Friday, July 26, 2013
An Illinois Reader Writes about School Library Books being Destroyed by You-Know-Who
“We were supposed to complete a report together. We found the information and instead of writing the information that we needed, she took out a knife and cut out the pages.”
For Nicholas:
Starting in the 1970's they began to build a whole bunch of public libraries in the community almost all in negro neighborhoods. And in each of these libraries they invariably had a Martin Luther King room. Containing the collected works of KING. And also invariably the students in the surrounding community had to write at least once a paper on King. These students naturally went to the MLK ROOM to get the info they needed. The library workers found out very quickly that ONCE EVERY THREE YEARS THE ENTIRE COLLECTION HAD TO BE REPLACED SO MANY PAGES HAD BEEN RIPPED OUT OF THE COLLECTED WORKS.
Once every three years the entire collection had to be replaced.
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A couple years ago, I took some night classes at the Rio Grande campus of Austin Community College, located on the edge of downtown Austin.
I didn't look for the Martin Luther King books in the school library on the times I went there, but I did notice two long rows of biographies devoted to Malcolm X. Why on earth would a library need so many biographies of Malcolm X?, I asked myself.
Upon further reflection, this was no surprise, because it was confirmation that this particular A.C.C. campus celebrates black history month all year round. There are posters and displays devoted to blacks (on permanent display), Oprah's and Michelle Obama's photos appear on sample student IDs, and a huge poster of Obama is visible from one of the offices from the outside of the building.
Incidentally, few of the students are black at this campus. Most are white and hispanic.
As for page-cutting from library books by, uh, certain people, I've encountered that too, but not at A.C.C.
One last thing: I've had some happy memories of the A.C.C. Rio Grande campus over the years. It's a beautiful old building (it was once a public school) and I've learned some useful things there that have helped with my career (such as it is!) A.C.C. has some really capable, hard-working teachers, to whom I owe a debt of gratitude. It's just a shame to see this campus taken over by a small group of people who are doing everything to put blackness before its students at every possible moment.
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