In recent years, Texas has become an epicenter of the rapidly-spreading book banning movement. This year alone, our state lawmakers lead the nation with at least 31 proposed bills that the American Library Association says would effectively restrict librarians’ abilities to do their jobs. One such bill, Senate Bill 13, passed through the Texas Senate last month, and would require school boards, not librarians, to have final say over which materials are removed from public school libraries. Another bill, Senate Bill 412, which recently made its way to the Texas House, would criminalize librarians, removing protections that prevented them from being charged with providing harmful material to minors.
Since 2021, Texas has ranked among the top states in the country when it comes to book bans. In the 2023-2024 school year, PEN America tracked 538 bans, trailing behind only Iowa and Florida.
How exactly did we get here? While book bans have spread all over the country, director Kim Snyder’s latest documentary, The Librarians, points to the movement’s origins right here in the Lone Star State.
The film, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, follows librarians who have found themselves on the frontlines of a culture war largely fueled by right wing misinformation campaigns. Among them are Carolyn Foote and Becky Calzada, two of several Texas librarians who came together to create the aptly-named “FReadom Fighters” — a group dedicated to supporting librarians and speaking out against censorship.
Zooming out from Texas, Snyder then connects the book banning efforts here to other efforts and copycat legislation in other states like Florida, Louisiana, and New Jersey. Though the locations may differ drastically, the books being challenged and the concerns surrounding them are eerily similar, cluing the network of librarians into a frightening realization about who they’re up against: a number of right-wing conservative groups who have made book banning and taking over school boards their top priorities.
The Barbed Wire spoke with Snyder as well as Foote and Calzada shortly after the documentary’s screening at South By Southwest to talk about the film and what the fight against censorship looks like now.
Kim, I’m wondering what initially drew you to this topic and how you first became aware of it?
KS: I’ve been working on a lot of projects that revolved around the stories of gun violence, and I happened to come across the “Freadom Fighters.” I was just so inspired. I always say that when it comes to stories, it’s like falling in love. You just kind of see something, and you feel called to it. I immediately got in touch, and started digging deeper.
You started filming around 2022. Did any of you have an inkling at the time of the fact that you would still be fighting this fight years later, or how far it would spread outside of Texas?
CF: No, I think we had no intention of founding a group that would still be going three or four years later. Social media has been a game changer in helping things spread so rapidly. While that’s something we could’ve anticipated, I thought, “People have short attention spans, they’re going to move on to some other issue.” But we were also initially caught off guard because, after [Gov. Abbott signed the “critical race theory” bill into law], we were prepared for attacks on books about race or racism. Then the Krause list came out and it also had all of these books about LGBTQ topics and sex education. That was sort of out of left field. It wasn’t the fight we were preparing for, but it sort of felt like all the culture wars had landed on our doorstep as librarians.
BC: I think the other part of it is not just the escalation, but the repetitive nature [of these bans]. Typically, you might hear about maybe one book challenge in a year, but then we started seeing 16 for the same book. And then you would hear that book being spoken about in another school, or in another state. The copycat nature was really surprising, because it opened our eyes to these organizations teaching people how to challenge books, and they were really focused on leveraging their networks and social media to spread misinformation and to disparage professionals.
KS: From my vantage point as a documentarian, sadly, a commonality with this film and my other work is that it feels like they’ve only become more relevant since they were made. I don’t want that to be the case. With book bans and with gun violence, it feels like it’s been unending. I wish that wasn’t the country we lived in.
In the film, you talk about right-wing groups like Moms For Liberty fanning the flames of this moral panic over books. How did you realize that these book bans were part of something bigger?
BC: I think that was one of the strengths that Carolyn and I brought to the table: we’re pretty connected. We’ve been in libraries for quite a while, and already we’ve been doing advocacy work around library funding and things like that. We have a network that we can rely on, so we would support one another through different book challenges, and we could also share “this is what happened to me,” or “I saw this happen here.” We started to see patterns.
CF: We met people online that were going through the same thing. We compared stories, and things started coming together where, by the spring of 2022, we knew this was definitely part of an intentional effort. We didn’t know yet who exactly might be involved, and since then, there have been some new players who started entering the equation, but that’s how the ball got rolling.
The film highlights several librarians who lost their jobs trying to fight back against bans, and also others who have faced harassment and threats. What has it been like to publicly bush back on book banning?
BC: I happen to work in a district that has, so far, been holding the line. We’ve had our fair share of book challenges, and because of that, I feel like I’ve been able to help others learn from what we did. A lot of it is rooted in trust. I’m not going to say we haven’t had an attack, because people will target us on social media and say things about us, but I always tell people that a lot of times we’re viewed as a threat because of our influence.
CF: We try to help guide people as much as we can because this is so new. We coach people not to engage in social media because it makes it worse. I think we’ve been strategic and thoughtful about how or who we engage with.
What gives you hope in telling this story?
KS: I would say the Granbury storyline in our film gives me hope. We told the story of [Courtney Gore, a Granbury ISD school board member] who was one of millions of moms who was essentially led to believe one thing because of misinformation, and when she did some digging and realized that she was incorrect, she spoke out. Granbury is not a liberal bubble, it’s a pretty conservative place. So for her to speak out in her town, I have hope that there could be many Courtneys out there. I’m hoping that’s what this film can do, is let people see what’s really happening, and that there is a politically-driven, nefarious agenda here.
We’re setting a dangerous precedent right now, but there’s still time for us to pull back. I know a lot of people feel demoralized right now, they’re fed up with the polarized politics. But I hope that the role models in this film show them that you don’t have to succumb to fear and apathy. You can affect change on a local level.
BC: The students give me hope. I think of students who have come back and talked about how not having access to a library hampered them. I think about the students who have spoken up at board meetings in defense of librarians. I think about our banned book club in our school district, and how they actually approached the school board and said, “Hey, we want a seat at the table. Can we be part of the consideration process?” And our school board actually allowed for that to happen. These students are speaking out, they’re taking action, they’re leveraging their agency because they deserve better. They’re so smart and so creative, and that’s what gives me the most hope.