Banned Books Week: African-American Classics Barred From Classrooms
Invisible Man, The Bluest Eye and more.
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Banned Books Week - Banned Books Week, from Sept. 22-28, is an annual celebration of the freedom to read, sponsored by the American Library Association. A North Carolina school board banned Ralph Ellison’s 1952 classic Invisible Man just last week. Take a look at other literature by or about African-Americans that has been banned from schools and libraries across the nation. — Dominique Zonyéé (Photo: Heinrich van den Berg/Getty Images)
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Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison - A Randolph County, North Carolina, school board banned Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison in September because they could not find “any literary value” in the 1952 classic. However, the school board rescinded its ban on Sept. 25, returning it to local high school libraries.(Photo: Courtesy of Random House)
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To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee - Harper Lee’s emotionally charged novel To Kill a Mockingbird has faced as much scrutiny as it has praise since it was published in 1960. In the past decade, schools in Tennessee, New Jersey, North Carolina and Illinois have removed it from the curriculum because its uses of the word “n----r” and explores racism and incest.(Photo: Courtesy of J.B. Lippincott & Co.)
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The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison - Parents of a Colorado school district petitioned for Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye to be removed from an 11th grade reading list in 2013 due to its its “explicit sexual scenes, describing incest, rape, and pedophilia.”(Photo: Courtesy of Vintage Publishing)
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Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe - Published in 1882, this American classic was written in response to the passage of the second Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, which declared that all runaway slaves be brought back to their masters. The book immediately enraged white Southerners and was banned for a time in many parts of the South. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
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