The public library in Fairhope, Alabama — a picturesque city on the shores of Mobile Bay — has found itself in the crosshairs of battles over library content.
The Alabama Public Library Service Board of Trustees voted Thursday to withhold state funding from the Fairhope Public Library after complaints from conservative parents about books in the teen section. In the same meeting, the board voted to immediately dismiss the executive director of the state library agency, who had been planning to resign.
Board Chairman John Wahl, who is also the chair of the Alabama Republican Party, said board members believe the Fairhope library is in violation of state policies to protect children from inappropriate materials. The books cited by the upset parents included “Sold,” a National Book Award finalist about a girl who is sold into sexual slavery in India.
The actions come amid a broader national culture war over library content and programs and a surging number of challenges to books on library shelves. The American Library Association’s list of the most-challenged books of 2023 included many with LGBTQIA+ or sexual content.
“I think that the GOP chair on the State Library Board is forcing the removal of books just because of anti-library extremists. I think that’s ignoring the voices of Fairhope taxpayers and library users,” said Amber Frey of Read Freely Alabama, an organization that has opposed the restrictions.
The action against the Fairhope Library is the first taken under a new Alabama law and 2024 administrative code changes that say to receive state funding, local libraries must have policies to safeguard youth from “sexually explicit or other material deemed inappropriate for children or youth.”
Wahl said they aren’t trying to ban the books, but he maintained the state code requires “the actual relocation of these books out of youth sections.”
“We are unapologetic about standing up for Alabama families and putting them in control, even if that means temporarily defunding local libraries until they can be compliant,” Wahl said.
He said parents objecting to the books read excerpts during the meeting to demonstrate why they believe the books do not belong in the teen section.
Clean Up Alabama, a group that along with Moms for Liberty had sought restrictions, praised the decision. “We saw the board step up in the fight to protect our children,” the group said in a statement.
The secretary of the board of the Fairhope Public Library said they were shocked by the action.
“We’re devastated and really stunned by this. We had no warning that this was going to happen,” Randal Wright said.
Several years ago, the library received complaints against 35 books and went through a review process, Wright said. The director declined to move them after determining they were appropriate for teens.
Wright said they recently received a request to revisit that decision because of the new state policies. She said the board declined to move them.
“We had looked at those books, and we stuck by that decision,” Wright said.
Wright said she believes the challenges were filed by a small number of people. The overall community is supportive of its library, she said.
Read Freely Alabama has started a fundraiser for the Fairhope library to try to replace the $42,000 in state funding. The group had raised $8,000 by Friday afternoon.
The state board on Thursday also dismissed Nancy Pack, who has led the library service since 2014. Pack had planned on resigning at the end of September. Wahl said there had been friction between Pack and some board members who believed she was hostile to the policies they were trying to implement.
Pack has spent over 30 years as a librarian and has been honored as a distinguished alumni of the University of Tennessee’s School of Information Sciences.
“Libraries have never been political,” Pack said, adding that the attacks on librarians and libraries have been distressing.
“We have seen more librarians retire rather than go through what we’re having to go through at this time,” she said.