CHICAGO—In June 2023, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed a first-of-its-kind piece of legislation, preventing libraries from banning books effective after Jan. 1, 2024.
Written into Illinois code, the policy says it is the state’s duty to “encourage and protect the freedom of libraries and library systems to acquire materials with external limitation and to be protected against attempts to ban, remove, or otherwise restrict access to books or other materials.”
The law also requires that libraries and library systems must adhere to the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights or have another written policy prohibiting the practice of banning books to be eligible for state grants. According to ABC 7 Chicago, in 2022 the state gave out $62 million in grants to libraries across Illinois.
While pushing for this initiative, Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, who also acts as the state librarian, described the law as a needed response to the ever-increasing wave of scrutiny toward libraries.
“Our inspiration for this bill was hearing from librarians throughout the state who have never seen a level of intimidation, threats to violence and job insecurity like they have across the state…so that’s really troubling,” Giannoulias said in a Capitol News Illinois article. “We should be applauding them, and they’ve never felt this harassed. So hopefully this shows librarians across the state that we support them.”
According to the ALA, 67 attempts were made to ban books in Illinois in 2022, which was 26 more than in 2021.
In an ABC 7 Chicago article, Pritzker said "Book bans are about censorship, marginalizing people, marginalizing ideas and facts. Regimes ban books, not democracies.”
Lori Vanwey, a teacher from Crab Orchard, Illinois said that while she doesn’t always agree with the Prairie State governor on this topic she can’t help but praise him.
“People are saying that books written in the past are racist and shine a negative light on how we treated African Americans for example. I say keep those books and read them to always remind us that, that is what we were and we should not ever want to go back to that. They should make us cringe. But if we ban them it will be like we are trying to change history or erase it,” Vanwey said.
“I think that people think if we ban books, tear down statues, get rid of certain art that it will right the wrongs of history. But just because those things are gone doesn’t mean what happened in the past will be gone.”
Vanwey said she does not place any weight into the idea of banning books out of fear of offending people because it is an infringement of a person’s freedom of expression.
She went to reflect on how a friend of hers from school became a middle school teacher in Mississippi, where during the 80s and 90s she wasn’t allowed to teach about the Civil War.
“That just blew my mind. How can teachers teach around offensive /controversial things that happened such as slavery and the holocaust and Vietnam?
“I believe book banning limits our teacher’s curriculum and denies them the chance of teaching, showing our children what our world was like, in the minds of these authors, and [it’s] limiting the children’s ability to process that information and come up with their own conclusions about racism, religion, and politics, etc,” she said.