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1/ Since #BannedBooksWeek is over, now it's time for #BanRacistBooksWeek. There are two books that I've submitted a Request for Reconsideration to (ironically) the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library.
2/ The books are Monticello Scrapbook (1939) and Young Tom Jefferson's Adventure Chest (1942), both by Betty Davis Via, children's historical fiction about the life of Thomas Jefferson.
3/ The request is to move them to the ACHS Reading Room, where two other books by Davis are shelved, instead of the juvenile section of the library.
4/ Betty Davis Via (née Betty Elise Davis) worked in Charlottesville city schools for 38 years, first as a teacher at Venable Elementary, becoming principal in 1945, then as the first principal of Johnson Elementary for another 10 years, until her retirement in 1955.
5/ Jackson-Via Elementary was named in her honor and, as it was the City's first school built after desegregation, named after both a Black educator, Nannie Cox Jackson, and a white educator, Via.
6/ Coincidentally, Nannie Cox Jackson's mother, Nancy Colbert Scott, was enslaved at Monticello. Article here: monticello.org/getting-word/p…
7/ The JMRL follows the ALA's Freedom to Read Statement (ala.org/advocacy/intfr…), as it should. Most challenges to library books are intended to reinforce existing dominant systems.
8/ By the ALA's statistics, only 3% of challenges are against racism in books directly (some related challenges gets categorized for "offensive language").
9/ Both of these books purport to be biographical. At best, they are a misguided attempt to present the plantation system in a less-horrifying way for children, and, at worst, a racist whitewashing of the lives of real African Americans who were enslaved by Jefferson.
10/ Either interpretation denies the true existence of the real human beings who lived and worked at Monticello, and the millions more bound to similar circumstances.
11/ As Greg Johnson writes to introduce the work of Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, "an omission or inaccurate portrayal of the crimes and suffering can do lasting societal damage to readers and how they see the world." penntoday.upenn.edu/news/represent…
12/ Children who only learn of an imagined, benign slavery grow up to be adults who have the luxury of ignoring the intergenerational affects that slavery, then Jim Crow, then mass incarceration have had and continue to have on our society.
13/ It's unlikely Via was an overt, self-identified racist -- she wasn't even a member of the UDC -- but rather someone who, even as a history teacher, had the same pervasive, glossy view of American history as many people had then, and many still have.
14/ As @DrIbram tells us, it is not the intent of action or inaction that classifies something as racist or not, it is only the effect that matters.
15/ Booker T. Reaves praised Via with: "She had an excellent personality, and was liked by all of those who worked with her. She liked her teachers and she liked the people she worked with. As a matter of fact, I don't remember any conflicts involving her in all that time."
16/ Booker T. Reaves was principal of the Black-only Jefferson School for many years, and, when Charlottesville integrated in the 1960s, Reaves was named the district's first African-American Assistant Superintendent. The Media Center at Charlottesville High is named for him.
17/ Via (under her maiden surname Davis) wrote several books, including Monticello Scrapbook (1939) and Young Tom Jefferson's Adventure Chest (1942), mentioned above.
18/ In my request, I wrote: 'Her books frequently perpetuate the "happy slave" myth, refer to enslaved individuals simply as "servants", use racist archetypes for Indigenous and African-American characters (e.g., "grinning negro boy"[sic], "old Mammy"), ...
19/ ...use an imagined dialect for the dialogue of those characters, and use what we now consider racial slurs, such as negro[sic], Injuns, redskin, and squaw.' #SlaveryWithASmile
20/ Via prefaces Monticello Scrapbook with: "The events included in the Monticello Scrapbook are historically authentic. ...
21/ ...In order to make the stories more alive I have in some cases related what the characters might have said and described the reactions which they might have experienced to well known situations."
21 / We also have a complication between fiction, non-fiction, and biographical fiction. Most non-fiction for kids is necessarily reductionist in some way, but biographical fiction is more pernicious because it takes a kernel of truth and surrounds with fictional embellishments.
22/ It's most dangerous when these embellishments are completely ahistorical, which is to say, entertaining lies. All library history books, but particularly juvenile books, should high standards for correctness and accuracy, and these clearly do not.
23/ In the story "Home Again" from Monticello Scrapbook, she tells of Jefferson's return to Monticello after having served as a diplomat in France.
24/ "Mr. Jefferson had written to his overseer the news of his return and the overseer had told the negroes. Upon their request the 23rd was declared a holiday in honor of the master's home coming and all of them had gathered from Mr. Jefferson's farms...
25/ ... No one wanted to miss the happy event." ("Home Again" from Monticello Scrapbook)
26/ "Miss Martha done growed up, bless de Lawd," exclaimed an old Mammy standing near, "An' look at Miss Mary, ain't she beautiful?" called out another. And Maria, now in her 11th year, was more beautiful and lovable than ever....
27/ "Martha was a tall and stately young lady of seventeen. Their charm and beauty and lovely French clothes overawed the servants, and they fell back to let them enter." ("Home Again" from Monticello Scrapbook)
28/ It was around this time that Jefferson began a sexual relationship with Sally Hemings, who was the same age as Martha.
29/ Young Tom Jefferson's Adventure Chest (1942) contains numerous passages in dialect, like:
30/ "Marse Tom," he gasped. "Look at dis here. I heered a bobwhite call and den it come flyin' through de air and stick right in a stump near de woodpile whar I'se asittin'. Marse To, it's Injuns. Is we gwine to be attacked?" (p. 178)
31/ Removing books, especially nonfiction children's books, from a library should be done thoughtfully and carefully, but, ultimately, the line should be far beyond books that clearly promote racist ideas through ahistorical details, as these do.
32/ Finally, a few good resources about diversity and representation in children's books I found while researching this: @CrazyQuilts crazyquiltedi.blog @debreese …ricanindiansinchildrensliterature.net @Ebonyteach booktoss.blog decoloresreviews.blogspot.com
33/ More: readingwhilewhite.blogspot.com @ReadWhileWhite cbcdiversity.com jstor.org/stable/20865298 Social Tolerance and Racist materials in Public Libraries by Susan K. Burke
35/ And I got a response from the JRML. The books are going to be reshelved to either the ACHS or the local history section. I also have a good template now for exactly what criteria the library is evaluating. 
