In response to a public records request filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina (ACLU-SC), the Berkeley County School District has released a list of 93 books that have been targeted for censorship in the district's classrooms and libraries. The challenged books are still available to students pending review.
ACLU-SC Executive Director Jace Woodrum provided this statement:
“Book banning is an unconstitutional infringement on the First Amendment guarantee of access to information. Censorship remains deeply unpopular across the state and across the political spectrum, and we hope that the district will listen to parents, teachers, students, and librarians who support the freedom to read.”
The list of challenged books includes 12 titles by Ellen Hopkins, 10 by Sarah J. Maas, and 3 by Rupi Kaur. It includes contemporary classics such as Sarah Gruen's Water for Elephants and Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, as well as 20th-century masterpieces like Richard Wright's Native Son and Toni Morrison's Beloved.
According to the records provided by the district, a single person filed all of the book challenges and nearly all of the books were challenged on a single day, May 27th, 2023. As part of the Request for Reconsideration of Instructional Material, this person indicated that they had read all 93 books herself.
All of the titles being challenged in Berkeley County are listed on BookLooks, a site commonly used by political interest groups like Moms for Liberty to disseminate talking points.
The ACLU-SC encourages parents to stay involved in the education of their children. Parents who object to a book's content can follow established protocols at their district to exempt their children from reading it.
The ACLU-SC also encourages anyone interested in pushing back against this wave of censorship to join Freedom to Read SC and ProTruth SC. The ACLU-SC remains involved in the federal court case NAACP v. Pickens County School District, challenging a politically motivated book ban.
The challenged books list provided by the school district is below.
* All Boys Aren't Blue was included on a list of challenged books provided by the district. However, the Request for Reconsideration paperwork provided via the FOIA request did not include a challenge of that specific book.
