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.