Sept. 22-28 is Banned Books Week, and though book banning has been a debate in the last few years, it has been a simmering issue for decades, especially during the 1950s.
A 1953 incident in Illinois that resulted from a clerical error is remembered as one of the most heated examples.
The controversy swirled around “The Boy Came Back,” a now-obscure novel that fell into the hands of a southeastern Illinois teenager. Before it finally subsided, the furor had swept Illinois and reached as far away as London.
Written in 1951 by Maine physician Charles Knickerbocker, “The Boy Came Back” featured small-town scandals slightly reminiscent of the later “Peyton Place.” The central characters were simply known as the Boy, an alcoholic, violent Army veteran, and his wife, the Girl, who is desired by most of the town’s married men. She is later murdered by her husband. Graphic sexual descriptions and profanity are frequent in the book, which received favorable reviews.
In that era, many Illinoisans were not served by public libraries, and the Illinois State Library strove to provide free reading access to all citizens. One method was to distribute large quantities of reading material to designated locations statewide, where residents could browse and borrow. In October 1953, a teenage girl in Richland County in southeastern Illinois borrowed a copy of “The Boy Came Back” at a local high school, a drop-off point.
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Indignant at the book’s foul language and sexual content, the teen’s mother took the book to county sheriff Jesse Shipley.
It was the first in a series of outlandish reactions. Shipley in turn wrote a searing letter to Illinois Gov. William Stratton, decrying the book’s “vulgar, obscene, and profane language” that would “lower the morality of American boys and girls”
He added that the book was “communistic in purpose” and went a step further, demanding the individual responsible for circulating the book be prosecuted with a legislative inquiry to follow.
The county superintendent of schools also weighed in, writing the state library that the book “was lewd in every sense of the word.” Gov. Stratton forwarded Shipley’s letter to Secretary of State Charles Carpentier, the official state librarian, echoing Shipley’s concern that “The Boy Came Back” was “communistic in purpose.”
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The episode was reflective of the decade. Dominated by McCarthyism, the Cold War, and conformity, the 1950s saw many authors, singers and artists blacklisted for supposed nontraditional values.
In Vincennes, Indiana, just across the border from Richland County, the classic “Robin Hood” was banned for alleged “communistic influence.” In Sapulpa, Oklahoma, a handful of books dealing in “socialism and sex” were actually burned.
“That was a front-line issue in librarianship in the 1950s,” said Spencer Brayton, library manager at Waubonsee Community College in Sugar Grove. “There were a number of groups that petitioned individual libraries, as well as the American Library Association, to either ban or label items. In the majority of cases, librarians and the ALA took a stand against it.”
In Springfield, Carpentier was equally alarmed by the concerns on “The Boy Came Back.” On Nov. 10, 1953, he ordered Assistant State Librarian Helene Rogers, the highest-ranking state library administrator, to “take out of circulation ... books of a salacious, vulgar, or obscene character.”
The vague directive left much room for interpretation. Rogers, who has been described as both energetic and autocratic, cracked that “if we acted on [Carpentier’s memo] as it stands we would start with the Bible.” For some reason, she elected not to inform the State Library Advisory Committee, the institution’s oversight body, for several weeks.
Instead, Rogers quickly went to work, withdrawing massive numbers of books from state library collection. By mid-December, some 6,000 to 8,000 volumes were pulled. Finally, she told the Advisory Committee of the situation, and she and the members were clearly willing to pass the blame to Carpentier.
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On Dec. 16, the Moline Dispatch – the secretary’s hometown newspaper – broke the story with the blaring headline “State Sex Education Books Ban!” The Dispatch, in an “exclusive series of conversations with state officials, legislators, and book borrowers,” determined that “a purge of sex education books for teen-agers was in full blast in Illinois.”
Later that day, Carpentier responded by calling Rogers’ actions “overzealous” and attributed the delivery of “The Boy Came Back” to the Richland County high school on a “clerical error.” On Dec. 17, The Dispatch printed a partial list of the banned books, which included works by John Dos Passos and Sinclair Lewis.
Within days, papers across the nation and as far away as London were covering the controversy. The term “sex education” was used interchangeably in many articles with books of other literary genres. The Washington Post termed the affair “The Illinois Book Controversy.”
Public opinion swayed against the ban. The Dispatch quoted Mrs. Howard Riordan of Erie, Illinois, who had to return one of her borrowed books, as calling the purge “a ridiculous gesture.”
Nervous political leaders scrambled to quiet the furor, and Gov. Stratton retreated from his original stance, now saying that child readers should be “protected” while “the adult population can read what they want.”
On Jan. 5, 1954, the embattled Carpentier ordered all withdrawn books “restored to adult circulation” and stated his desire for a plan “to make it impossible for school children to obtain smut or objectionable materials from the Illinois State Library.”
What resulted was a process that stamped the notice “this book is for adult readers” on selected state library books, though some of Hans Christian Anderson’s children’s works were stamped as well.
The stamping process itself only inflamed the controversy. Over 500 newspapers in Great Britain carried news of the book stamping, one writing that “they are not burning books in the state of Illinois, they are putting ‘red flags’ on them.”
On Feb. 6, Carpentier wearily admitted that the book banning “had turned into a comedy of errors ... I’m ready to climb the walls over this thing.”
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Carpentier, who was easily reelected to two more terms, died in 1964. The book banning proved the final episode in the 19-year run of Rogers as assistant state librarian. She suffered a stroke in her office on March 25, the same day that an advisory committee meeting was scheduled. Rogers never fully recovered and died in 1968.
The decision to ban certain materials remains a topic in American librarianship today, though the issue has cooled considerably from the 1950s.
“For librarians, it’s part of our profession’s code of ethics,” said Brayton. “It’s also a question of intellectual freedom. Librarians on the whole believe that readers should judge what they want, rather than letting someone else tell them what they should be able to read.”
• Tom Emery is a freelance writer and historical researcher from Carlinville, Illinois. He may be reached at 217-710-8392 or ilcivilwar@yahoo.com.