In the 1940s and ’50s, as the Cold War took seed, the country saw its share of book-burnings. In 1940, members of the Binghamton, N.Y., Board of Education, for example, proposed a public burning of textbooks thought to be subversive.

Many Americans may conceive of challenges to books in schools in terms of reactive parents, or those simply concerned after thumbing through a paperback in their child’s knapsack or hearing a surprising question about a novel raised by their child at the dinner table. However, the large majority of book bans underway today are not spontaneous, organic expressions of citizen concern. Rather, they reflect the work of a growing number of advocacy organizations that have made demanding censorship of certain books and ideas in schools part of their mission.

From religious texts and anti-slavery novels to modern works removed from school libraries, here’s how the targets of censorship have changed over the years.

This article is more than 8 months old
The livestreamed event drew large crowds, who cheered as books deemed ‘demonic’ by pastor Greg Locke went up in flames.