A lawsuit has been filed on the heels of the Wentzville School District barring Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye" from its campuses in January.
Brynne Cramer, chief communications officer for the school district, said its first priority is the education of school children.
“The Board voted not to retain the book in the Wentzville School District in the Jan. 20 board meeting,” Cramer told the St. Louis Record. “The district will not be commenting further due to pending litigation. As always, the Wentzville School District continues to prioritize high-quality education for its students.”
The ACLU of Missouri has filed a lawsuit to stop the district from banning Morrison’s book.
"We're not making any secret that they're violating the First Amendment and they should know what will happen," Tony Rothert, director of Integrated Advocacy, said. "This is a notice that they are going to be sued."
Rothert also said the school district has already banned nine books from its library shelves with the latest being Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.
The Bluest Eye tells a story of a young African American girl, Pecola, growing up in the 1940s. She develops an inferiority complex, "which fuels her desire for the blue eyes she equates with whiteness," according to Wikipedia.
Joe Kohlburn, the Missouri Library Association's current chair of Intellectual Freedom Committee, also sent a letter to the school district which was published in the St. Louis Post.
“We, the Intellectual Freedom Committee of the Missouri Library Association (MLA-IFC), would like to formally express our concern as Missouri librarians and intellectual freedom advocates regarding your recent decision to remove Toni Morrison’s 'The Bluest Eye' in spite of the recommendations of your review committee,” the letter stated.
Kohlburn added that the organization was against all practices that infringe on the student’s right to read and that Morrison’s work was a critically acclaimed, challenging book and the banning of certain books was “part of an organized effort to undermine the civil and intellectual rights of students.”
“Additionally, removing books as your district has done exposes you to lawsuits on behalf of those very same students who are being denied the opportunity to see their experiences reflected in curricula and library collections,” he wrote.