With third-highest number of books banned, state removes renowned work about slave trade from library shelves A Tennessee school district has banned Roots , the author Alex Haley’s groundbreaking novel and one of the most renowned and influential works about the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade. Knox county schools (KCS) took that step under a state law that has disappeared hundreds of titles from school libraries and alarmed advocates of free expression. Continue reading...

A Knox County school board committee read a single passage from Alex Haley’s Roots and did exactly what Tennessee law told them to do. They banned it, voting to pull it from school libraries. Knox County Schools Superintendent Jon Rysewyk reversed the ban May 26, returning the 1976 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel to shelves at seven […]