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Banned in Arkansas: A History of Censorship and Resistance
In Arkansas, the battle over books has deep roots. Long before recent headlines about banned titles and library protests, communities across the state were already wrestling with who makes decisions about what content citizens can access.
From comics to LGBTQ+ literature, the fight over books in Arkansas has reflected broader struggles over race, sexuality, morality, and the power of public institutions. Here’s a look at some of the pivotal moments in the state’s history of censorship.
1950s: Banned in Blytheville
In the wake of a nationwide panic over juvenile delinquency, comic books became a lightning rod for moral outrage. Dr. Fredric Wertham’s 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent claimed that comic titles like Tales from the Crypt and CrimeSuspenStories encouraged crime and corrupted youth. Across the country, communities were exposed to this narrative, and in places like Blytheville, Arkansas, this informed public policy.
There, school supervisor Winnie Virgil Turner led a local campaign against “objectionable” comics, calling them “an invitation to illiteracy” and a threat to family values. In January 1955, the Blytheville City Council passed Ordinance 556, banning the sale of crime comics to anyone under eighteen, with fines up to $100. While a proposed statewide ban inspired by Ordinance 556 failed, Blytheville’s ordinance remains on the books to this day.
1911–1975: The Little Rock Censor Board’s Long Shadow
Decades earlier, Little Rock had already established a powerful censorship body. The Little Rock Censor Board, founded in 1911, was charged with protecting “public morals.” It wielded broad authority over what citizens could see or read. This included books, movies, plays, and even newspapers.
The board’s decisions were often racially and politically charged. In the 1920s, it banned Black newspapers following the 1927 lynching of John Carter in Little Rock. One of its early members was Lulu Markwell, a prominent leader in the Women of the Ku Klux Klan.
Over the years, the board banned depictions of nudity, profanity, and interracial love scenes. Even literary works like Return to Peyton Place were deemed unacceptable, though the Little Rock Public Library refused to remove the book when it was challenged in 1960.
Resistance grew over time. In 1971, a court overruled the board’s attempt to block a performance of the musical Hair. By 1975, with no legal authority left and facing growing public opposition, the board quietly disbanded.
2023: The Fight Over Act 372 and Today’s Book Bans
In recent years, a new wave of censorship has emerged targeting books with LGBTQ+ themes or discussions of race and identity. Arkansas Act 372, passed in 2023, allowed criminal charges against librarians who provided materials deemed “harmful to minors.” It gave local officials the power to remove books from public libraries based on community complaints.
Supporters framed it as a parental rights issue. Critics saw it as a direct assault on intellectual freedom. The Central Arkansas Library System and other library leaders fought back. CALS filed a federal lawsuit, and by the end of 2024, key portions of the law were ruled unconstitutional, affirming that vague claims of “harm” cannot be used to criminalize librarians or suppress books.
Books That Have Faced Bans in Arkansas and Beyond
CALS Roberts Library staff have identified several titles by Arkansans that have been banned or challenged broadly. These books span decades and genres, but at some point in time, all were deemed too dangerous, controversial, or subversive for public shelves.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (published 1970)
Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a memoir that recounts Angelou’s childhood and adolescence in Stamps, Arkansas. The memoir focuses on the author’s experiences with racism, trauma, and sexual abuse in the segregated South and later in California. The book details these events alongside her struggle for acceptance and her long-term path toward self-acceptance driven in large part by the power of literature.
According to the American Library Association, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was banned and/or challenged due to discussions of sexual assault that the author experienced as a young girl. The book was also seen as being “anti-white,” leading to further challenges. It was listed as number three on the ALA’s list of the Top 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-1999. In response to these challenges, Maya Angelou was quoted as saying, “I’m always sorry that people ban my books. Many times I’ve been called the most banned. And many times my books are banned by people who never read two sentences. I feel sorry for the young person who never gets to read.”
The Girl by Robbie Branscum (published 1986)
Robbie Branscum’s The Girl centers on the experiences of a young woman left with her four brothers and sisters in the care of a cruel grandmother who resents their existence as they struggle for survival in a poor Arkansas hill community. Abandoned by their mother after their father’s death, they endure back-breaking chores and nourish each other with dreams of the day their mother will reclaim them.
The CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas entry on author Robbie Branscum notes that her books were often subjected to challenges due to their “blunt, homespun language and occasional swear word[s].”
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown (published 1991)
Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is an account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. Brown allows great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell in their own words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them demoralized and defeated. The book disrupted commonly held views about the impacts of westward expansion on these communities.
Though not often challenged, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee was banned from a Wisconsin public school district in 1974. The administrator who banned the book supposedly said, “If there’s a possibility that something might be controversial, then why not eliminate it?” Dee Brown’s papers are held by the CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies.
March: Book One by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell (published 2013)
John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell’s March is a graphic novel series documenting John Lewis’s lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation. March: Book One spans John Lewis’s youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Luther King Jr., the birth of the Nashville Student Movement, and their battle to tear down segregation through nonviolent lunch counter sit-ins, building to a stunning climax on the steps of City Hall.
March illustrator Nate Powell, an Arkansas native, addressed censorship by sharing that an Indiana middle school librarian opted not to stock March in her library for fear that she would lose her job. Powell wrote, “Comics are the most democratic mass storytelling medium. We always knew that March, by its choice of medium, carried this extra vulnerability in the face of racist policy-makers and history deniers.” Despite this, March: Book One was honored by the Coretta Scott King Book Awards in 2014.
Explore these titles and more here and visit CALS Roberts Library’s Banned Books Display “Banning Books is Scary!” up now in the Research Room through the end of October.
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Banned Books Week, October 5–11, is an awareness campaign promoted by the American Library Association and Amnesty International that, since 1982, has celebrated the freedom to read and called attention to banned and challenged books. Read more here: https://www.ala.org/bbooks
by Danielle Afsordeh, Butler Center/Roberts Library community outreach archivist and programs coordinator & Bekah Ervin, Roberts Library cataloging and serials librarian
