1950s AD - Decade

The weekend conference gathered twenty-five librarians, publishers, and citizens "representing the public interest" to "give some guidance to librarians in defending their basic principles" and perhaps to "have some effect on public opinion" (Bixler, 1954, p. 8). The issues were "clearly drawn," Dix felt; an "aroused and determined opposition" had to make its voice heard soon or the country would experience an "era of book burning such as we have never seen before" (Dix, 1953a, p.3). The group reached substantial agreement which a committee headed by IFC and ABPC member Dan Lacy subsequently developed into a statement for publication--"The Freedom to Read" (six, 1953b).

As events unfolded, ALA's endorsement of the Freedom to Read statement at the annual conference in San Francisco was perfectly timed to gain maximum publicity. First, on June 14,1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower addressed Dartmouth College graduates. Appearing to speak off the cuff, he gave a stirring speech against library censorship: "Don't join the book burners....Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book, any document as long as it does not offend [y]our own ideas of decency." The nation could defeat communism, he said, only if citizens knew what it taught and why it had appeal. It could not defeat communism by concealing ideas critical of the United States, ideas that should be accessible through libraries. Denying access to contrary ideas, he said, was inimical to the American way (Eisenhower, 1953, p.59).

Eisenhower's speech set the stage for the Whittier Intellectual Freedom preconference entitled "Book Selection in Defense of Freedom." In sessions dealing with science and pseudo-science, morality and obscenity, and politics and subversion, participants heard several nationally known speakers (Bixler, 1953; Mosher, 1954). Among them was Lester Asheim who, in his classic article, "Not Censorship but Selection" (1953), defined the difference for librarians and dealt once again with librarians themselves as censors. They had been known, he said, "to defer to anticipated pressures, and to avoid facing issues by suppressing issue-making causes. In such cases, the rejection of a book is censorship, for the book has been judged--not on its own merits--but in terms of the librarian's devotion to three square meals a day" (p. 67). He related librarians' practice of selection to librarianship as a profession. A profession was dependent upon society's willingness to grant autonomy to professionals in their area of expertise. The public was "willing to defer to the honest judgment of those in special fields whose knowledge, training, and special aptitude fit them to render these judgments," provided the professional to whom "such authority" was delegated demonstrated "the virtues which are the basis of that trust" (p. 67). He concluded:

In the last analysis, this is what makes a profession: the earned confidence

of those it serves. But that confidence must be earned, and