The Day They Came to Arrest the Book

by Nat Hentoff

  “Mr. McLean,” said the principal, “I very much appreciate your coming in this morning. We want to know, we need to know, our parents’ concerns about the school. After all, you are our employers. On this particular matter, you will appreciate that I have to consult with the faculty and librarian, but I can assure you that this will all be done swiftly, and I shall be in touch with you very shortly.”

  “Give me a date,” Carl McLean said.

  “A week from today at the latest. You have my word.”

  “You understand”—McLean stared at him—“that I am not bargaining. Either the book goes, or there will be a mobilization of a good many parents besides myself.”

  Mr. Moore held out his hand. “Again, I hear you. It has been a pleasure meeting with you.”

  McLean just barely shook the principal’s hand, motioned to his son to get up, and said at the door, jerking his thumb toward the wall of photographs, “Sure aren’t many blacks up there. Maybe you ought to put up a group picture of the kitchen and custodial staff. That’d balance it out some.”

  V

  The next morning, zooming down the corridor toward a class that had somehow started without him, Gordon McLean, seeing Nora Baines approaching, slowed just enough to proclaim, “Huck Finn is dead! Dead! Dead!” and sailed on.

  “What on earth?” She looked after him, shook her head, and was about to go on when Maggie Crowley, a lanky, cheerful-looking woman in her late twenties, came around the corner.

  Normally Baines kept her distance from Maggie Crowley, being suspicious of anyone in constant good spirits, particularly anyone teaching at George Mason High School. “You’ve got to be deaf, dumb, and blind, or loony,” Baines had told Deirdre Fitzgerald, “to walk around like she does with a smile all the time.” However, Baines had recently acquired a certain respect for Crowley. Maggie had not only created a new course, American Problems, for this new school year, but had actually gotten the principal to approve it despite the controversies its guest speakers might stir up.

  Crowley had worked on Mr. Moore all last spring; and he had finally given her a go-ahead only after having exacted a pledge that, as the principal put it, “Every single controversial subject—which means everything you will be covering in this course—must be dealt with objectively. It is your responsibility to see that all sides are fairly presented.”

  “How did you get him to even consider going for it?” Nora Baines had asked last May when the approval came through.

  “Mighty Mike came to realize, with a lot of nudging from me”—Maggie had laughed—“that through the guest speakers, this would be a way to appease those parents who keep complaining that their kids only get the ‘liberal’ point of view on everything. From the textbooks and the teachers, and what not.

  “There’s some truth to that, you know,” Maggie had said. “Nobody at George Mason teaches that the earth is flat or that the poor should all be sterilized or that the only way to deal with Russia is to cremate it. Though, from what I hear in the teachers’ lounge, some of our colleagues do believe in one or more of the above. They just don’t teach it.

  “Anyway,” Maggie had continued, “Moore likes being able to tell certain parents that, through my new course, the kids will be getting points of view at George Mason that they’d get in very, very few other schools. Damn right. Like this whole shooting match was created in six days, and the theory of evolution is just monkey business. Hey, do you know that one of the anti-gun-control guests I’ve been trying to line up won’t come unless he can bring his rifle? I said no, and he said I’m violating his constitutional rights. So I’m a reasonable person. Bring it unloaded, I said. But what if he gets accosted by a radical student? he said.”

  “Or by a middle-aged history teacher?” Nora Baines had sounded eager.

  “Well, I told him that in this saloon, everybody has to check his guns at the door. The beauty part of this whole thing for me, Nora, is that the kids, by being able to listen to and argue with a whole spectrum of advocates—from Catholic nuclear pacifists to my gun-toting friend, and I’ll get him—the kids may get the knack of thinking for themselves.”

  On this September morning, as Maggie Crowley came around the corner, she was even more animated than usual. “Hey,” she said to Nora, “I’m having a debate next Thursday. ‘Is Individual Freedom Getting Out of Hand?’ You like that?”

  Nora Baines looked uncertain. “Tell me more. Who’s debating?”

  “I’ve got a young lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union and … I’ve got Matthew Griswold.”

  “Good Lord,” Baines said, “the abominable founder and the chief executive officer of the Citizens’ League for the Preservation of American Values. You think your young lawyer can handle him?”

  “Well, if he can’t”—Maggie Crowley smiled—“what about you? Actually, I wanted to invite you to bring your nineteenth-century American history class to the debate. It might be interesting for the kids to compare how the argument went then with how it’s going now.”

  “Yeah.” Nora nodded. “Not a bad idea. We accept, and we appreciate your invitation. Can my troops get into the question period?”

  “Oh, sure. Just remember to tell them to leave their guns at the door.”

  That afternoon, Nora Baines’s eyes were on Mr. Moore, who was standing in front of the wall of photographs in his office.

