was, "Well, I don't know anything about that."

So if you're not taught your history, you won't know your history, and you won't be able to make the better decision that comes from that.

- Yeah, you know, also to that end, if we don't know this history, we can't have critical conversations, right?

We can't grow.

You know, if we continue to stifle this information and, you know, protect it in a way, how can both sides grow from it?

You know, I love to think that kids are born with.

Pure eyes, and they don't see, I mean, of course we see color, we see differences, but there's not a need for that division until we show it to them, but wouldn't it be beautiful just to just have a conversation about this is what happened, but this isn't what has to continue happening.

When we look at curriculum development instructors that are trying to pull together content, reading materials, how deep does this go?

Is it beyond books?

Does it go into the textbooks as well?

We've had debates and conversations around textbooks before.

Is this kind of the same space that we're talking about?

- Most teachers, well, first of all, the curriculums are so...

The curriculum is dictated.

So unless you're that teacher that goes outside of that box that says, "My students need to learn Black history other than in the month of February," and brings in supplemental materials throughout the curriculum, throughout that school year, you know, that's how students learn.

But if you're focusing on testing and if you're focusing on just getting the kids through, then you're not going to bring that material that's needed.

For example, the SAT, ACT tests, rarely if ever have any questions about African American history on them.

Think about how many thousands of students take that test each year.

So does that say that that history is not important?

But, again, it depends on the individual teacher.

What is it that you want your kids to learn?

Do you have a singular focus, or are you looking out for everyone's good?

- Yeah.

As we wrap up the conversation, if there is a parent that wants to get involved, what's the first step to take, I guess, in this fight, right, for literature?

- In this fight, what we encourage parents to do is to read with your students, male or female.

Start building your own home libraries.

Get some James Baldwin.

Have the discussion between W. E. B. and Booker T. in your home.

Encourage, find out what your student is reading in school.

Ask the question.

Vote.

Whether you vote, make sure you vote up and down ballot, because that person that lands on that school board will be making the decision for what goes on in your child's school.

- Indeed.

- So if you don't know, make yourself aware.

Ask your students, "What are you reading?"

Buy the book.

Sit down at the table with the child and say, "Hey, let's read about this person.

Did you know that a Black person invented the stoplight?

Did you know that a Black person invented blood plasma?

Did you know?"

- Great tips.

- From there you build that knowledge.

And not only that, you build that bond with your child.

- Beautiful.

Well, thank you so much, Willa Sample.

We appreciate your thoughts.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

And as election day approaches, we well know all of these topics are very important.

PBS North Carolina wants to ensure that our viewers are prepared to vote.

You can find information about election day, voter registration deadlines, early voting, voter ID, and so much more, so make sure you visit pbsnc.org/vote for additional details.

Well, that's the rest of our show.

We thank you for watching.

If you want more content like this, we invite you to engage with us on Instagram using the hashtag #BlackIssuesForum.

You can also find our full episodes on pbsnc.org/blackissuesforum and on the PBS video app.

I'm Kenya Thompson.

I'll see you next time.

[upbeat music] ♪ - [Announcer] Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you, who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.