Online Companion: The Complete Student, Achieving Success in College and Beyond

Chapter 6: The Library

Case in Point: Jerilynn Adams Williams

There are librarians today who are playing a heroic role in a society where First Amendment rights are too often coming under attack. Jerilynn Adams Williams, director of the Montgomery County (Texas) Library was the 2003 recipient of a First Amendment Award. In August 2002, when a dozen angry community members stormed a meeting of the Commissioner's Court in Montgomery County to demand that a book called It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex & Sexual Health be removed from the county's library shelves, Ms. Williams stood fast. Countering charges that the book was "obscene" and "promoted homosexuality," she spent 3 solid months tirelessly educating public officials and the community at-large about the proper way to challenge library materials. Fighting to defend the library's right to offer this critically acclaimed book that tactfully and sensitively explains human sexuality to young readers, Ms. Williams received personal threats and calls for her termination. In the end, however, she prevailed and the Commissioner's Court returned the book to the library shelves. The American Library Association publishes a list of the 100 Most Challenged-those books most frequently censored in schools and libraries. On the list are such classics as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, as well as the Harry Potter series and even Where's Waldo? The efforts of librarians like Jerilynn Adams Williams to preserve First Amendment rights in the face of personal danger and sacrifice truly are heroic.