Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School v. Pico was decided 40 years ago on June 25, 1982. The lawsuit held that the Island Trees Board of Education violated students’ First Amendment rights when they removed nine books from the high school library. The U.S. Supreme Court decided in favor of the students’ right to read freely.
The nine books that were removed were:
- Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
- The Naked Ape, by Desmond Morris
- Down These Mean Streets, by Piri Thomas
- Best Short Stories of Negro Writers, edited by Langston Hughes
- Go Ask Alice, of anonymous authorship
- Laughing Boy, by Oliver LaFarge
- Black Boy, by Richard Wright
- A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich, by Alice Childress
- Soul on Ice, by Eldridge Cleaver