{"id":1321,"date":"2009-04-14T12:16:23","date_gmt":"2009-04-14T12:16:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2009\/04\/14\/farewell-to-judith-krug-and-thanks-from-all-of-us-readers-libarians-kids-computer-users-and-gamers-y\/"},"modified":"2014-08-04T05:35:18","modified_gmt":"2014-08-04T05:35:18","slug":"farewell-to-judith-krug-and-thanks-from-all-of-us-readers-libarians-kids-computer-users-and-gamers-y","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2009\/04\/14\/farewell-to-judith-krug-and-thanks-from-all-of-us-readers-libarians-kids-computer-users-and-gamers-y\/","title":{"rendered":"Farewell to Judith Krug – and Thanks from All of Us (Readers, Libarians, Kids, Computer Users and Gamers — Yes, Gamers)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Judy<\/a> You’re looking at a heroine here, a tireless advocate of “freedom to read” and the First Amendment.\u00a0 Her name is Judith Krug<\/a>, known to many as “Judy” and a brave and wonderful woman.\u00a0 As Director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom since it was founded in 1967, she also founded “Banned Books Week<\/a>” in 1982. That’s how I met her.<\/p>\n

I’d done stories before about First Amendment issues and someone gave her my number.\u00a0 She called to tell me that the last week of September, 1982, would be the first ALA Banned Books Week and wouldn’t the Today Show like to cover it?\u00a0 Of course we would.\u00a0 Look at some of the most banned books over the year<\/a>s – here in the US!\u00a0 Surprising at best, eh?\u00a0 They include Harry Potter<\/a>, Huck Finn<\/a>, Of Mice and Men<\/a>, The Catcher in the Rye<\/a> and Kaffir Boy<\/a>.\u00a0 Appalled by the list,\u00a0 I remember starting the piece with film of the Nazi book burnings in Berlin.\u00a0 Judy loved it!<\/p>\n

In the years since 1982 we repeated the story almost every year — and every year new books joined the list.<\/a>\u00a0 Not always from the right, either.\u00a0 Some liberal parents challenged Huckleberry Finn as racist, and the other ban efforts came from all over the place!\u00a0 Harry Potter<\/a> as Satanism, Native Son<\/a> because it put the death penalty in dispute and the Bible preaches “an eye for an eye,” Wrinkle in Time<\/a>, Understood Alice and others by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor<\/a>, Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret<\/a>,\u00a0 The House of Spirits<\/a>, Slaughterhouse-Five<\/a> and Lord of the Flies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But banned books were far from her only concern.\u00a0 As the Chicago Tribute wrote:<\/p>\n

Mrs. Krug worked directly with librarians across the country who were engaged in censorship battles. She enlisted allies from fields that are
\naffected by 1st Amendment attacks such as publishers and journalists,
\nsaid Robert Doyle, executive director of the Illinois Library
\nAssociation.
\n“She was concerned about the gamut of expression,
\nso that people could go to the library and encounter the full
\nmarketplace of ideas,” Doyle said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Beyond books was her opposition to filters on library computers and her less-noticed championing of free expression in video games.\u00a0 A Game Politics <\/a>piece includes this:<\/p>\n

Judith was instrumental in the fight against video game censorship. She was a forceful advocate for Media Coalition amicus<\/em>
\nbriefs in the Indianapolis, St. Louis, Illinois, Minnesota, and
\nCalifornia video game cases. It would have been easy for the librarians
\nto say, “That’s not our battle,” but thankfully that wasn’t Judith’s
\ntemperament.<\/p>\n

Judith was a fierce believer in the importance of
\nfreedom of expression to our culture and our society and was zealous
\ndefender of the First Amendment. We all have truly benefited from her
\npassion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Judy died on April 11th.\u00a0 She leaves a family who will miss her, I’m sure.\u00a0 But she leaves a legacy for the rest of us too, one for which we should be grateful.\u00a0 Anyone who loves to read, who wants to be able to ask a librarian for a special book for a quirky kid, who wants to use the library computer to do research or read off-the-wall news stories, or who just loves to wander in the stacks or online looking for something that never occurred to them, or a special idea or book or website — we’ll miss her too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You’re looking at a heroine here, a tireless advocate of “freedom to read” and the First Amendment.\u00a0 Her name is Judith Krug, known to many as “Judy” and a brave and wonderful woman.\u00a0 As Director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom since it was founded in 1967, she also founded “Banned Books … Continue reading Farewell to Judith Krug – and Thanks from All of Us (Readers, Libarians, Kids, Computer Users and Gamers — Yes, Gamers)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,6,27,2764,7,9,52],"tags":[720,717,716,718,719,234,715,711,712,714,713,557],"class_list":["post-1321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-culture","category-current-affairs","category-i-seem-to-write-a-lot-of-obits","category-life","category-politics","category-weblogs","tag-american-library-association","tag-banned-book-week","tag-banned-books","tag-censorship","tag-first-amendment","tag-freedom","tag-freedom-to-read","tag-judith-krug","tag-judy-krug","tag-librarians","tag-library","tag-obituary"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-lj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1321"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2484,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1321\/revisions\/2484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}