  “I cannot believe what I am hearing,” she said. “You are telling me that one of the landmarks of American literature is unsuitable for use in my class. Unsuitable for students in the third year of high school! I don’t know why I said that. It would be just as outrageous to deny Huckleberry Finn to sophomores and freshmen and—”

  “Calm thyself, Ms. Baines,” the principal said softly. “The reason we have so much teacher burnout, and principal burnout, is that we overreact to every little frustration, and God knows there is no more frustrating job in the world than what we do. I have often said that I would have a longer life expectancy if I had spent all these years in the Oval Office rather than in this one.”

  He chuckled, but Nora Baines’s face was of stone.

  “Look,” the principal said, “this is not a frivolous complaint. Nor is it a new one. Huckleberry Finn has been objected to by black parents and black organizations in other places. By respectable, responsible people, not extremists. It has been taken off high school required reading lists in Indianapolis and in New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois. You see, I’ve been doing some homework.”

  “I do not care”—Nora Baines banged her hand on the principal’s desk—“where this book has been stomped on, mutilated, or burned by censors with the connivance—you hear me, connivance!—of people who call themselves educators. Who call themselves”—her voice rose sharply—“Americans!”

  “Ms. Baines—”

  “If you’re going to call me anything, Mr. Moore, please call me Miss. That other thing sounds as if you were a yardman asking me if there were any more chores for you to do. Now, George Mason—the very George Mason whose name this school bears—said something you should know about. He said it in 1776. Note the date well! In drafting Virginia’s Declaration of Rights, which led right to our Declaration of Independence, George Mason said: ‘Freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.’ And he did not mean just newspapers, Mr. Moore. He meant books, and anything else that comes off a press.”

  The principal moved to his desk and sat on its edge. “This has nothing to do with freedom of the press, Miss Baines,” he said. “We are not preventing anyone from publishing this book. However, freedom of the press does not mean that we must place in our school library, or use in our classrooms, every single book that is published. Freedom of the press does not mean that the First Amendment requires us to compel students to read a book that offends minority children and their parents.”

  “You know what I’m talking about!” Nora Baines struggled to keep contr
ol of herself. “You know damn well what I’m talking about. Freedom to publish is useless if people are not allowed to read what is published. And that certainly includes students. I still can’t believe what I’m hearing. We’re not talking about trash. We’re not talking about a piece of pornography. We’re talking about preventing our students from reading Huckleberry Finn! And why? Because it offends some people. Show me a book that offends no one, and I will show you a book that no one, in the whole history of the world, has ever willingly read. Mr. Moore, think of what you are asking of me! I am supposed to throw Huckleberry Finn out of my classroom! Have you no shame, sir? At long last, have you no shame?”

  “Miss Baines,” said the principal with a smile, “you are overwrought. Please believe me, I admire your fervor, your outspokenness. But I beseech you, Miss Baines, try to imagine yourself a black child, a black parent—”

  “As if, as if”—she was breathing hard—“all blacks think alike and act alike. As if all blacks are just dying to suppress books they don’t like! Do you realize what you’re saying? Talk about stereotypes! Oh, what’s the use? I am not going to remove this book from my course just because you ask me to. We have a regular procedure, including a review committee, when there is a complaint about a book. I insist we follow that procedure.”

  “And you will abide by the result?”

  “I cannot believe,” Nora Baines said, “that a majority of any review committee will censor this book.”

  “But,” Mr. Moore said gently, “if a majority should decide to recommend the book’s removal from your course, you will abide by the result?”

  Nora Baines sighed. “I would have no choice. I helped set up those procedures. But it won’t happen.” She looked at the principal. “Unless there’s some funny business in the selection of the committee.”

  “As you know, Miss Baines,” the principal said coolly, “the school board appoints the review committee. Are you saying the school board would engage in any funny business?”

  “I am going to be watching. Very closely. If need be, Mr. Moore, the American Civil Liberties Union can be asked to come in on behalf of the First Amendment rights of the students—and of the faculty.”

  The principal smiled. “You say that as if I were Dracula and you were advancing on me with a cross in your hand. Miss Baines, I have no fear of the American Civil Liberties Union. My responsibility is not to any outside organization. My responsibility is to the students and to the parents.”

  “You left out the faculty.”

  “Not by intention,” Mr. Moore said smoothly. “We are all linked indivisibly in our common task. And that does lead me back to where we began this absorbing discussion. Since there is going to be a review procedure—though I had hoped to be able to resolve this complaint informally—the book, in all fairness to the complainants, will not be used in your course while it is being reviewed. If the committee does decide the book is appropriate, you can schedule Huckleberry Finn later in the year.”

  “No way,” Nora Baines said. “This book is presumed innocent until proven guilty. That’s what our review procedures say, Mr. Moore. Are you going to change them unilaterally?”

  The principal rose. “The test of leadership, Miss Baines, is flexibility. Thoughtful flexibility—rather than rigid adherence to the letter of each rule and regulation. This school has suspension rules, for instance, but on occasion I have slightly reinterpreted those rules to avoid placing a permanent stain on a student’s record. This has only happened under very special circumstances, of course. In fact, I recall your arguing very strenuously with me two years ago not to suspend a boy because of certain very special circumstances. And on reflection, rather than sticking slavishly to the rules, I agreed with you.

