'America Is Not A Land of Crime, Horror, Murder, Hatred, and Bloodshed'

[Nevilledog]

https://foreverwars.substack.com/p/maus-ban-isis-assassination-critical-race-theory


ON MARCH 14, 1955, nearly 67 years before the McMinn County School Board banned Maus, the children of Stone Bank, Wisconsin, an unincorporated place in Waukesha County, were offered something like a hostage exchange. Relinquish their comic books, filled with lurid tales of treachery, crime, horror, and racism, and they would receive copies of books of their choosing from a library of two hundred more edifying titles. Ten comics got a kid a hardback copy of Swiss Family Robinson or Heidi.

The program, a national phenomenon called Operation Book Swap, was a project of the influential veterans’ public service organization The American Legion. It had come about in response to public outcry over the comics, stoked by opportunistic politicians and fraudulent pundits hawking pseudoscience that claimed crime comics produced juvenile delinquency. Inside each wholesome book, according to the Waukesha Daily Freeman, was a note from the parent who had organized the Stone Bank event, Ruth Lutwitzi:

Dear Young Reader,

You have performed a great service to your country today, by getting rid of those ten crime and horror comic books. Those ten books were like ten enemies who were trying to destroy good American boys and girls. You deserve a reward. We are happy to give you this good book as your reward.

America is not a land of crime, horror, murder, hatred, and bloodshed. America is a land of good, strong, law-abiding people who read good books, think good thoughts, do great work, love God and their neighbor. That’s America.

There are thousands of other bood books on the shelves of your school and public libraries. Read good books! Remember, good books make good Americans.

Lutwitzi made a big pile of the comics— 546 of them, writes David Hadju in his excellent book about the panic, The Ten-Cent Plague. The girl who traded in the most comics won a prize of three dollars. Then Lutwitzi set the comics on fire.

*snip*

[Solly Mack]

1. Not the only time either.

https://www.krcu.org/2021-03-16/almost-yesterday-the-burning-of-the-comic-books

Comic books were burned in several cities.

[Haggard Celine]

2. Boy, were they in denial!

[msongs]

3. beatles albums nt

[Thomas Hurt]

4. electricity, flouride in the water, rock and roll, video games, dungeons and dragons, Barney...

teletubbies, social security numbers, and the list goes on and on and on.