Chelton Accuses ALA's President of Abetting Censorship

Oprah Winfrey’s move last week to withdraw her recommendation of The Education of Little Tree (Delacorte, 1976), an award-winning young adult novel by Forrest Carter, has ignited controversy within library circles, with an outspoken professor of library science accusing the president of the American Library Association (ALA) of abetting censorship.

"When did ALA's president get into the business of aiding and abetting censorship by literary criteria?" asked Mary Chelton, a professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies at Queens College in New York.

Chelton was referring to comments by ALA’s president, Loriene Roy, who responded to Winfrey’s withdrawal of the book from Oprah’s Book Club by telling the Associated Press, "I am surprised, of course, that Winfrey would recommend it. Besides the questions about the author's identity, the book is known for a simplistic plot that used a lot of stereotypical imagery."

Roy was traveling and was not available for comment, according to an ALA spokesperson.

In posts on ALA’s and the Young Adult Library Services Association’s discussion boards, Chelton wrote, "Oprah can do what she damn well pleases and probably will, with or without ALA's blessing, but I expect better of the ALA president. This is ridiculous, and deeply offensive to those of us who have spent entire careers defending the public's right to read what they please!"

Little Tree, once marketed as an autobiography, is about an orphan Cherokee boy’s experience of racism in the 1930s. It was later learned that the book’s author, Asa Carter, was a white supremacist who penned Alabama Governor George Wallace’s infamous "Segregation forever" speech. Carter died in 1979.

Winfrey, who acknowledged knowing these facts back in 1994, said that she felt inclined "to take the book off my shelf," but apparently did not follow through.

Chelton is opposed to censoring what some see as good reading material, simply because it’s politically incorrect. "I’m sorry, but bigots have First Amendment rights too," she says.

"If you start down that road on the assumption that all we stand for is the good, the true, and the beautiful, Danielle Steele’s going to be out of every published library."