KNOX NEWS
Lydia X. McCoy | February 23, 2011
Sissy Ferguson, executive director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center in Alcoa, poses Friday, Feb. 18, 2011 with her 20-year collection of figurines used from the 1920s to 1950s to depict black people.
Related article: Blount County Library exhibit of Black Americana offends some patrons
FOX 4 NEWS (Dallas-Ft. Worth)
Melissa Cutler | February 22, 2011
When Rose Schifferdecker opened a book from the children’s section of the Carrollton library, she couldn’t believe her eyes. She said it describes sex.
The Carrollton mother babysits three young children. She took them to the library about a month and the 9 year old picked out a book titled, “My Mom’s Having a Baby.”
At the time, Schifferdecker said she didn’t think anything of it.
“I told the kids, ‘Go ahead. Everybody get three books each,’” she said. “I’ve always felt it was safe. Go ahead. Get what you want.”
It wasn’t until she got home that Schifferdecker realized what was inside the book.
WORCESTER TELEGRAM
Jacqueline Reis | February 22, 2011
The library is a marketplace of ideas, but sometimes they mix like oil and water.
Tomorrow night, for instance, scheduled events at the Worcester Public Library were to include Black Culture Movie Night — and the monthly meeting of North East White Power.
When the white power group scheduled its meeting, it did so under its acronym, NEWP. It wasn’t until third parties recognized the acronym and e-mailed the library last weekend that Head Librarian Mark J. Contois realized he might have a volatile situation.
He conferred with the city manager’s office and the Police Department, who recommended asking one of the groups to reschedule. The Black Culture Movie Night — which planned to view the movie “Souls of Black Girls” — had been scheduled first, so Mr. Contois asked the white power group to postpone its meeting.
MILLER MCCUNE
Lewis Beale | February 10, 2011
On the website Parents Against Bad Books In Schools, some of the works deemed “sensitive, inappropriate and controversial” for K-12 students, even those who are college-bound or in advanced placement classes, include Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses, Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.
“Bad is not for us to determine,” says the disclaimer on the site. “Bad is what you determine is bad.” One of the purposes of PABBIS.org, the disclaimer goes on to say, is to “provide information related to bad books in schools.”
