I hate to admit it, but my authorial ego was bruised by wading through the list of 381 books pulled from the Nimitz Library of the U. S. Naval Academy last week. It tallied the volumes expelled by order of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, for committing the grave sins of advocating and documenting aspects of work for racial and gender justice, particularly its recent incarnation in programs lumped together as DEI.
I was bummed out because, after all, I’ve published four books on racial justice. They got several decent reviews, sold some thousands of copies, and have turned up in footnotes and bibliographies of much better-known tomes. This is a sign that at least a few serious people had taken note of them.
My books were forged from direct experience and much research on a time of wide-ranging and often violent struggle for racial justice. They covered Selma’s Bloody Sunday; the Poor Peoples Campaign; Black Power (“By any means necessary!”). Writing them, I considered each as documentation of radical challenges to an evil status quo. Surely at least one of them should have caught the sharp eye of a diligent censor.
But no.
None made the cut for the Naval Academy’s dishonor roll.
Continue reading The Naval Academy Library’s Magical Minstrel Show for Massa Hegseth
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