The Dismissal of Miss Ruth Brown - by Louise S. Robbins

Eight years ago I wrote about the film Storm Center. I recently learned that this film, produced at the height of McCarthyism, was loosely based on the case of Ruth Brown, who was fired from her job as librarian at the Bartlesville (Oklahoma) Public Library in 1950. Robbins' book even contains a rather thorough summary of the movie. Bette Davis (who played ousted librarian Alicia Hull) was questioned about taking the role by at least one parent, Anne Smart. 

Smart sent Davis a "report of the book controversy" she was causing in Marin County [California]...Her report depicted in "vivid detail...the type of material being given to our children in some schools. [The report]...made its way around the country for for several years [and contained] the names of authors "all extremely well listed as to their communist and/or communist front affiliations by various government investigating committees."

The more things change... 

Brown was an outspoken civil rights activist in her town. Her racial justice work during the height of McCarthyism made her an easy target. Charges that she was circulating "subversive" materials was a façade for the real reason of her dismissal.

The back cover blurb of this work (published in 2000) reads 

The fundamental issues of the Brown case make it especially pertinent today when differences - in race, gender, class, and national origin - are again feared and as challenges to materials in library collections again escalate. Ruth Brown's story helps us understand the matrix of personal, community, state, and national forces that can lead to censorship, intolerance, and the suppression of individual rights

This description is even more eerily prescient today. As are discussions in the book of neutrality, academic freedom, freedom of acquisition, freedom of access (especially to controversial materials) and the blatant sexism. 

Ruth Brown was one of the women, mostly white and middle-class, who made up 88.8 percent of the allied profession of librarianship in 1950. For a salary less than a man would receive, she organized and maintained a comfortable homelike space where people, especially young people, went for wholesome enlightenment (emphasis mine). The professional role of the librarian gave communities low-cost female employees (emphasis mine) to provide healthy recreational and informational reading while it extended the margins of the domestic sphere without exploding them. The librarian's role did not transgress boundaries as long as the homelike space and the materials and activities organized in it remained safe, comforting, and submissive to the prevailing ideology...

The more things change... 

The Library Bill of Rights was originally adopted by the American Library Association (ALA) in 1939 to ensure access to information (even what some might consider harmful or dangerous) to all. "The ALA articulated the importance of allowing citizens to decide for themselves what they should read, an idea Brown expressed in her interview with the city commission". This is a stark contrast to the description of the "stereotypical" librarian 

in Alice I. Byran's 1952 research report, The Public Librarian...[who] was "rather submissive in social situations" and lacked self confidence. "Indiscreet" was not part of the lexicon by which librarians, especially female librarians, were described. In fact female librarians have been characterized as discreet to a fault in book selection practices, "ruthless in their own censorship." Marjorie Fiske's 1959 classic , Book Selection and Censorship, depicted its mostly female subjects as anxious and fearful, avoiding challenges to library materials through self-censorship.

The more things change... 

 And on a final note, we see the same ideological concerns in libraries today as libraries in Montana and Georgia cut ties with the ALA over president Emily Drabinski's identity as a Marxist lesbian.

The more things change...

The Music Man (the movie)

 

Prof. Harold Hill sexually harasses Librarian Marian Paroo in The Music Man 

I was the guest speaker in my husband's class earlier this week. The lesson for the day was how to find information to do research on Coffee. The day before the class he said he liked to start his classes with some music and asked me to suggest something. "How about Marian Librarian" said I. 

We used a video we found on YouTube. I realized while we were showing it to the class that it had been a long while since I'd seen it (certainly not since before the Me Too movement) and so I felt compelled, after watching it with the class, to mention that this display of sexual harassment was completely inappropriate.

Nevertheless James and I decided to watch the entire two-and-a-half-hour movie together that evening (it actually took two nights because the movie is so very long). I can't deny that it is a fun movie with some catchy tunes, even though the cringe-worthy sexual harassment is all too familiar to those of us who work in public services.

There is almost too much to say about this, so I will stick with the highlights.

First of all Shirley Jones as Marian is, without a doubt, the most iconic of all fictional librarians - a "sadder but wiser"... "stuck up"..."maiden lady librarian who gives piano". Lucky for swindler "Professor" Harold Hill (Robert Preston) that type of woman is exactly his "speciality".

What I remembered about Marian was that she curated a fine collection of materials for use by the citizens of River City, Iowa and was a defender against the would-be censors. Important to note, however, is that Eulalie Shinn, the Mayor's wife (Hermione Gingold), complained about what her daughter was reading, but was unconcerned that others might read the same book. Parents always have the right to dictate what their own children can read. Something Mrs. Shinn understood. 

What I didn't remember was Marian's own heinous crime of ripping a page out of one of the library's books! This is simply not acceptable - even if the librarian does believe that she is going to save the City from itself by doing so. 

There were some interesting things to note about the library hours. For instance, when Marian returns from work in the evening her mother asks "Library open later than usual?" "It always is" is Marian's un-ironic reply. The library was also open on the Fourth of July.

There is some serious "shush-ing" going on at the River City Public Library. Even Marian herself gets shushed by some of her patrons.

And Professor Harold Hill? As my late Grandmother used to say about my Uncle Dave "he can fall in a pile of shit and come out smelling like a rose"