LI student won battle against book ban — 40 years ago
Steve Pico, as a teenager in 1977, challenged the Island Trees school board's decision to ban 11 books. Credit: Courtesy Steve Pico
Steven Pico was an Island Trees High School junior in 1975 and a member of the student council when, while attending a school board meeting, he said, a school librarian whispered in his ear that school board members had been in the library the night before, searching for books to remove.
Soon afterward, 11 books were removed. And Pico went to work.
Ultimately, he contacted the New York chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and sued the school board in 1977. Pico, and a few other students added to the case, won in a lower court and the school board appealed to the Supreme Court. It became a landmark case that would ultimately be decided in his favor by the U.S. Supreme Court 40 years ago Saturday, on June 25, 1982.
Island Trees School Board members on July 28, 1976, vote 7-0 to ban "Soul on Ice," one of several books removed from the district libraries. Credit: Newsday/Jim Peppler
In a 5-4 decision, Justice William Brennan wrote for the majority in the case of Island Trees School District Board v Pico: "We hold that local school boards may not remove books simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek their removal to 'prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of pubic opinion.' "
"Readers need to understand the Island Trees case only dealt with library books," Jay Worona, deputy executive director and general counsel of the New York State School Boards Association, said in an interview with Newsday. He said the court declared "the library was a place of free thought."
He added, "School boards have a lot more authority to decide what books constitute the curriculum. Let’s say someone conservative gets on the school board. They could change curriculum offerings, as long as the changes comply with state regulations."
Pico, now 63 and living in Manhattan, recalled his effort to get the 11 banned books back on the shelves during a phone interview just a few days before the 40th anniversary of the court's decision and at a time when battles over the banning of books from schools and libraries continue to be fought, including on Long Island where a local library board briefly removed Pride Month displays in its children’s reading rooms.
On that long-ago day when he was a high school student, Pico learned that an American Library Association meeting would be held on Long Island and attended. ”I told them I felt my constitutional rights were being violated by the banning of books by my school board and I wanted to get a lawyer, take them to court and have the books restored to the shelves without restriction," Pico said.
Noting several of the banned books were by Black authors, Pico said, "so the book banning of Island Trees, New York, attempted to silence Black authors in particular." Among the books banned: "Black Boy," by Richard Wright; "Soul on Ice," by Eldridge Cleaver, an early leader of the Black Panther Party; "A Hero Ain’t Nothin' but a Sandwich," by Alice Childress; "Best Short Stories of Negro Writers," edited by Langston Hughes; and "Down These Mean Streets," by Piri Thomas, an Afro-Puerto Rican American.
"As a 17-year-old I felt censorship is un-American," Pico said, who cited the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as an important figure in his life and his focus on nonviolence to fight injustice. "I felt that I was trying to preserve the use of Black literature and the discussion of Black literature in classrooms across the United States.”
He noted that books by two Jewish authors were banned: "Slaughterhouse-Five," by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who Pico said would stand beside him when he announced the lawsuit, and "The Fixer," by Bernard Malamud.
Pico said the board cited these and other books as either " 'anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and just plain filthy. ... In addition these books contain obscenities, blasphemies, brutalities and perversions beyond description.' That’s their exact quotation from a board press release they sent out," Pico said.
Pico, who works as an artist — he paints and sculpts — and is an art critic, said he has remained passionate about this issue and has given interviews about the case for many years, adding, "I never made one penny off of this."
Pico said book banning "is an attack on one of the bastions of our democracy. "
He sees similarities in the ideologies underpinning book banning currently, but also ominous differences. He said book bans in the 1970s and '80s were done by groups across the ideological spectrum. "Now in 2022, I see politicians who are using book banning as part of a game plan to frighten parents … to divide communities for their political gain. And that’s very dangerous."
Just this week, Smithtown Public Library trustees voted to remove Pride Month displays of 29 books from the children's rooms in the library system, but after a public outcry and promises of an investigation by state human rights officials, the library board reversed course. And the Smithtown School District last year restricted some videos in the BrainPop cartoon series teaching about topics on race, sex and violence following a complaint that some of the content is biased against conservatives. Smithtown schools officials declined to comment in recent weeks.
Pico said parents who want to remove books are "not protecting young people. They’re leaving them defenseless in the real world."
He said he respected parents' concerns about books their children are exposed to and offered this advice: "You don’t have to ban something," but rather, he said, request "another book alongside it to present more points of view."
And Nora Pelizzari, spokesperson for the National Coalition Against Censorship, based in Manhattan, noted: "There are already processes in place for parents to request alternative assignments for their kid, or put restrictions on what their own kid can check out. ... So what we’re really talking about is people controlling what other people can read … trying to control what other kids are allowed to know," and that, she said, is classic "thought-policing."
Pelizzari encouraged people to stand up against censorship. "Call it out when you see it."
And Pico called for young people to be proactive in the face of censorship. "These battles have to be fought over and over. That’s why I want young people out there to form banned book clubs and read the books that are challenging."
He added: "There should be a place for all kinds of ideas and all kinds of books in our public school system and libraries. Let people read for themselves in a safe environment and choose the path they want to follow."
