The Central York school board had "frozen" a list of titles for more than a year, including children's books about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. | Ohio Humanities/Facebook
The Central York school board had "frozen" a list of titles for more than a year, including children's books about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. | Ohio Humanities/Facebook
The Central York school board initiated a school-district-wide ban on books that were written by authors of color or about people of color.
The Guardian reports that the ban was implemented in October of 2020 and stonewalls works on the library shelves from acclaimed authors like Jacqueline Woodson, Ijeoma Oluo and Ibram X Kendi. Children's books with titles about Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King are also part of the ban.
According to The Guardian, school officials said that the books were not banned, but rather "frozen" while under review by the school board.
Author Brad Meltzer
| LinkedIn
Jane Johnson, the school board president, told CNN it was just a coincidence that the books being banned were either written by or about people of color.
"I’m currently sitting in the virtual Central York school board meeting to stop this book ban," Brad Meltzer, author of the book "I am Rosa Parks," wrote in a Sept. 20 tweet. "I read 'I am Rosa Parks' and 'I am Dr. King' to the board. Here are two of the pages I read. I’m even more inspired by the community members speaking out against this."
The pages that Meltzer read from "I am Rosa Parks" said the following: "In my life, people tried to knock me down. Tried to make me feel less than I was. They teased me for being small. Being black. Being different. Let me be clear: No one should be able to do that. But if they try, you must stand strong. Stand for what's right. Stand up for yourself (even if it means sitting down)."
“When you’re banning Dr. King and Rosa Parks, you’re on the wrong side of history,” Meltzer said to the school board, according to The Guardian.
Voting unanimously during a meeting on Sept. 21, the school board reinstated the list of books.
"This seems pretty egregious," Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, an associate professor of history at the New School, told CNN. "I can see how certain trainings or workshops that some parents take exception to seem really outside of what a history class can be expected to do. But the kind of texts that are being banned here make me feel that there is now just sort of an allergy to anything that mentions race or racism."
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