The Day They Came to Arrest the Book (7 page)

“Who appointed
you
the censor?” Luke asked.

Griswold laughed. “As a free American, I made a choice some time ago to do something about getting harmful books out of the schools, just as I would if you had rats in the basement of this school and nobody in charge here was doing anything to get rid of them. It is a citizen’s privilege, and his responsibility, to pitch in and help when something’s gone wrong with anything he supports with his taxes. That right is open to your parents and to anyone else in the community. We can all
appoint
ourselves, young man, and we should.

“But it doesn’t stop there,” Griswold went on. “Just as the President of the United States himself is accountable to everyone who votes, and just as the President can be kicked out if we don’t like what he’s doing, so it is with our very own school board. If they ignore my complaints about certain books that ought not to be in the schools, why, the next step is for me to try to get enough voters to agree with me so that we can change
the school board in the next election. That’s called democracy.”

Nora Baines and Maggie Crowley exchanged meaningful glances.

“Wait a minute.” Kent Dickinson rose from his seat at the table. “You haven’t dropped the other shoe yet, Matt. You’ve said that there is no true freedom without knowing all the choices there are. Okay, but you’ve just told these students that they have no freedom to read what you don’t want them to read. So you’re limiting their knowledge of the choices they have. What happens to true freedom then? It seems to me there’s a big hole in your logic.”

“There’s a hole in my logic”—Griswold smiled—“only if you’re not used to thinking logically. It is one thing to say that students should know there is such a choice as religious faith—whether or not they elect to make that leap into faith themselves. But it is quite something else to say that students are entitled, as part of their formal education, to absorb,
under the authority of the school
, pornography, tributes to sexual promiscuity among adolescents, books that talk about kikes or niggers—”

“That’s right!” Gordon McLean shouted.

“—or books that contain blasphemies against God, who cannot speak for Himself, in the school. If students want any of that filthy stuff, they can still buy it outside of school, God help them; but to permit anything and everything, no matter how false and vile, in the curriculum and in the school library, violates every sensible
definition of education. The students are here to become part of the continuity of human learning,
civilized
learning—not the diseased and vicious muck of man’s ignorance.”

Mockingly, Kent Dickinson silently applauded Griswold. “One thing that bothers me,” Dickinson said, “is that you and I might disagree about what’s diseased and what’s healthy.”

“Tell me, my friend”—Griswold turned toward Dickinson—“would
you
allow a book saying the Holocaust never happened to be taught in this high school?”

“Damn right,” said Dickinson. “You take one of those books and you put it alongside the true record, and not only will kids get a stronger hold on what really happened by checking the lies against the grisly facts, but they’ll learn something else that’s terribly important. They’ll learn the lengths to which anti-Semitism, or any bigotry, will go to deny the undeniable. It’s very useful for young people to have some experience with that kind of pathology.”

“Well, sir,” Griswold said, “you just give that little lecture to the Jewish parents in this school if any teacher or librarian is pathological enough to assign one of those books.”

“Your argument doesn’t hold together, Matt.” Dickinson sat down again. “You don’t help people learn to be free by narrowing their choices.”

“Freedom,” Griswold said to Dickinson, as if he were speaking to a slow pupil, “is indeed something that has to be learned—unless we’re talking about
chaos. And human beings become ready for different degrees of freedom at different ages. That is why we put the young of our species in schools. These students, here, even now, even though they are in high school, have not yet learned enough to be able to responsibly evaluate
all
the different pernicious choices in the kinds of books I say must be kept away from this school—as any carrier of infectious diseases must be kept away.”

“So what you’re saying is”—Dickinson looked up at Griswold—“God can come into the schools now, but later for a book in which a boy and a girl go to bed together.”

Griswold smiled, “That is indeed what I am saying.”

“How much later for pulling back the covers?”

“Oh,” Griswold said, “if God comes first, they’ll know when it’s time to do that.”

While the debate was still going on downstairs, Mr. Moore, in his office, was taking a phone call from a member of the school board who had just been visited by a delegation of angry black parents.

Seated in front of the principal’s desk, Deirdre Fitzgerald looked at the wall of photographs and imagined how she might brighten up the display. A Tenniel
Alice in Wonderland
drawing of the March Hare’s Mad Tea Party with Alice, the Hatter, and Mr. Moore as the Dormouse being stuffed into the teapot. She giggled.

“Yes, I hear you, Mrs. Harmon.” The principal looked somberly at Deirdre. “I understand how agitated they are. Yes, we certainly are going to review the book. At my request, Mr. McLean has just sent in the form that starts the procedure, and I shall appoint a review committee before the day is over. Yes, I shall keep you informed. Thank you so much for calling.”

Mr. Moore put down the phone. “Well, Miss Fitzgerald, I trust you’re settling in nicely.”

“Yes, thank you,” Deirdre said. And waited.

“Well, I expect you have heard something of the excitement about
Huckleberry Finn.”

“Yes.”

“Miss Fitzgerald”—the principal leaned forward—“how many copies of the book do you have for general circulation?”

Deirdre paused and thought. “Let’s see. The order for Nora Baines’s class turned up somewhat short, so after I filled the rest of it from the copies we had, I think there are maybe two or three still downstairs.”

“Miss Fitzgerald”—the principal smiled at her—“we don’t want any more furor over this book than we already have, do we?”

“I don’t quite understand.”

“I think,” Mr. Moore said slowly, “that for the time being, while all this is being worked out, it would be a good idea to collect whatever copies you have and put them under your desk. If anybody asks for them, they’re out.”

Slowly, firmly, Deirdre shook her head from side to side. “As I understand the situation, although the complaints have been specifically directed against
Huckleberry Finn
in Miss Baines’s class, she is continuing to use it during the review procedure. That’s the rule here, I’m told. So why should the book be removed from the library?”

