Librarian in Censorship Case Honored

A gathering this month will commemorate a censorship case in Island Trees, NY, that culminated in a landmark Supreme Court decision asserting the First Amendment rights of students. It will also honor the librarian who was an outspoken opponent of her district's attempt to ban books.

In June 1982, after years of litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded in Island Trees School District v. Pico that school officials "may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books." While the court conceded that school boards have significant discretion in determining curriculum content, the narrow 5–4 decision was a victory for the plaintiffs—four high school students and one junior high student—and their supporters. Chief among their supporters was Island Trees District Library Supervisor Irene Turin, who, from the beginning, opposed the book ban.

In the fall of 1975, Turin became aware of a list of "objectionable" books, which three Island Trees board members had ordered removed from two local schools. Described by the board as "anti-American, anti-Christian… and just plain filthy," the list of titles—ranging from Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver to The Fixer by Bernard Malamud—had originated with a conservative group, Parents of New York United. Turin met with school officials to learn the facts of the situation, but, she says, it wasn't difficult to recognize "that civil liberties are threatened when they try to take books out of the library." Despite a hostile board, which threatened her tenure, Turin alerted the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), which took the case all the way to the Supreme Court. Although she was never called to testify, Turin remained active, lecturing widely on the issue.

The October 3 event at the C. W. Post campus of Long Island University will assemble many of the original participants, including Barbara Bernstein of the NYCLU and Steve Pico, one of the plaintiffs, who was then a 17-year-old student at Island Trees High School. But it is Turin, the librarian "who fought furiously for all of us for so many years," who will receive special honors. In 1977, she received the American Library Association's Immroth Memorial Award honoring intellectual freedom fighters.

Now 72 and living in Florida, Turin has no regrets about her actions. "The principle of librarianship is to provide access to material of all points of view," she says. And while she "hasn't a clue" about dealing with Internet censorship, Turin tells librarians facing book challenges to garner support from their unions and library associations, as she once did.