Toni Morrison's "Beloved," and "The Bluest Eye" Banned in Spotsylvania Public Schools

Spotsylvania County School Superintendent Mark Taylor has decided to ban 14 books from Spotsylvania County school libraries. The list of books is seen at bottom.

The list includes two books written by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Toni Morrison (1931-2019). They are Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye, written in 1970, and her 1987 novel Beloved. A memo issued on March 28 confirmed the list of 14 books to be banned from public school libraries in Spotsylvania County. The order to ban the books lands on the same week as the 35th anniversary of Morrison being awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Beloved in 1988.

Author Toni Morrison in 1970. The cover for Beloved. Spotsylvania County Schools Superintendent Mark Taylor.

Mark Taylor began as the Spotsylvania County Schools Superintendent in September 2022. His selection was controversial and some questioned his credentials. Taylor’s salary is $245,000 and his three year contract included lifetime health care. But critics noted that Taylor, an attorney, had no direct experience in education before he was hired as Spotsylvania County Schools Superintendent. It also didn’t go unnoticed by some parents that Taylor home-schooled his children.

Beloved was set after the Civil War and was based on the story of a Black woman who escaped slavery in Kentucky in 1850s. Morrison dedicated the book to "Sixty Million and more" in reference to Africans and their descendants who died during the Atlantic slave trade. The book's title refers to Romans 9:25, which in part reads: Those who were not my people I will call 'my people,' and her who was not beloved I will call 'beloved.

The Bluest Eye is set in Ohio during the Great Depression and covers issues around the impact of systemic racism, poverty and self hatred. The novel also includes incest and rape — which is usually the reason cited by school administrators for the book to be banned. Morrison, who died in 2019, said she wrote The Bluest Eye to remind people "how hurtful racism is." 

Book covers for Toni Morrison’s books.

"A book removal order is being issued in Spotsylvania County,” reported Julie Carey last night. Carey covers northern Virginia for NBC4 in DC.

“Fourteen books, including Toni Morrison’s Beloved, must be pulled from all school library shelves by Friday after they were challenged & found to have sexually explicit content,” Carey reported on social media. The demographics of Spotsylvania County are changing and the county is 66 percent white, 16 percent Black and 10 percent Hispanic. Discussions around what history is taught in school is driving heated school board meetings in many localities.

Tonight, there will be a public budget meeting of the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors that will also consider Taylor’s proposal to cut the staff and therefore close all the libraries in public schools in Spotsylvania. This was reported first by 7News in Washington D.C. on March 27.

“On Monday, 7News was the first to report Taylor included eliminating all school libraries in the district and the 63 librarians staffing them in a presentation he would later deliver during that night's school board budget meeting,” the station reported.

RUBY BRIDGES. The decision in Spotsylvania, Virginia is followed by news that the parent of a second grade student at North Shore Elementary in St. Petersburg, Florida prompted Pinellas County school officials to ban the Disney movie Ruby Bridges. One parent complained. The 1988 movie was banned in the Florida district after it was shown to 60 students in second-grade on March 2 for Black History Month according to a Pinellas County Schools spokesperson. Toni Morrison’s book, The Bluest Eye was banned in the same district earlier this year, after just one parent complained.

Norman Rockwell’s painting featuring Ruby Bridges. A Department of Justice photo of Ruby Bridges leaving school in 1960.

Ruby Bridges was the first Black student to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana on November 14, 1960. The image of the four year old surrounded by federal Marshalls to attend school was dramatized in photography and art by Norman Rockwell.

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