“Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” is an autobiography published in 1845 that focuses on the orator and abolitionist’s first 20 years of life spent living in slavery in Maryland.
A desire to keep enslaved people ignorant is a recurring theme in this unflinching first-person account of plantation life. Douglass was taught to read around age 7 or 8 by the wife of his enslaver, but when her husband found out, he put a stop to it. After all, knowledge is power, and from the perspective of the oppressor, nothing good comes from empowering the oppressed.
It seems ironic, then, that “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” is among the books often banned by school libraries. Marietta City Schools recently removed it from its middle school curriculum’s approved book list for eighth graders.
Marietta City Schools Superintendent Grant Rivera said the reason was sexual content.
Credit: Ben Hendren
Credit: Ben Hendren
“One of the principles we have in sixth, seventh and eighth grade is we are sensitive about having any sexual content in our ELA (English Language Arts) curriculum,” he said. “We review primary texts to make sure they are aligned with our standards and appropriate for kids. One of our criteria is that for our sixth, seventh, eighth grades, we do not want to use primary text that could include references to explicit sexual conduct. That could include graphic depictions of body parts, sexual intercourse, sexual violence, etc.”
But Kayla Sargent, a psychology professor at Kennesaw State University and mother of five children including three in Marietta City Schools, says you’d be hard-pressed to find explicit sexual content in the Frederick Douglass autobiography.
Sargent is board president and executive director of Marietta in the Middle, a grassroots organization of parents, students and educators that is challenging the school board’s removal of books from libraries and curricula. She believes there’s another reason for the book’s removal, along with three other titles: “Little Rock Girl 1957″ by Shelley Touga; “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot; and “A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School” by Carlotta Walls LaNier.
“The school district is trying to dodge the fact that they have removed these from curriculum on grounds of divisive concepts because of their racial content,” said Sargent, referring to Georgia’s new Divisive Concepts law, which restricts classroom discussion about race. “We have a copy of their rubric on sexual content, and it’s unconscionable to act like these were removed because of sex or violence. … It’s very clearly racially loaded.”
Credit: Ben Hendren
Credit: Ben Hendren
The practice of banning books is growing. The American Library Association claims 4,240 titles were targeted for removal from schools and libraries in 2023, up 65% from the number banned in 2022. One of the engines driving the bans is Moms for Liberty, an organization founded in Florida in 2021 to challenge COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates. Now they have branches all over the country and have turned their attention to book bans.
Last month, Cobb County Schools added 13 more titles to its list of books banned from its libraries, including “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson, a memoir about a boy growing up Black and gay, and “Crank” by Ellen Hopkins, about a teenager’s struggle with drug addiction.
As book bans have expanded in recent years, so have efforts to stop them.
PEN America, Penguin Random House and a group of authors and parents have filed a federal lawsuit in Florida against Escambia County Public Schools and the county’s school board claiming they violated the First Amendment rights of students, authors and publishers by banning 150 titles from school libraries without following policy. Noting that a large majority of the books on the list deal with race or LGBTQ issues, the suit accuses them of singling out books “based on ideological objections to their contents or disagreement with their messages or themes.”
The American Library Association has proclaimed Sept. 22-28 Banned Books Week to draw attention to the issue. In honor of the occasion, Random House imprint One World is hosting “Free Your Mind,” an event celebrating story, music and freedom of speech featuring a stellar lineup of authors.
Ta-Nehisi Coates (“Between the World and Me”), Nikole Hannah-Jones (“The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story”) and Bryan Stevenson (“Just Mercy”) are among the authors who will participate. The event is Sept. 26 at the MLK International Chapel at Morehouse College. For details, go to 44thand3rdbookseller.com.
Unrelated to Banned Books Week but well-timed, Decatur Book Festival brings to town Amanda Jones, author of “That Librarian” (Bloomsbury, $29.99). Jones, a middle school librarian in rural Louisiana, has a harrowing story to tell about being on the front lines of the book ban battle. She’ll be at Marriott Courtyard Hotel on Oct. 5. For details, go to decaturbookfestival.com. And look for the AJC’s profile of Jones in the Sunday Living & Arts section on Sept. 29.
Meanwhile, “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” is in the public domain, so anybody can find a copy to read online for free.
Suzanne Van Atten is a book critic and contributing editor to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She may be reached at Suzanne.VanAtten@ajc.com.
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