All posts tagged "Book Bans"

A school district in a deeply red state decided to ban an iconic Pulitzer-winning novel about slavery because of a single passage.

Knox County Schools in Tennessee banned the 1976 novel "Roots: The Saga of an American Family," written by Alex Haley, who spent his early years and later life in the state, according to reports.

The novel, set in the South, follows the journey of Africans who were enslaved and brought to the U.S. and their later generations. It was also turned into a popular mini-series shortly after it was published. ...

This article first appeared on Wisconsin Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

More than 100 Wisconsin school districts — 1 in 4 — fielded inquiries about books or formal requests to remove them since 2020, according to a Wisconsin Watch review of records obtained from all but two of the state’s 421 public school districts.

Many requests came from organized conservative groups and politicians rather than organic requests from parents concerned about required reading. In several cases, the school district didn’t even own the books someone wanted to remove....

This article first appeared on Oklahoma Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled in favor of Edmond Public Schools in a battle over books in its school libraries.

The state’s high court in a unanimous decision said Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters and the state Department of Education overstepped their authority in trying to force Edmond schools to ban two novels. ...

When teacher Mary Wood stepped back into the classroom this semester, she didn’t just have the usual back-to-school jitters. This wasn’t the veteran teacher’s first time starting a new English class, but it was the first since her lesson plan for last year put her in the center of a very public spat about how race is taught in South Carolina classrooms. It was a discussion that she at times welcomed and at others worried how it was affecting her standing both professionally and in her community at large. “Starting school was weird,” Wood said in an interview at her Chapin, South Carolina, home......