Throughout the country, far-right groups are trying to control what books kids can read. In Dayton, Wash., they tried to shut down the library altogether.
, WASH.—Todd Vandenbark stands at a table in the Dayton Memorial Library and spreads out a cluster of books. All are aimed at children and young adults, with titles such as What’s the T?, Gender Queer, This Book Is Anti-Racist, and When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir. They focus on race relations or issues of sexuality and gender identity and include titles that were bought to help celebrate Pride Month or Black History Month. Some are cardboard books, usually housed on the basement shelves that form the young children’s section. They include Being You, Our Skin, and Yes! No!, which explore issues of sexuality and consent in a way that kids who are still learning to read might understand.
Over the past couple of years, movements that seek to ban books with LGBTQ+ or racial justice themes have picked up steam in GOP-controlled states around the country. Pro-censorship groups have sprung up at both the local and national levels, pioneered by a Florida outfit with the Orwellian appellation Moms for Liberty. The organization is endorsed by Steve Bannon, the Heritage Foundation, and other avatars of the hard right and has more than 200 local chapters. Egged on by such groups, legislatures in Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, Idaho, Indiana, and other states have either passed or are considering policies restricting what sorts of books can be on school library shelves or lent to children from public libraries. The tiny town of Dayton is one of the latest flash points of this effort to limit what young readers can access.
Dayton is in the heart of southeastern Washington’s farm country, nearly 300 miles from Seattle, 125 miles from Spokane, and 270 miles from Portland, Ore., making it about as far from the region’s big cities as it is possible to be. The little town’s Main Street is lined with old stores and cafes, including a drugstore that still has its original soda fountain. The overwhelming majority of its residents are white, and most are conservative; in recent elections, upwards of 70 percent of the county voted for GOP candidates.
In the early 19th century, Lewis and Clark’s expedition traveled through this region. More than half a century later, following the routes of the new cross-country railroads, pioneers began settling small communities like Dayton, which was founded in 1871. By the early 20th century, townsfolk and nearby farmers, many of them growing apples and Bartlett pears on the sprawling orchards that drew water from the Touchet River, were pitching in for a fund to create a library, selling baked goods and scrap metal to raise money. In the 1930s, then-Governor Clarence Daniel Martin reputedly donated $5,000 of his own money to the library fund. And in 1937, in the heart of the Great Depression, WPA crews finally made that hope a reality, building the little brick library on South Third Street where Todd Vandenbark became the director in early 2021. That federal investment in local literacy—the sort of investment fiercely opposed by much of the right today—gave the out-of-the-way community access to a collection of books that could never have been matched by any of the town’s private individuals.
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