On March 17, 1946, before a mostly appreciative crowd that included both Black and Caucasian civic leaders and throngs of local residents, Jackie Robinson stepped onto the grassy field of a beautiful little ballpark in Daytona Beach and made history as the first player to break Major League Baseball’s color barrier.
Seventy-seven years and one day after Robinson’s debut, hundreds of people attending a March 18 quarterly meeting of Florida’s NAACP in Orlando gathered around tables of books that have been challenged over the past year. The books include titles that have shown up on district ban lists for Florida’s schoolchildren under a 2022 law that allows any parent to challenge a book —and have it pulled, subject to review that has sometimes led to a permanent ban. While the frenetic pace of challenged books has slowed down, the law allows it to be revived at any time.
It was clear, in the shock and sorrow on the faces of conferees attending the event, that the topics represented in those stacks and stacks of books had struck them to the heart. The sheer breadth of the books that have been challenged — stories highlighting traditions and everyday life from cultures around the globe, as well as stories about families that didn’t fit the one-dad-one-mom mold, and young people struggling with their own sexual and gender identity — was almost impossible to comprehend.
Some of the bans have left even their own authors puzzled. Popular young adult author John Green’s debut novel, “Looking for Alaska,” is one of the most-challenged works in the state, largely due to one brief description of a sexual encounter between two characters. He talked to the Sentinel’s Scott Maxwell about seeing his novel under attack at the high school he once attended. ” “No parent should be allowed to decide what other people’s kids can read,” he said.
That’s why Floridians should support the collaboration between the NAACP and the American Federation of Teachers, which has donated 10,000 books to start “Freedom Libraries” across the state. The goal — of getting these books into the hands of local children, despite county-based challenge lists that pull books from school shelves — is laudable, and this summer is a great time to build a resource that could keep local students reading and talking about these books throughout the school year.
Local residents can help build this area’s Freedom Library in several ways, but we have one in particular to suggest: On June 20, the NAACP of Orange County plans an afternoon rally in Lorna Doone Park to strike back at many of the anti-WOKE initiatives Gov. Ron DeSantis and his captive lawmakers have advanced. It would be a powerful response to the stirring speeches (and a nice way to acknowledge the rally’s free hotdogs and burgers, as well as kids’ activities) to see a pile of donated books stacking up in a place of prominence, ready to jumpstart the local library that Sylvia McMillon, civic engagement chair of the Orange County NAACP, says is in the works. We have links to current lists of challenged books in local counties on our website, as well as historic lists of books that were pulled and then restored.
DeSantis has tried to deny the reality of what’s happening as a result of the anti-WOKE legislation he so proudly touted, but at least two books about Robinson’s bittersweet triumph and how it galvanized him to fight for civil rights have been challenged at the county level.
A story worth telling
Those bans suppress an extraordinary story. Later in life, Robinson and others would write about that day in 1946, including how it made him feel to know that — after being rejected and threatened in Sanford and DeLand — he was not just tolerated, but celebrated, in Daytona Beach. It wasn’t easy. As baseball historian Bill Schumann recounts, the audience was mostly positive but seeded with a handful of people who called out ugly taunts. Daytona was almost fully segregated: Robinson and his wife, Rachel, could not stay in local hotels or eat in restaurants. But the newlyweds were made welcome in the home of Black businessman and powerbroker Joe Harris, whose long-term alliance with Mayor William Perry empowered Daytona Beach’s African American community to lay claim to a more generous share of civic resources and the ability to own and operate the businesses that were open for Black shoppers, patients and even diners.
Harris was in the bleachers during Robinson’s historic debut. So was Perry — who, as Schumann recounts, had made it clear bad behavior would not be tolerated. It was a story that should engender pride, not shame, among Florida students.
The same goes for many of the books that have been challenged at the county level. Others simply tell stories of families living lives that may not perfectly echo “traditional” Ward-and-June American tropes, but speak to this nation’s lifelong ability to synthesize many cultural heartbeats into one vast and loving whole.
The piles of books heaped on tables reveal the real shame. Putting public school libraries and classroom collections at the mercy of the smallest-minded and most aggressive parents (such as the Clay County man who has challenged hundreds of books he says have “concerning content”) — and denying children access to these books under the pretense that they might be making modern students ashamed or unhappy also deprives them of the stories behind the victories that helped lay the basis for modern-day history. Kids deserve to read about these wins, and to be proud of their national heritage, even as they acknowledge its ugliest episodes. That’s the message behind Freedom Libraries, and why they deserve support.
The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. Contact us at insight@orlandosentinel.com
