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Finck
One of the hot n ews stories is the bill in Florida banning discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in elementary schools. The bill is called "Paren tal Rights in Education Bill" but h as b e en dubbed the "Don't say gay" bill. This, of course, has led to a national debate about censorship, decen cy, and age appropriateness. This is not the first of this discus
This is not the first of this discussion as schools are passing similar laws against issues like "Critical Race Theory" and t aking books off schoollibrary shelves deemed inappropriate. As always, this column does not propose to answer any of these debat es, but , historically speaking, censorship is not new and looking at historical examples may help us make more informed decisions today.
Actual laws allowing for censorship are in no way new. President J ohn Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts into law which fined or arrested anyone speaking out against the government. President Woodrow Wilson signed a similar Sedition Act . Lincoln did not sign a sedition law.
He just locked everyone up who spoke out against him, claiming it as a war measure. Yet , I want to focus on a particularly difficult time when censorship was rampant and consider how one particular President h andled the situation
The year was 1950 and America was embroiled in th e Red Scare, where we were suspecting communist s were hiding under our beds and in our closets. Granted, this was not just paranoia, as communists h ad infiltrat ed American agencies and organizations.
Before 1950, The House Un American Activities Committee h ad already h eld trials to stamp out communist s in t he movie business and created the infamous blacklists. In this same year a little-known sen ator from Wisconsin gave a speech in West Virginia, claiming to h ave a list of communists who were working for the State Department.
Overnight , J oseph McCarthy became famous, and McCarthyism was born. McCart hyism is often compared to a witch hunt, especially after the release of "The Crucible," but there is one stark difference: there were no gh ost s in Salem but th ere were communists in government.
However, what McCarthy did was greatly exaggerate the situation for personal gain and created a frenzy in this nation to rid all aspects of communism from everywhere. On e a r ea wh ere McCarthyism focused it s attacks were libraries, especially the State Department's oversees libraries.
InApril1953, two ofMcCarthy's chief st affers, Roy Cohn and David Schine, took a tour of Europe, att acking the books in th e libraries an d the State Department officials who ran th em.
Mter the tour, the State Department issued a list of which books were appropriate and which were not. While some of these books were overtly communist, most were not.
Some were banned simply because an author who was not a commu n is t would not publicly reject communism. President Eisenhower was in a tough position.
He did not agree with McCarthy, but they were in the same party and McCarthy held a grea t deal of power. Eisenhower refused to tangle with McCarthy publicly, as it was his policy not to debat e any opponent publicly, possibly his greatest character trait and one I wish modern president s could mimic.
Yet fin ally the President had had enough. On June 14, 1953, while speaking at Dartmouth College, he took up the idea of censorship. Mter speaking about having fun and joy in life, he spoke about courage.
He ended that part of his speech with: "Don't join the book burners. Don't think you are going t o conceal faults by concealin g eviden ce that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book, as long as that document does n ot offend our own ideas of decency. That should be the only censorship.
"How will we defeat communism unless we know what it is, and what it teaches, and why does it have such an appeal for men? Why are so many people swearing allegiance to it?" "And we h ave got to fight it with something better, not try to con ceal the thinking of our own people. They are part of America. And even if they think ideas that are contrary to ours, their right to say them, their right to record them, and their right to have them at places where they are accessible to others is unquestioned, or it isn't America."
When asked about h is st atements a couple of days lat er at a press conference, Ike added, "When I talk about books or the righ t of dissemination ofknow ledge, am I r not l t alking about any docu ment or any other kind of thing that attempts to persuade or propagandize America into communism? Indeed, our courts found 11 communist s guilty of practically traitorous action; they pointed out that these men were dedicat ed to the destruction of th e United St ates form of government by force, and that they took orders from a foreign government. So, manifestly, I am not talking about th at kind of thin g when I t alk about free access to knowledge."
As an academic, I agree with PresidentEisenhower that information should not scare us. He went on to say that if more Americans had read Mein Kompf, we might h ave been better prepared to stop Hitler, so reading more about why people were attracted to communism might not be a bad thing.
But notice that Ike did make two exemptions: th ose th at "offend our own ideas of decency" and those th at "persuade or propagandize." For myself I would add "age appropriateness." Think about our movie ratings.
Most things th a t a re PG 13 movies are not bad but are not age appropriate for younger children to learn about yet or wit hout parents' approval.
I know this is a difficult subject. We have been fighting it for years. wh en it comes to our children, we will probably never stop fighting it. Eisenhower warned us against censorship, but h e also believed there were certain t hin gs th at should not be read.
Dr. J ames Finck is a Professor of History at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma and Chair of the Oklahoma Civil War Symposium. To receive daily historical posts, follow Historically S p eaking at Historicallyspeaking.blog or on Facebook. Dr. J ames Finck is an Associate Professor of History at the University of S cience and Arts of Oklahoma in Chickasha. He is Chair of the Oklahoma Civil War Symposium . Follow Historically Speaking at www.Historicallyspeaking.blog.