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Henderson Lecture - "Books on Trial"
September 10, 2005 – “Books on Trial: Witch Hunt in the Heartland and a Nation's Response” is the title of this fall's Henderson Lecture by husband and wife team Professors Wayne and Shirley Wiegand. The lecture takes place on Sept. 26 during Banned Books Week—a celebration of our freedom to read—in the Pleasants Family Assembly Room of the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The lecture focuses on a 1940 raid of an Oklahoma City bookstore by police officers, who confiscated more than 7,000 books and arrested 16 people. Oklahoma officials then put the books on trial, and prosecuted and sentenced four of those arrested to ten years in prison and fines of $5,000.
The Wiegands will present the previously untold story of the trials, the public book burning and the appeals process that was ultimately used to reverse the decisions.
“The lecture is a colorful and richly detailed case study in American social and legal history with many parallels to the present,” said Dr. Wayne Wiegand, “another time when real emergencies have been used to trample on the civil rights of American citizens and in the process pose threats to their freedom to read.”
Wayne A. Wiegand is F. William Summers professor of Library and Information Studies (and professor of American Studies) at Florida State University, and author of numerous books (including Irrepressible Reformer: A Biography of Melvil Dewey) and articles in American print culture and library history.
Shirley A. Wiegand is professor of Law at the Marquette University Law School, and author of many scholarly articles that address issues of civil liberties and conflict resolution.
The annual Henderson Lecture was established in 1990 to honor the memory of Lucile Kelling Henderson, faculty member (1932-1960) and dean (1954-1960) of what was then known as the School of Library Science. Previous lecturers include Dr. Barbara Rimer, dean of the School of Public Health,; Dr. Fred Kilgour, a distinguished research professor in the School of Information and Library Science and founder of OCLC the Online Computer Library Center; and Dr. Herbert Van de Sompel, team leader of the Digital Library Research and Prototyping Team at the Research Library of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The Henderson Lecture is a free and open program of the School of Information and Library Science. It is scheduled from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. A reception will follow the lecture in the lobby of the library.
For more information, please contact Wanda Monroe by calling 919.843.8337 or by sending e-mail to: wmonroe@email.unc.edu