  “Similarly, in the present instance, Miss Baines, what harm can it possibly do to be flexible, to show the black parents that we are sensitive to their concerns, and remove the book from your course until the review committee makes its decision? You didn’t object to my bending the suspension rules just a bit? Why are you so rigid now?”

  The history teacher stared at the principal, shaking her head. “You are incredible. You are the one who wants to suspend a book. That is the same as suspending the reason for all of us being in this school. Freedom of inquiry. Freedom of thought. Oh, God, why am I wasting my breath?”

  “Are you saying, Miss Baines, that a book is more important than a child? That rules may be adjusted to particular circumstances when a child is concerned, but never when a book is concerned?”

  With a sound that was somewhere between a word and a cry of anguish, Nora Baines stalked out of the room.

  Mr. Moore, leaning back in his chair, was allowing himself a half smile, when she suddenly popped back in.

  “I am not going to discontinue the use of Huckleberry Finn until the review procedure is finished. And if you try to force me to, I shall go public!”

  “You already are,” the principal said amiably. “This is a public school. Nothing is hidden here.”

  “You know what I mean, Mr. Moore. Not everything that happens here gets into the newspapers and on television. Yet.”

  The principal, his elbows on his chair, gazed speculatively at Nora Baines. “You know,” he said, “a teacher who acquires a public reputation for creating controversy—even with the most noble motives—injures her credibility as an emotionally dependable, fair-minded guide to the young. I would be very distressed, Miss Baines, to see you undermine your fine reputation over these many years when, after all, this simply requires a brief period of self-restraint on your part until the democratic process at George Mason is allowed to—”

  “NO!” Nora Baines, still at the door, shouted. “If this book is convicted, then, and only then—and with utter despair—will I stop teaching it. But not until then.”

  “I hear you, dear Miss Baines. I hear you. Take some hot milk before you retire, and we shall speak of this again.”

  This time she slammed the door.

  And opened it again.

  “I assume,” Nora Baines said sharply, “that you have asked the parent to fill out a formal complaint form so that we can get this show on the road.”

  Mr. Moore suppressed a sigh. “I shall ask Mr. McLean this very afternoon to fill out the form. It somehow slipped my mind.”

  “Hah!” Nora Baines said.

  “Anything else?”

  “There’ll be plenty else.” She moved through the door.

  “Gently, my dear Miss Baines. I’ve become quite attached to that door.”

  A few minutes later, the principal came out of his office, looked around the outer office to be sure Nora Baines had gone, and said to his secretary, “Rena, ask Miss Fitzgerald to come see me. Fit her in as early as you can tomorrow.”

  VI

  Deirdre Fitzgerald was curious about Barney Roth. He was in the library so often, more than any other student actually, but he hardly ever spoke to her.

  Looking at him going through the card catalog first thing the next morning, she thought: Either he never needs any help, or he’s shy. Probably both. Or he resents me. Nora says he was a particular favorite of Karen Salters’s. Well, I never did believe a librarian should force herself on anybody. Besides, I’m kind of shy myself, I guess.

  But here he was, coming toward her. “Miss Fitzgerald, I’m looking for a book called Banned Books/387 B.C. to 1978 A.D. There’s a reference to it in something I’m reading for Miss Crowley’s course. You know, American Problems. There doesn’t seem to be a card for it, though.”

  “There was a card,” Deirdre said, “but no book to go with the card. Somebody must have liked it so much he couldn’t do without it. I have the book on order, but if you like, I have a copy at home you can borrow.”

  “Gee, thanks, I’ll be very careful with it.”

  “Least I can do.” She smiled. “You’re my best customer.”

  “Where you worked before,” Barney asked, “did you ever have any problems with peop
le wanting to ban books?”

  “Where I was before was in a private school for girls. The headmistress had a deep interest in the wishes of the parent body—in fact, that was her specialty as an educator. So she, and she alone, decided what books we would buy and what books we would not buy. Anything that might possibly offend any parent was not on the list. All banning of books, you see, was done before any book ever arrived. So, we never had any trouble once the books did come.”

  “Why did you leave?” Barney sat down on a chair to which she had waved him.

  Deirdre laughed. “I think I just told you. I wasn’t really a librarian there. Also, I wanted to work where there were all different kinds of students. A livelier place.”

  “I hope you haven’t been disappointed,” Barney said.

  “Oh, no. You folks, as my father would say, are full of beans.”

  “Did you always want to be a librarian?” Barney asked.

  “Just about always. I mean, where else can you be surrounded by friends who never die? I guess that sounds funny.”

  “No,” Barney said, “not at all. If I didn’t want to write books, I think I’d like to be a librarian or maybe own a secondhand bookstore where people could find books they’ve almost given up finding. My father spends a lot of time in secondhand bookstores, and I don’t think he’s ever left one of them without a bunch of books. My mother says he’ll never read them all even if he lives to be a thousand, but he says that’s not the point. He says, late one night, a book will come into his mind that he wants to read, and there it will be, just across the room.”