Who’s afraid of a public library? (Colbert King column, WaPo, December 13, 2024)

Thomas Jefferson would have been appalled by today's Virginia politicians and their meretricious attack on public library.  Shameful people: Dull Republicans have a codlock on political power in Warren County, Virginia and they are abusing it. Warren County Board of Supervisors should be haled into federal court for their First Amendment violations.  Pray that our federal courts will spare us from anti-intellectual control freaks, Philistines, ninnies, boobies and book-banning bigots. Good column by Pulitzer Prize winning Washington Post columnist Colbert King. My mom took me to the Woodbury, N.J. Public Library for my first library card on my sixth birthday, a right of passage that many Americans fondly remember.  Attacks on libraries are contrary the genius of a free people. One of our County Commissioners once asked the political party registrations of applicants for seats on our St. Johns County Public Library Advisory Board. I immediately dissented from Commissioner Krista Joseph's illegal question, on First Amendment grounds. She's a good person and understands now that our First Amendment is a bulwark of democracy, starting with our liberties and schools. We must safeguard our public libraries.  Colbert King column from The Washington Post: 

Opinion by Colbert I. King

Who’s afraid of a public library?

A cramped view imperils Virginia’s library of the year.

December 13, 2024 at 1:22 p.m. ESTToday at 1:22 p.m. EST

4 min

The Samuels Public Library in Front Royal, Va. (Robb Hill for The Washington Post)

The Samuels Public Library in Front Royal, Va. (Robb Hill for The Washington Post)

A tragedy occurred this week in a Virginia community about an hour’s drive west of our nation’s capital. No bodies were harmed. There was no need for sirens, flashing lights or grief counselors. But knowledge fell victim to fear at an hours-long meeting on Tuesday of the Warren County Board of Supervisors. The all-Republican board voted to grab control of Samuels Public Library, which was honored as the state’s 2024 Library of the Year.

The conservative county leaders won 4-1. The losers were the Front Royal community and all who value the library’s depository and wealth of knowledge.

The supervisors said their purpose was to create a library board to oversee policy and budget. But it’s clear the takeover was not about finances and balance sheets but getting control over what is on the bookcases and available by way of library cards. The object of the consternation driving political efforts to corral Samuels — whose roots go back to 1799 — is the presence of LGBTQ-themed books. Reading materials deemed clear and present threats to the social order, as defined by the fearful.

What a shame to see libraries attacked this way.

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I grew up on libraries. I even know the exact time and date I first entered the magnificent structure of the Central Public Library on K Street NW. It was 1:30 p.m. on Sept. 28, 1949; the event was recorded in the December 1949 edition of my elementary school newspaper, the Stevens Star.

The Central Library of Andrew Carnegie, which opened in 1903, was the first desegregated public building in the District. We traveled from our segregated grade school, past whites-only businesses, theaters and stores, to enter this place where doors and bookshelves in the vast children’s section were wide open to us — if we had library cards.

We got ours. And for weeks on end, the three King kids walked 15 blocks from home to check out, take home, read, exchange among ourselves and return books, walking those same 15 blocks again.

My library card became a passport to a world far beyond my Foggy Bottom/West End neighborhood. It carried me outside a city in which I was judged based on my skin. It was a haven in which I could learn about and study real stories, get into the minds and lives of real people who made me laugh or mad or scared as hell. Over the years, and through my library card, I learned about life, the good and bad, and how to live it. I learned something about myself and others.

My parents’ library involvement was limited. Our family didn’t own a car. We couldn’t afford to ride the streetcar or bus whenever we wanted. Our parents used the streetcar to go to work. Our father knew how much we wanted to return to the Central Library.

So he walked us to the corner of 22nd and K streets NW, pointed us in an easterly direction, and said,“Just follow your nose.” He wasn’t the least bit nosy about what we were reading. My parents were simply glad that we were.

Purge a book because it is disputed? Remove it from the shelves because there’s something on its pages that makes me uncomfortable or threatens my tightly held prejudices?

Thank goodness for books and libraries.

A few years ago, I looked at some of the books that school systems, including Fairfax County’s, had pulled from library shelves. I had to know why banning those books was so high on some folks’ agendas.

This octogenarian with seven grandchildren — and a family tree that spans sexual orientations — gained a deeper appreciation for the sometimes-painful journeys taken by people just trying to understand and accept who they are. So, yes, books delving into sexual orientation that are in libraries for the benefit of gay, lesbian and bisexual youths, or young people working through trans and nonbinary identities, should be available. Not only for them but also for the rest of us — and especially for the book-banners whose reckoning is as cramped as their fears and loathing.

Libraries are where fear and ignorance meet facts. Libraries are where history is captured and boundaries are rightfully crossed, and communities are built, not broken, around them.

The Warren County Board of Supervisors, instead of being a source of community improvement, is tragically marching backward toward an inhumanness best left behind. If only those public officials could learn. After all, they have Samuels Public Library right at hand to enlighten them.

By Colbert I. King

Colbert I. “Colby” King writes a column — sometimes about D.C., sometimes about politics — that runs in print on Saturdays. In 2003, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. King joined the Post’s editorial board in 1990 and served as deputy editorial page editor from 2000 to 2007.follow on X@kingc_i