May 10, 1933. My father was born the day before, on May 9th, the same day Helen Keller wrote a letter to the students in Germany who planned to burn all books deemed “un-German,” including Keller’s work, “How I Became a Socialist.” In her letter, she wrote: “History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas.”

The next day, May 10, 1933, the works of Helen Keller, Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, Felix Mendelssohn, and H.G. Wells, as well as those of hundreds of other authors, scientists, and composers, were ritualistically burned.

Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, fueled the book burning in a speech to the university students in Berlin, referring to the authors as “Intellectual filth” and “Jewish asphalt.”

The Nazis destroyed books that were:

  • Literature with liberal, democratic tendencies and attitudes
  • Pacifist literature
  • Literature by Jewish authors
  • Literature of Marxism, Communism and Bolshevism
  • All historical writings whose purpose is to denigrate the origin, spirit, and culture of the German people
  • Works of traitors, emigrants, and authors from foreign countries who believe they can attack and denigrate the new Germany
  • Books that advocate “art” which is decadent, bloodless, or purely constructivist
  • Writings on sexuality and sexual education that serve the egocentric pleasure of the individual and, thus, destroy the principles of “the master race”
  • Entertainment literature that depicts life and life’s goals as superficial and unrealistic
  • Pornography and explicit literature
  • All books degrading German purity

The book burnings weren’t limited to May 10 and not just in Berlin; they occurred throughout Germany and Austria. When university students ran out of books at colleges, they turned to public libraries and independent bookstores.

It took the lives of 250,000 Americans and another million injured to defeat fascism and the Nazis in World War II. Today, Helen Keller’s works are available worldwide. You can buy her autobiography at this link >>

If you own a Kindle, it will cost you 30 cents.

The complete works of Ernest Hemingway are also widely available. If you’d like to borrow any, I have them in my library.

1963. Before he was shot and killed by a leader of the Ku Klux Klan, the Civil Rights Activist Medgar Evers echoed Keller’s words— “You can kill a man, but you can’t kill an idea.”

April 4, 2025. Three hundred eighty-one books were removed from the Nimitz Library at the US Naval Academy. Books on the Holocaust, histories of feminism, civil rights, and racism, as well as Maya Angelou’s famous autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, are now gone. This action was part of an effort by the Trump administration to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) content from federal agencies. An additional 900 books are under review.

Nimitz Library at the US Naval Academy

Among the books removed are:

  • Memorializing the Holocaust: Gender, Genocide and Collective Memory by Janet Jacobs. About Holocaust memorials, collective memory. Jewish women in the Holocaust, Gender identity, Memorialization.
  • Half American: the epic story of African Americans fighting World War II at Home and Abroad by Matthew F. Delmont.
  • The Showman and the Slave: Race, Death, and Memory in T. Barnum’s America by Benjamin Reiss. About the famous circus promoter who used a slave in his shows to depict a woman once owned by George Washington. He claimed that she was 146 years old.
  • White Out: Understanding White Privilege and Dominance in the Modern Age by Christopher S. Collins and Alexander Jun.
  • Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama by Tim Wise.
  • Whitewashed: America’s Invisible Middle Eastern Minority by John Tehranian.
  • The Racial Logic of Politics: Asian Americans and Party Competition by Thomas P. Kim.
  • Jim Crow’s Legacy: The Lasting Impact of Segregation by Ruth Thompson-Miller, Joe R. Feagin, and Leslie H. Picca.
  • The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee.
  • Talk With You Like a Woman: African American Women, Justice, and Reform in New York, 1890-1935 by Cheryl D. Hicks.
  • The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril (Chinese Immigrants) Became the Model Minority by Madeline Y. Hsu.
  • Muslim Diaspora: Gender, Culture, and Identity by edited by Haideh Moghissi.
  • Gender Issues in Contemporary Society by Stuart Oskamp, Mark Costanzo, editors.
  • The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan by Jenny Nordberg.
  • The Masculine Woman in Weimar Germany by Katie Sutton.
  • The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition by Linda Gordon.
  • Teaching Race and Anti-racism in Contemporary America: Adding Context to Colorblindness / Kristin Haltinner, editor.
  • Horse by Geraldine Brooks. About Race horses–Fiction; Slavery–Fiction.; Racism–Fiction.; African American horsemen and horsewomen.
  • I Don’t Hate the South: Reflections on Faulkner, Family, and the South / Houston A. Baker, Jr.
  • Hemingway’s Genders: Rereading the Hemingway Text by Nancy R. Comley and Robert Scholes.
  • I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou by editor Mildred R. Mickle.
  • Anne Rice and Sexual Politics: The Early Novels by James R. Keller, with conclusion by James R. Keller and Gwendolyn Morgan.
  • Race, Ethnicity, and Disability: Veterans and Benefits in Post-Civil War America by Larry M. Logue, Peter Blanck.
  • Our Time is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America by Stacey Abrams.

You can still read Mein Kampf in either the original German or the English translation at the Nimitz Library. It is not part of the 381 books removed. For the full list of books removed, click here>>

May 30, 2025. Due to an overwhelming outcry from both within and outside the Navy, all but approximately 20 books have been returned. But the Administration’s intent was clear.

Apparently, no one in the Secretary of Defense’s office knows Latin. If they did, they’d realize that the motto of the United States Naval Academy is Ex scientia tridens, which translates to, From knowledge, sea power.

2012. The award-winning movie “The Help” won the following awards at the 84th Academy Awards: Octavia Spencer won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. The film received three Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Best Actress for Viola Davis, and Best Supporting Actress for Jessica Chastain.

If you think you can silence Southern Black women like Maya Angelou and Stacey Abrams by banning their books – all I can say is “Bless your heart.”