Mississippi Bridge Faces
Virginia School Library Challenge
A Henrico County, Virginia, school board committee is considering the fate of Mississippi Bridge after a parent asked that the book be removed from a school library because of its “negative content.” Arcelia Jackson’s 9-year-old daughter checked the book out of Donahoe Elementary School library in Sandston. “The language is rough for a 4th-grader,” Jackson told the school board February 27. “There’s nothing positive in it. It’s riddled with prejudice.”
The 62-page novel, set in rural Mississippi in the 1930s, was written by Newbery Medal–winning African-American author Mildred D. Taylor. Geared to 9- to 12-year-old readers, the book is about a young black man who tries to save white passengers in a bus accident, despite being ordered earlier to give up his seat to “white folks.”
Superintendent Mark A. Edwards said in the February 28 Richmond Times-Dispatch there had been no complaints about the book in the decade or so it has been on Henrico school library shelves. The book is now under review by the school division’s materials review committee.
Posted March 5, 2001.
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