Missouri State Senators in Video Were Burning Boxes, Not Books
Facts And Fact Checking,Missouri,Book Burning
Two Missouri state senators participated in a fundraising event that included a demonstration of flamethrowers that were up for auction. Videos shared on Instagram falsely claimed to show the senators engaged in a “book burning.” But only empty boxes, not books, were being torched.
Efforts to ban or censor books are intensifying in the U.S., targeting titles on school shelves and in public libraries, according to data released in September by the American Library Association and PEN America.
The ALA said that between Jan. 1 and Aug. 31, the association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom found “695 attempts to censor library materials and services and documented challenges to 1,915 unique titles. The number of unique titles challenged has increased by 20 percent from the same reporting period in 2022.”
“Most of the challenges were to books written by or about a person of color or a member of the LGBTQIA+ community,” the ALA report also said.
PEN America, which advocates free expression for writers, reported that during the 2022–23 school year, the organization “recorded 3,362 instances of books banned [in schools], an increase of 33 percent from the 2021–22 school year.”
