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Notes -
So I tracked back that quote to Kristina Rosenthal at the University of Tulsa in 2014 but it seems she sourced the quote from R. Wolf Baldassarro in 2013 who doesn't appear to have named a source that I can find. The "strong leadership roles" wording does appear to be his paraphrasing with just the "ungodly" wording being a quote in his original piece.
"Nevertheless, it has come under attack several times. Ministers and educators challenged it for its “ungodly” influence and for depicting women in strong leadership roles. They opposed not only children reading it, but adults as well, lest it undermine longstanding gender roles."
I did find an article in the Chicago Tribune from 2000 which said this:
"In 1928, you would not have been able to find “The Wizard of Oz” at the Chicago Public Library; librarians there considered the book “not literature, but, somehow, rather evil for children.”" but again the quote is unsourced. The Chicago Tribune was extant in 1928 so I assume they would maybe have internal archives so as to verify that the banning actually happened, but it isn't specified in the article.
I do concede however that I cannot find a contemporary source for those quotes. Though I also can't find a contemporary source for the 1928 banning at all. Possibly buried in a newspaper archive I would need a library card to access, ironically enough.
For the 1950's though I think we have better evidence (this piece is about state librarians in Florida):
"When it came to employing the tactic of using the public’s anticommunist sentiment to remove the works of Baum from public libraries (and thereby empower the library in its fight against communism), Dreier and Dodd were not alone. These localities joined Detroit, Washington, D.C., Chicago, (ironically) Kansas City, and other local library districts across the nation in purging their shelves of the works of Baum. "
"Dreier was arguing that his movement to improve the quantity and quality of Florida’s libraries was a necessary front in the Cold War. He viewed libraries as extremely important institutions that would create a populace capable of defeating the Soviet Union in the marketplace of ideas"
This paper is sourced from letters held in the Florida State archives from the 1950's and illustrates that seeing libraries as a cultural weapon was already happening then.
"Outside the pages of his library newsletter, Dreier was an even more strident anticommunist. Elsewhere he wrote vitriolic propaganda pieces with stark depictions of leftists:
"The socialist is smarter than the capitalist. He has to be to get what he wants. The capitalist is the producer. He raises the fruits and vegetables. He makes gadgets. He accumulates profits. That’s when the socialist, himself unable to create anything, steps in and passes laws that compel the capitalist to turn part of his profits into socialist projects. The time will come when the socialist will actually pass laws that compel the producer to surrender complete control of what he has created."
"Given his antipathy toward leftist politics, the fact that Baum’s work was often suspected of containing subversive political ideas gave Dreier additional impetus to support Dodd’s list of books to be removed from Florida’s libraries."
Whether it applies to Baum in 1928 or not, the evidence is that libraries were already seen as a battleground for cultural clashes well before the current timeframe.
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