Over the past five years, book bans and book challenges have become a major flashpoint in American politics.
School boards, parents, librarians, and lawmakers are fighting over what students should—and shouldn’t—have access to on library shelves. Supporters of library restrictions say they are protecting children. Opponents say they are censoring ideas.
But this debate isn’t new.
In the 1970s, America saw a similar surge in book challenges. One local dispute in Long Island, New York, made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court and became the only school-library book-removal case the Court has ever decided.
That case was Island Trees School District v. Pico, better known simply as Pico.
In this episode, we’re joined by Anthony Aycock, legislative library director at the North Carolina General Assembly and the author of Just Plain Filthy: The Story Behind Book Banning’s Trial of the Century.
His book tells the story behind Pico, including the school board that removed the books from its libraries, the students who fought back, and the Supreme Court justices who delivered a fractured ruling that left some of the case’s most important constitutional questions unresolved.
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Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
03:02 How Anthony became a librarian
05:08 What inspired Anthony’s book?
07:33 The origins of Island Trees School District v. Pico
13:25 The Miller test for obscenity
14:43 Steven Pico and the road to the Supreme Court
18:15 The local reaction to Pico
20:17 If libraries choose what comes in, why can’t they choose what goes out?
20:51 How librarians build a collection
26:05 When and why books leave library shelves
26:52 The Supreme Court’s plurality opinion
30:08 Why Pico still matters: the Llano County case
35:41 Libraries, viewpoint diversity, and public access
38:24 When is censorship justified?
39:55 Should parents decide what everyone can read?
51:01 Stress test: Should Hitler’s Mein Kampf be available in libraries?
54:05 How librarians feel about literary censorship today
57:57 Outro
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