Banned Books Week: Stories of Censorship
Students in the bridge experience course LI 202, Free to All: Public Libraries in U.S. Society, researched cases of censorships in public libraries over the last two centuries. Using primary sources they wrote short reports about these cases and designed corresponding posters for Banned Books Week. Browse this guide to learn about the variety of cases in libraries.
Course Instructor: Johanna MacKay
Poster and Report by Ava Wood '24
“He had, in fact, got everything from the church and Sunday School, except, perhaps, any longing whatever for decency and kindness and reason”― Sinclair Lewis, Elmer Gantry
How were authors expected to write books while working with the constraints of obscenity laws, when the so-called obscene nature of something was not even defined? On March 3, 1873, President Ulysses Grant of the United States of America signed into law the “Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literatures and Articles of Immoral Use.” This new legislation created a ban on all items that could be deemed “obscene, lewd, lascivious, or filthy."
Novelist Sinclair Lewis was the first author from the United States to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1930. In 1927 he published Elmer Gantry, the fourth of his six most popular books. This novel was banned from numerous public libraries as well as the United States Postal Service within its first year of being published. When Sinclair Lewis published Elmer Gantry in 1927 the U.S. Post Office Department defended postmasters who banned it from the mails (in 1931, the Post Office Department even banned any catalog that listed the book), and libraries in Boston and Camden, New Jersey, refused to put it on their shelves (Wiegand, 2005). Elmer Gantry would be banned in Boston, Massachusetts, Kansas City, Missouri, Camden, New Jersey, and other US cities (Wiegand, 2005).
Sinclair’s book appalled loyal churchgoers from coast to coast, as the main character, the novel’s namesake, is a preacher who seemingly praises alcohol and promiscuity more than his faith. A well known evangelist Billy Sunday “got all worked up and called the Minnesota author “Satan’s cohort” (Boston, 2022). This book’s release harbored a massive amount of negative attention, yet any press is good press, right? The frenzy Sinclair jump started with this blasphemous preacher caused audiences to rush to purchase the book, even if only to read it with the intention of slandering it.
Americans United (au.org) is an organization for the separation of Church and State. They released an article in 2022 in recognition of Banned Books Week. In their editor’s statement they declared, “Americans United has opposed religiously based censorship since the organization’s founding in 1947 because religious extremists and their lawmaker allies should not dictate what books other people’s children are allowed to read.” While Elmer Gantry as a character can certainly be perceived as offensive by a certain reader, the creation of this character is purely fictional and was created on the basis of criticizing flaws within the church, and not created as a direct reflection of any specific preacher or religious figure.
Sources:
Boston, R.(2022, September 20). Banned Books Week: Some churchgoers banned this 1927 novel about an amoral clergyman – and made it a bestseller. Americans United.