The Books Unbanned™: From Freedom Riders to Freedom Readers Initiative started In October 2022 when The African American Policy Forum (AAPF) partnered with the Transformative Justice Coalition (TJC) for a two-week bus tour to fight back against book bans and voter suppression across the country. Following the tour, AAPF’s Books Unbanned™ installation has brought attention to the banning of books and providing communities throughout America with free copies of banned books—especially those by Black and Queer authors. In 2023, we kicked off the Annual Banned Books Week (October 1-7, 2023) by launching our 2023 Books Unbanned Tour™ in partnership with The New Republic ’s (TNR) “Banned Books Tour 2023” Bookmobile. Currently, forty-seven (47) U.S. states have introduced legislation, administrative rules, executive orders, or binding state attorney general opinions restricting what can be taught in public schools about systemic forms of racism. Twenty-three (23) 1 have enacted curriculum prohibitions in K-12 and higher education classrooms. These bans were developed in the name of eliminating “wokeness” or “Critical Race Theory.” But it’s become quite clear that these bans translate to a campaign to stamp out Black history, Black knowledge, and Black resistance to structural discrimination. Moreover, state restrictions on “Critical Race Theory” paved the way for “Don’t Say Gay'' legislation, banning the discussion of LGBTQ+ topics in public schools. As the American Library Association (ALA) and PEN America have reported, book bans are proliferating at unprecedented levels. Although 95% of all fiction books published in the U.S. between 1950-2018 were by white authors, book bans have disproportionately targeted Black authors. The Washington Post reported that of the ten most challenged books in the country, three were by Black authors . And 40% of books banned featured primary characters that were people of color, nearly 50% featured LGBTQ characters, and 6% challenged feature both LGBTQ and race themes.
40% of books banned featured primary characters that were people of color, nearly 50% featured LGBTQ characters, and 6% challenged feature both LGBTQ and race themes
July 1, 2022, to June 31, 2023, PEN America 2 recorded 3,362 instances of book bans in US public school classrooms and libraries
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2 https://pen.org/report/book-bans-pressure-to-censor/ 1 AL, AR, AZ, CT, FL, GA, IA, ID, IN, KY, LA, MS, MT, NC, ND, NH, OK, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA
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