Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books

Book banning in the United States has a long history. The very first volume to be censored was New England Canaan by Thomas Morton. He published it in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1637. The author was critical of the Puritans and their treatment of Indigenous people. Though a colonist, Morton was not Puritan, and his views threatened the religious orthodoxy of his day. The next book to stir widespread controversy didn’t appear for almost 200 years. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) was banned from most of the South for its inflammatory anti-enslavement rhetoric. Plantation owners feared that it might inspire uprisings among enslaved people. In the North, it fueled the growth of the abolition movement.

In both these instances, the topics suppressed by America’s earliest censors are still capable of stirring controversy today: religion and social justice. The third topic, sexuality, had its turn in 1873 with the Comstock Act. This law prohibited the post office from transporting materials deemed to be obscene. While one might assume that pornography was the target, the law was really intended to prevent the circulation of materials related to contraception or abortion. The Comstock Act still impacts people today since contemporary anti-choice activists are attempting to use it as a pretext to curtail the distribution of medical abortion pills.