By Vivian Shipe
KNOXVILLE, TN — All along the walkway leading up to James Agee Park were giant posters of books banned for public school reading.
Books that not so long ago were required reading in school. Pulitzer Prize award winning volumes that have been deemed unacceptable, threatening, or objectional; even books dealing with race and police brutality have been removed from school library shelves and local bookstores around the country.
The practice of banning has been going on a long time but in 2022, according to the American Library Association, the number surged by 38 percent.
In an effort to protest and to give voice to the threats that book banning brings, Michael and Evelyn Gill held a banned book reading event in the outside James Agee Park venue.
Evelyn Gill, former County Commissioner for Knox County, delivered a stern opening to the event by reminding everyone that public institutions like public libraries are critical and contain access to public information.
Gill went on to say that institutions like the public library system are currently being undermined, eroding the very fabric of this country on which we stand.
As she opened her book and prepared to read from The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, Gill said, “The stakes are too high to keep silent”. Others in Knoxville agreed.
Readers from across Knoxville were invited to come, bring a chair and a favorite banned book and take turns reading excerpts aloud. Among the banned authors featured where Tony Morrison, George Orwell, Angie Thomas, Harper Lee, even Ray Bradbury.
Under a blue sky on a cold October evening as day slipped into dusk, the words from some of the greatest books ever written were released and floated into the atmosphere as if to say, we are still here.
