Editor’s Note: We welcome letters to the editor. You can send them with your name, and town of residence to editorsarah@yahoo.com.
From Angie Hayden
Prattville, Alabama
Dear Editor:
As the controversy surrounding the Autauga-Prattville Public Library grows, due greatly to manufactured outrage, I’ve been thinking about the way history repeats itself when we refuse to learn from it.
In 1959, a children’s book titled “The Rabbit’s Wedding” was causing panic and outrage among Alabama parents. The book, a sweet and beautifully illustrated children’s story about a little white rabbit marrying a little black rabbit in the forest, was getting angry accusations that it would “cause confusion about marital practices” in children. You could say these concerned parents were accusing it of grooming children to accept what they sincerely (and wrongly) believed was against God and the natural order of things. This was a belief that was deeply and sincerely held among many at the time, and it was a belief they would use Bible verses to defend. They accused the book of violating anti-miscegenation laws (laws that enforced segregation in marriage), and the result was cries for the dangerous book to be removed.
The book was ultimately ordered to be pulled from shelves, and when APL director Emily Wheelock Reed made the decision to keep the book in reserve behind the circulation desk, she faced threats not only to herself and her position, but also threats to library funding.
Sounds familiar. History really does repeat when we don’t learn from it.
In 1933, in Hitler’s Germany, the very first book burnings occurred at a library in an institute dedicated in part to the study and affirmation of gay and trans people. Think about that- among Hitler’s first targets were books about LGBT people.
It would be easy to say that particular comparison is hyperbolic. But Clean Up Prattville has resulted in book challenge forms that demand complete removal of books, and in some cases, demands for books to be destroyed. The group claims repeatedly in front of meetings that they’re not asking for book bans, but their words outside of recorded meetings, in their own petitions, websites and forms say something very different. On top of that uncomfortable reality, there is the admission from Ms. Rees, Clean Up Prattville’s executive director, that the group is working in tandem with Moms for Liberty, who recently quoted Hitler in their newsletter.
History repeats.
During the second Red Scare, at the height of McCarthyism (another subject Clean Up Prattville members should really look into before again appearing before City council shouting accusations of communism), books were again targets of burning, and a U.S. senator arguing against censorship said “It matters little whether the bans take the form of burning gas or consist of storing books in basements or warehouses.”
History repeating again.
Now, present day. On August 7th, Clean Up Prattville stood before the Alabama GOP executive committee and repeated the falsehood that the Prattville library has explicit content for 8-year-olds. It does not. Books read aloud at past City council meetings for shock value were all from the young adult section, in a completely separate space from the children’s library.
On August 10th, they repeated the falsehood that there is pornography in the children’s library at the APLS board meeting. They waved around a book called “Genderqueer” for shock value this time, which the Prattville Library does not even have.
There is an important point to be made here: if their cause were noble, they would not need to misrepresent facts in order to stir up anger to garner support. Christian values have been brought up again and again as a weapon against the library as of late, so as a Methodist girl myself I would ask readers to consider Matthew 7:15-20. It’s a classic, one about false prophets, and it tells us that “by their fruit they will be known.” I ask now what the fruits of the efforts of the Clean Up Prattville movement have been, aside from division, anger, misrepresentation and outright threats against not only the very existence of the public library, but the staff and city officials who defend it.
Because history threatens to repeat again, if we refuse to learn from it.
