Rick Bowmer/AP Photo
From July 2021 to June 2023, PEN America recorded 5,894 instances of book bans across 41 states and 247 public school districts.
When a parent came before the North Hunterdon-Voorhees Board of Education and read the most explicit passages of a sex education book titled Let’s Talk About It this past November, Martha Hickson stayed away. The veteran librarian of North Hunterdon High School in central New Jersey had spoken out against the removal of five books during the 2021-2022 school year. The books stayed on the shelves, but it came at a great personal cost: Parents singled out Hickson, baselessly labeling her a pedophile, groomer, and kink promoter.
Last month, she was targeted again. On January 13, an anonymous user posted an edited video of the parent reading Let’s Talk About It to a Facebook group called the “Hunterdon County Project.” The video’s description called out Hickson by name. The video was then shared on a right-wing Facebook group called “NJ Schools” that has over 14,000 members. The husband of a school board member is one of the group’s administrators. In the comments, he wrote “@everyone,” a new feature introduced by Meta in 2022 for administrators that notifies every member of the Facebook group about a specific post.
On January 15, Hickson received a message on her work email. The sender accused her of being a “danger to young people” and called her various expletives. The email address from which it originated was linked to a tactical weapons business.
The barrage of hate—set off in part by a spouse of a school board member—has upended Hickson’s life.
“I’m sitting here frightened, which was the intention. It is stochastic terrorism meant to get in my head [and] freak me out. And it’s working,” Hickson told the Prospect.
In addition to her full-time job as a school librarian, Hickson has spent her free time rallying support to defend the school library. She has designed graphics, written talking points, and coordinated with networks of supporters, including the North Hunterdon-Voorhees Intellectual Freedom Fighters, a group of parents, students, and friends that formed to support Hickson during the first round of proposed book removals.
“I basically no longer have a life,” said Hickson.
On January 23, the North Hunterdon-Voorhees Intellectual Freedom Fighters held a rally at the county library with multiple local politicians in attendance, including U.S. Rep. Andy Kim. Later that day when the North Hunterdon-Voorhees Board of Education met, so many people showed up that the board postponed the session until they could find a venue big enough to accommodate everyone who wanted to attend without breaking fire codes.
On January 30, the board of education members took their seats in front of a packed auditorium in North Hunterdon High School. Supporters of Hickson and the library wore red. Proponents of book removals or restrictions wore blue. Attendees held up homemade signs in the crowd. Choruses of cheers and boos rang throughout the public comment period, which lasted over two hours.
After the last community speaker, board president Glen Farbanish commended the speakers on both sides for their passion. The board declined to issue any statement defending Hickson or condemning those who attacked her online.
IN SCHOOL DISTRICTS ACROSS THE COUNTRY, groups of parents, educators, students, and activists have mobilized against organized efforts to remove books from their schools.
During the pandemic, conservative parents’ groups, like Moms for Liberty, rallied to challenge mask mandates. As the pandemic waned, the groups shifted their attention to school libraries. Though their ideology has proven to be unpopular—the parents’ rights movement faltered in last year’s elections in November—small sects of far-right activists continue to try to exert influence on school boards and to police content in school libraries.
The number of book challenges has steadily increased over the past three years. From July 2021 to June 2023, PEN America recorded 5,894 instances of book bans across 41 states and 247 public school districts.
Many times, just one parent wants to restrict or remove a book for a whole district. In December, one parent challenged 444 books in Elkhorn, Wisconsin. In Florida, one man has submitted over 600 book challenges and over 400 appeals.
According to Peter Bromberg, the associate director at EveryLibrary, a nonprofit group that fights censorship and supports local libraries, libraries have had protocols for challenging materials for the past 50 years. But since the anti-masking movement turned its attention to the libraries, everything has changed.
“[People] haven’t read the books. They’re doing a copy-paste complaint that they got off the internet,” said Bromberg. “These policies weren’t designed for the weaponization that’s happened.”
Bromberg told the Prospect that it took some time for those who care about defending books to respond, but now they are.
Libraries have had protocols for challenging materials for the past 50 years. But since the anti-masking movement turned its attention to the libraries, everything has changed.
The vast majority of parents do not support book removals. According to EveryLibrary, over 90 percent of parents, grandparents, and legal guardians trust librarians to provide their children with appropriate materials.
“Anywhere there are people trying to ban books, there are also those trying to protect the freedom to read,” wrote Sabrina Baêta, a program manager at PEN America, in an email interview.
In 2021, the book ban movement came to Orange County, Florida, when a small group of parents read the most explicit parts of books out of context at a school board meeting and urged the board to remove the books from the library.
The incident inspired Stephana Ferrell to start the Florida Freedom to Read Project to help parents facing similar challenges find resources to keep books in their schools. The Florida Freedom to Read Project now has 2,700 members on Facebook. Ferrell says that she routinely dedicates more than 60 volunteer hours per week to the project.
Submitting public records requests has been one of the most effective tools for the Florida Freedom to Read Project. In 2023, the organization, which Ferrell runs with two other parents, submitted over 500 public records requests. Their requests have repeatedly uncovered school districts banning or restricting seemingly innocuous titles. For example, in May 2023, records requested by the Florida Freedom to Read Project revealed that Miami-Dade schools had restricted access to the poem “The Hill We Climb,” which poet Amanda Gorman recited at President Biden’s inauguration.
In Texas, Anne Russey co-founded the Texas Freedom to Read Project, which operates independently from but sometimes shares resources with the Florida Freedom to Read Project.
Russey told the Prospect that school boards violating their own book challenge policies has consistently been a problem.
Russey’s children attend schools in the Katy Independent School District (ISD) outside of Houston. In the past, parents in the district could file a formal request for reconsideration if they objected to the content of a book. The form required parents to say whether they had read the book in its entirety, if the content violated Texas penal code on obscene and harmful material, and the actions they would like the district to take.
The challenge would then go to a committee with seven voting members: four parents and three educators, usually including a librarian. The committee would read the book, discuss it, and then vote whether to remove, restrict, or keep it.
But Russey says the Katy ISD has abandoned its official policy, instead electing to remove books at the behest of people who come to board meetings and read out the cherry-picked passages.
“[The board] err[s] on the side of caution instead of on the side of kids,” said Russey.
In 2022, a Texas Tribune and ProPublica investigation revealed that the superintendent of Granbury Independent School District in Texas ordered librarians in the district to remove all books with LGBTQ themes, regardless of whether they included sexual material. Over 130 titles were pulled even though there were no formal challenges filed with the district. Similar cases of school districts violating their own policies have occurred in North Carolina, Georgia, and Michigan.
Inside the schools, librarians and media specialists are experiencing widespread burnout.
In October 2021, a group of librarians concerned about anti-library rhetoric spreading in the state founded the Texas FReadom Fighters. One of its co-founders, Carolyn Foote, told the Prospect that increased book challenges have left librarians overworked and burned out.
Librarians and media specialists often bear the brunt of the work when books are challenged en masse or when states pass new guidelines that restrict the type of books allowed in schools. Foote explains: “Scrolling through every single book on the shelf and reviewing them like some librarians are having to do right now, book by book by book, when you have 22,000 books is an enormously time-consuming task.”
Not only does reviewing large numbers of books take away from the work librarians usually do, but in states like Texas where public-sector employees like teachers are prohibited from collective bargaining, librarians are not paid overtime for the work, according to Foote.
“We are exhausted,” said Foote. “The general vilification has been difficult to take in a profession that is really well loved.”
