Conroe branch of Montgomery County Library Photo by HIM Nguyen

While Texas continues to be a leading state in the number of book bans reported each year, a recent challenge at the Montgomery County Memorial Library (MCML) has been reversed.

The Texas Freedom to Read Project (TXFRP) reported that a children’s book, Colonization and the Wampanoag Story by Linda Coombs (Aquinnah Wampanoag)—an account of American colonization and Native traditions described from an Indigenous perspective—was challenged in September and subsequently moved out of the juvenile nonfiction area to the fiction collection.

In charge of that decision was a newly created citizen review board, five community members elected by county leadership per the library’s updated Reconsideration of Library Materials Policy. Previously, a library advisory committee made up of five librarians and five community members would have overseen the discussion of any challenged materials, according to the site Popular Information. The new iteration of the committee does not include any library staff and was established to specifically review requests for reconsideration involving children’s materials; adult and young adult materials are assessed by different means, according to the policy.

Written by county judge (senior county commissioner) Mark Keogh, the revised policy “addresses residents’ desire to reconsider where books are placed in the library,” according to a local news report. MCML’s collections are divided into four categories: adult, young adult, children, and parenting. The parenting collection was established as a location for titles written for children and young adults that are considered “sensitive,” including topics such as “sex, suicide, the death of a pet, adoption, cancer, and gender transitioning,” states an article from the Montgomery County Republican Party. Materials in the parenting section are restricted to checkout for patrons over the age of 18. While Keogh recognizes that librarians are “responsible for appropriately sorting materials” into the categories, he said “again and again” that books are not being sorted appropriately.

The new board, created to “reflect the values of the community,” has unilateral power to make decisions related to items placed in the children’s collections by librarians; the minutes and results of discussion during the closed-door meetings are not made available to the public. Local parent and author of the newsletter “Two Moms and Some Books” Michele Nuckolls praised the formation of the citizen review board, saying, “It’s been a long road…I first sounded the alarm about concerning children’s books at commissioner’s court a year ago.”

Montgomery County resident and local bookstore owner Teresa Kenney “has been monitoring the implementation and impact of the recently revised policy,” according to TXFRP; in September she submitted a public information request to find out what books had been challenged and brought to the citizen review board since its inception. When she learned that Colonization and the Wampanoag Story had been up for review because of a patron challenge and moved to the fiction collection, she attended a county meeting to express her concern. In her public statement, Kenney asked, “Is this type of decision—to recategorize a published book by a major respected publisher—under their scope of work in the reconsideration policy? Determining what history can and cannot be told? Whose story is fact or fiction?”

Nuckolls followed the story on Two Moms, where she shared her own request for public information to access the original request for reconsideration form on Colonization and the Wampanoag Story. The submission states that the book was “shelved incorrectly; it should be in the fiction section, besides other myths and fairytales,” and that the book reads as “a Nativist’s Mein Kampf.”

In an October 16 letter, PEN America and a coalition of organizations including the Texas Library Association, Authors Against Book Bans, and the American Indian Library Association (AILA) asked Montgomery County to “overturn the Review Committee’s decision on Colonization and the Wampanoag Story and order it to stay in the Juvenile Nonfiction Collection across your county’s public libraries.” The National Campaign for Justice hosted a letter-writing campaign to “Stop the whitewashing of Native American History in Texas libraries” that resulted in over 36,000 participants emailing the county commissioners, urging them to reverse their decision.

As a result of this advocacy, at an October 22 meeting the commissioners “issued a stay against all actions of the citizens reconsideration committee since October 1 and put any future decisions on hold,” according to news sources. Commissioner James Noack stated: “[The book] needs to go back, and just for the record, there should be no confusion.… Something is either true or it’s not true. There’s no right to decide something is not true.” Montgomery County resident Candance Godfrey said at the meeting, “I implore you to start using librarians, who are masters in their own right. Stop weaponizing everything. Let them do their jobs.” At this meeting a vote was also passed to form a new committee to review and revise the current library policies.

Speaking with Library Journal,current AILA President Jonna C. Paden (Acoma Pueblo) said:

“American Indian history, contributions, and voices in American society are diminished and made to seem insignificant—more often hidden. The reversal of a Texas library committee’s objectionable decision to reclassify Colonization and the Wampanoag Story by author Linda Coombs (Aquinnah Wampanoag) was met with exultation by American Indian Library Association members who stood ready to battle and defend truthfulness. There are many quotes about truth. In this matter, perhaps these words attributed to Nietzsche are most apropos: Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed . History is not one-sided. American Indian history is intimately entwined with American history. That fact must be recognized and respected.”