Title: Book Banning | The First Amendment Encyclopedia
Headings: The First Amendment Encyclopedia
The First Amendment Encyclopedia
Book Banning
By Susan L. Webb
Book banning is the most widespread form of censorship in the United States
Community standards may be taken into account when deciding if materials are subject to censor
Opponents of book banning emphasize the First Amendment rights of students

Content: Such actions, assert free speech proponents, endanger tolerance, free expression, and democracy. In this photo, author Kurt Vonnegut Jr., speaks to reporters on a federal court ruling calling for a trial to determine if a Long Island school board can ban a number of books, including his "Slaughterhouse Five," at New York Civil Liberty offices in 1980. ( AP Photo-File, used with permission from the Associated Press)
In September 1990, the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression declared the First Amendment to be “in perilous condition across the nation” based on the results of a comprehensive survey on free expression. Even literary classics, including Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, were targeted. Often, the complaints arose from individual parents or school board members. At other times, however, the pressure to censor came from such public interest groups as the Moral Majority. Censorship — the suppression of ideas and information — can occur at any stage or level of publication, distribution, or institutional control. Some pressure groups claim that the public funding of most schools and libraries makes community censorship of their holdings legitimate. To counter charges of censorship, opponents of publications sometimes use the tactic of restricting access rather than calling for the physical removal of books. Opponents of bans argue that by restricting information and discouraging freedom of thought, censors undermine one of the primary functions of education: