The Dismissal of Miss Ruth Brown · Civil Rights, Censorship, and the American Library

In 1950, after three decades of exemplary service, Brown was summarily dismissed from her job as librarian at the Bartlesville, Oklahoma, Public Library. Though the ostensible reason was circulating subversive materials, Robbins (Library and Information studies, U. of Wisconsin-Madison) says it was because she advocated racial equality and had helped form a group affiliated with the Congress of Racial Equality. She emphasizes the matrix of personal, community, state, and national forces that can still lead to censorship, intolerance, and suppression.