San Antonio Public Library: The Final Chapter of Censorship

Soon the library board dropped its support of Channel 9 educational television. Librarian Julia Grothaus and the library had been one of the earliest and strongest supporters of Channel 9. The board ordered library staff to stop all purchases of educational films and records. Library meeting rooms were to be closed to public meetings. The library was only to furnish books, pamphlets, periodicals, and other printed matter for circulating or reference. Library employees were ordered to arrange displays and reports on anti-subversive committees, while limiting space for important literature. The board ordered a great number of extremist right-wing periodicals and books. Gerald Ashford noted, “Many of them echo the Nazi propaganda line that U. S. participation in World War II was the result of a Communist plot…”

Again this was too much for the citizens of San Antonio. The San Antonio Ministers’ Association filed a complaint that the board was destroying progress and reneging on its responsibilities to the community. Maurry E. Boone, superintendent of then Northside Rural High School District, requested City Council prevent the “abolition of the visual aid department…” The Delta Kappa Gamma society wrote to the board not to curtail library services. The San Antonio Teachers’ Council and the Council of Parents and Teachers protested the library board’s actions. More and more individual citizens and local organizations filed protests with the library board and City Council.

At the December 1954 library board voted to remove films and records from the library. All the while the board refused to allow people to speak at the meeting. It adopted a committee report by trustees Leo Brewer, Sam Fly, and L. A. Winship that defined the public library as basically a collection of printed matter. This report was based on legal decisions in New York, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Kentucky, and Fort Worth. The most recent case appears to have been the one in Fort Worth from 1938. Nothing was mentioned about “new” media of the 1950s and the role they played in libraries across the country. In opposition to City’s Lilly Master Plan of 1951 and Wight Library Survey of 1952 which called for expansion of the main public library building and creation of more branch libraries, the board recommended closing some branches and curtailing bookmobile service. The library’s book budget had remained at $60,000 for three years as San Antonio’s population skyrocketed and no additions were requested.

In February 1954 library trustees Brewer and Tanner resigned. With the 1955 City Council election the “Good Government League” came into political control. A new library board was appointed and the two-year siege of intellectual freedom came to an end.

San Antonio Public Library: City Council vs. Library Board

In a closed meeting on 5 June the City Council replaced all but two of the fifteen members of the library board. By the middle of June the entire nation was watching San Antonio. The Washington Post published an editorial supporting the library and condemning those Americans who “have departed from the fundamental beliefs on which this country grew and prospered now has come from San Antonio…” Even President Eisenhower in an address at Dartmouth College on 14 June brought up the issue.

“It isn’t enough to say ‘I love America’ and to salute the flag and to cheer as it goes by. Don’t be afraid to go to the library and read the books…That’s how we will defeat Communism-by knowing what it is. We’ve got to fight it by doing something better, and not just by hiding it.”

On 11 February 1954 the new Library Board of Trustees sought to end the controversy by adopting the American Library Association’s “Bill of Rights for Public Libraries.” The vote was six to five.

In May the City Council again ousted all but two library board members. By September the library board was split again. This time the issue was the titles of books to be purchased for the library. Tanner Freeman objected to the purchase of Iron Curtain over America as being anti-Semitic. Book committee chairwoman, Mrs. Roy Beitel, admitted that committee members had added 88 titles with strong right-wing slants to the proposed purchases recommended by library staff. Ramon Galindo asked, “Are you speaking for thought control or freedom of information?”

San Antonio Public Library Book Censorship

The San Antonio Connection

The fireworks began at a pre-City Council meeting on Thursday, 14 May 1953. Mayor Jack White:
“I would like to put a thought to the council that they should be looking into the matter of stamping books in the public library by known Communists.”

Acting City Manager Wylie Johnson:
“I think they should be burned instead of stamped.”

City Librarian Julia Grothaus was called in to clarify the library’s position.
“Of course the library has always had books on controversial subjects. … The library has never dictated to the people what they should have and what they should think. We do have material that will give people the information on both sides of the question. That’s the policy of my library serving the people.”

Later that same day library trustees met to discuss the proposals of White and Johnson. The unanimous decision announced by M. M. Harris, board president and a thirty-three year member of the board, as well as editor of the San Antonio Express, was that the library would not censor books. He said,
“These are the very tactics which the Russians are using to fight us. … It is ironic that here in San Antonio, which prides itself on its freedom to think and act, that we shall run up against a sample of Communistic tactics.”

Johnson immediately called for the removal of all fifteen board members.

The City Council held a closed meeting on Friday May 15th. The Council was divided on stamping or burning the offending books. Councilman Henry B. Gonzalez called the burning of books “Hitler tactics.” That same day County Commissioner A. J. Ploch vowed to cut county funding if the library board was ousted.