The Goddard School District in Kansas has been accused of book banning after it announced that 29 books would no longer be allowed to circulate in its libraries. Many of the books have to do with themes involving African American history and life in the United States. One of the books, They Called Themselves the K.K.K. is a young adult non-fiction work on the founding of the Klan during the Reconstruction Era.
On the defensive, the district now claims it is merely “reviewing” the books, but the districts own policy states that during a review a book should not be removed from circulation.
They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group by Susan Campbell Bartoletti received the YALSA award for young adult non-fiction. The School Library Journal gave it a very favorable review, saying “This richly documented, historically contextualized account traces the origin and evolution of the Ku Klux Klan from a small mischievous social club into a powerful, destructive organization. With compelling clarity, anecdotal detail, and insight, Bartoletti presents the complex era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877, that gave rise to the KKK.” There are so few books on the Reconstruction Era in school libraries, that blocking one of those few from reaching the hands of students is a real disservice.
This book banning comes at a time when conservative school board members seem to be on a crusade against “Critical Race Theory,” by which they mean teachers and books that educate students about the history of non-white peoples in America.
Back to the book itself. I have not read it, being half-a-century older than its target audience, but I found this discussion of the book by a librarian on the School Librarian blog useful:
Social studies teachers have chatted with me about the difficulty of teaching U.S. History immediately after the Civil War. The Reconstruction period is a difficult one to explain to middle school students, particularly those who have not grown up in the South. The concept of a terrorist group forming in our country and being allowed to terrorize others with their hoods, violence, intimidation, and murder is difficult to conceive. With our talk of freedom and respect for others, how could anyone have stood by and allowed this to happen?
They Called Themselves the K.K.K. evenly conveys the circumstances and history that allowed the KKK to form. This title focuses the most upon the beginning of the organization through the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1871, better known as the Ku Klux Klan Act. It provides background to the Reconstruction Era and fills in the missing pieces of our history textbooks regarding the transition of slaves to freed people. It explains the background and allows the voices of the past to speak to us through reproductions of photographs and engraved images.
I learned much on the importance of education and why public education for blacks in the south was discouraged during this time. I did not realize there was little public education of whites in the South at this time since most studied at home. This title helped clear the fogginess of history teaching I had encountered.
Details on the economic situation, national leadership by Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S. Grant, the impeachment trial of Johnson, carpetbaggers, the efforts to rebuild the southern part of our country are intertwined to provide a better feel for history – a feeling lacking in textbooks.
Author Susan Campbell Bartoletti includes images from pictorial newspapers such as Harper’s Weekly and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. She scoured the Slave Narratives of former slaves that were interviewed more than seventy years after the end of the Civil War. She includes detailed, uncensored information from congressional testimony, interviews, and historical journals, diaries, and newspapers. Are the images uncomfortable? Yes. But I wouldn’t want to censor or sugarcoat this dark time in our history.
They Called Themselves the K.K.K. is readable nonfiction. How I wish I had a document reader or ELMO so I could share the pages and lead discussion of the illustrations! The design includes reproductions of primary source material on nearly every page. Quotes from W.E.B. Du Bois, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Gabe Hines, Jefferson Franklin Henry, William Pickens, Milius S. Carroll, and Martin Jackson are highlighted in the design to provide a sense of the conflict in their own words.
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