Mr. Moore scratched his ear with irritation. “The complaint form I received this morning from a parent concerns the presence of the book in the
library
as well as in Miss Baines’s class.”

“Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear, Mr. Moore,” Deirdre said calmly, “but you haven’t answered my question. I can’t justify removing the book from my shelves while it’s still being taught in nineteenth-century history. And it’s properly in use in that class because according to this school’s procedures, a book is presumed innocent until proven guilty.”

“Well, well, well,” the principal said sourly, “I know whom you’ve been talking to. Look—” A large smile suddenly appeared on his large face. “My concern, and I am sure it is your concern as well, is to minimize the tension, the divisiveness, the unpleasantness of this unfortunate situation. It would help me greatly if I were able to assure the black parents, while the review is going on, that as a gesture of good faith, we have taken steps to see that no black child will be offended by accidentally coming across the book in the school library.”

Deirdre stared at him but said nothing.

“If it is decided, Miss Fitzgerald, that
Huckleberry Finn
does belong in our school, why, of course, you’ll put it back on the shelves. What I am suggesting is just a gesture. A small extra step of understanding to show the black parents that we care about their feelings, their very strong feelings, on this matter.”

“What about the very strong feelings of Nora Baines
and some of the rest of us who find this sort of side-door censorship exceedingly offensive?”

“Now, Miss Fitzgerald”—Moore dug viciously into his ear—“you’re taking on an adversarial tone, and we are not adversaries. I have not known you long, to be sure, but I have known you long enough to be certain that you are not insensitive to the feelings of those who have experienced discrimination, cruel discrimination, throughout our history. Think of the kindness you will be doing them, with a small gesture of understanding.”

“Oh, it’s a bit more than that, Mr. Moore.” Deirdre got up from her chair. “I did not become a librarian to hide books and to lie to children looking for those books. What you call a small gesture would be a huge act of betrayal. Self-betrayal, among other things. Shoving books under a desk! Really, Mr. Moore!”

The principal also rose. “You disappoint me, Miss Fitzgerald. Pride is a wonderful thing, but compassion touches many more souls.”

“Is it compassion you’re talking about, Mr. Moore, or are you trying to work things out so that you’ll appear to be above the battle, no matter how it turns out?”

“How quick you are to be quick.” The principal sat on the edge of his desk. “No matter how it turns out, Miss Fitzgerald, I will still be here, and I will still be dealing with these parents until their children are graduated. Even if these parents lose this battle, I want them to know they can come to me again because I showed real concern—since you don’t like the word ‘compassion’—on this occasion.”

Deirdre shook her head. “But no concern, if I may say so, for the established review procedures of this school.”

Mr. Moore, his hands heavy in his lap, looked at the librarian. “You are talking abstractions. I am talking about people. About black people who are deeply offended by this book.”

“Mr. Moore”—Deirdre’s eyes were large and angry—“are you saying I’m a racist?”

“My, my, so quick. So quick to miss the point. I am saying that sometimes a human being of whatever color is more important than a piece of paper.”

“Including the First Amendment?” Deirdre snapped.

“Oh, well, you’re a young woman, Miss Fitzgerald. To the young, there is only right and wrong, and nothing in between. I shall look forward to discussing these matters with you again in, oh, ten to fifteen years. Thank you for coming.”

   “Don’t you understand”—Deirdre Fitzgerald was looking up at a defiant Kate standing in front of the librarian’s desk a few hours later—“that there isn’t a book in this whole library that isn’t offensive to somebody?” Barney, seated at a nearby table, nodded in agreement.

“That’s not true,” Kate said. “How about Jane Austen’s
Pride and Prejudice!”

“No blacks in it,” Deirdre said. “No Hispanics in it. No Orientals in it. How can minority students relate to a book in which there’s no one they can identify with?
Therefore,
Pride and Prejudice
is profoundly offensive because it utterly ignores the life experiences of millions of people. Only a white racist teacher would assign—and only a white racist librarian would keep—that book.”

“You’re being deliberately silly,” Kate said.

“Really?” Miss Fitzgerald smiled. “I’ve been at conferences where I’ve heard it seriously argued that even worse than books that stereotype blacks are books that ignore their existence entirely. And those books do not belong in a public school, whether they’re literary classics or not. Kate, can’t you see what I’m getting at?”

“No group should have veto power over what books we can read,” Barney volunteered.

“Exactly.” The librarian nodded her head. “Think, Kate. If
Huckleberry Finn
is going to be thrown out of school because it offends some black parents, what’s to stop other groups of parents from getting up
their
lists of books they want out of here? Catholics, Jews, feminists, antifeminists, conservatives, liberals, Greeks, Turks, Armenians. Where does it end, Kate?”

“I don’t play those games,” Kate said coldly. “Those ‘what if’ games. All I know is that Gordon McLean has the right not to have ‘nigger’ shoved in his face in a classroom, and I have the right not to be forced to read a book that demeans women.”

“But you and Gordon”—Barney was waving his hands—“can attack the book in class and show everybody else what you think is terrible about it.”

“Why waste time on that sort of thing?” Kate said.
“We ought to use our time to read good books. I mean, positive books, books that tell the truth—and only the truth.”

“Oh, my,” Miss Fitzgerald said. “Oh, my.”

“Well!” Nora Baines breezed into the library. “I have a copy of the complaint. Now at least we know what we’re dealing with.” She took several sheets of paper from a notebook she was carrying and laid them on Miss Fitzgerald’s desk.

“Can we see?” Barney asked.

“Of course,” Baines said. “This whole fight is about you folks and your tender, impressionable minds.”

The form began: