North Carolina School District Bans Landmark Segregation Novel

A complaint filed by just one mother of a grade 11 student in?Randolph County, N.C has successfully led to the banning of?Ralph Ellison’s breakthrough 1952 novel, Invisible Man, citing one board member as saying the book had “no literary value.”

Yes, books really still do get banned these days.

A lack of “literary value” has apparently left Ralph Ellison’s landmark 1952 novel, Invisible Man?banned from school libraries in Randolph County, N.C., the Asheboro Courier-Tribune reports.

According to the Tribune, a parent of an eleventh grader wrote the school district expressing her disapproval of the book’s availability to students stating:

The narrator writes in the first person, emphasizing his individual experiences and his feelings about the events portrayed in his life. This novel is not so innocent; instead, this book is filthier, too much for teenagers. You must respect all religions and point of views when it comes to the parents and what they feel is age appropriate for their young children to read, without their knowledge. This book is freely in your library for them to read.

As the school district’s policy requires, the parent’s complaints lead to votes on the school and district levels. Both held that the book should remain available to students in the library. However, in a 5-2 vote, the school board voted to ban the book, with one board member, Gary Mason, stating, “I didn’t find any literary value.”

Forget about the fact that the book won the 1953 National Book Award when it beat out?Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, forget the fact that in 1995 the book was praised by The New York Times’?Roger Rosenblatt “as a masterpiece, and forget the fact that Time magazine has included the book in its Top 100 Best English Language Novels?since 1923.

All that matters is that one woman had an axe to grind, and she used it to chop one of America’s most defining literary masterpieces into kindling and throw it on the fire of intolerance that is still ignited in North Carolina.

Bravo North Carolina. ?Bravo.

Edited by Jeromie Williams?- Hat Tip: ?Huffington Post?- Photo: The End Of Collection

I had a successful career actively working with at-risk youth, people struggling with poverty and unemployment, and disadvantaged and oppressed populations. In 2011, I made the decision to pursue my dreams and become a full-time writer. Connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.