Tennessee school district bans Alex Haley's Pulitzer Prize winning Roots under 2022 state law

[Swede]

A Tennessee school district has banned Roots, the author Alex Haley’s groundbreaking novel and one of the most renowned and influential works about the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade.

Knox county schools (KCS) took that step under a state law that has disappeared hundreds of titles from school libraries and alarmed advocates of free expression.

First published in 1976, Roots: The Saga of an American Family tells the story of Kunta Kinte, who was brutally stolen from his home in the Gambia and taken to North America to be sold into the nightmare of slavery.

The novel chronicles six generations of Kinte’s descendants in the US to Haley himself; won the Pulitzer prize; and was later adapted into a mini-series.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/15/tennessee-book-ban-alex-haley-roots

[blm]

1. Republicans are both evil and unAmerican.

[wcmagumba]

2. Good Gawd, these people are so scared of the "other"...

[spanone]

3. Fuck these people.

This is my state.

[peggysue2]

4. Tennessee, again

Btw, I lived in Knox County. The area I lived in--Farragut--was considered moderate to liberal in nature. But the state as a whole has been swallowed by MAGA madness.

Beautiful state but ugly, ignorant politics.

[Jim__]

5. I wonder of the bible is considered age-appropriate.

From the cited article:

She said Roots had recently been elevated to the district’s review committee for consideration over a passage in the novel’s 84th chapter, which it determined was not “age appropriate” under Tennessee law. “Broader themes or historical significance of a work as a whole is not a consideration under the law,” Harrington added.

I don't know what's in the 84th chapter of Roots, but I'm betting there's some comparable segments in the bible.