A Florida man once asked the Legislature to ban Three Little Pigs. Guess what happened? | Opinion

There’s nothing like the past to shed a ray of light on the present.

In 1959, the editor of The Miami News, Bill Baggs, wrote a column headlined “Empty Library Shelves” after a Miami segregationist tried to get the Florida Legislature to ban a beloved children’s book.

Looking into the future, Baggs pictured a 1970 public library and imagined the conversation between a man seeking to find a book to read to his young son and the librarian trying to help him.

Every time the man asked for a title, the librarian came up empty.

A book about rabbits?

Nowhere to be seen after “The Rabbits’ Wedding” inspired the ire of racists in Alabama who staged protests because it featured a black and a white rabbit getting married. The book was pulled from public libraries.

How about, the man asks, “The Three Little Pigs?”

“Oh,” Baggs writes, quoting the suddenly red-faced librarian, “please don’t mention those words around here!”

The satirical column was inspired by a true story out of Jim Crow Miami.

After unsuccessfully trying to have the rabbit book removed from Florida libraries, David Hawthorne, described as “a Florida segregation leader,” traveled to Tallahassee to try to get state legislators to ban a Whitman Publishing Co. edition of the “The Three Little Pigs.”

He claimed the book’s drawings of white, black and spotted, black-and-white pigs and the text were manipulated to depict the white pig — and by extension, white people — in an unfavorable light.

Such reasoning should resonate with anyone tuned to the rhetoric of Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican legislators who have spent the last two sessions passing laws masterminding ways to teach a whitewashed version of Florida’s racial history.

Black and white

Hawthorne, who called the spotted pig “mulatto,” wanted the smarter pig depicted as white.

For readers who need a refresher on the enduring tale, it’s a fable about three pigs who build their houses from different materials. The Big Bad Wolf blows down the houses made of straw and sticks and eats the pigs who played instead of working, but he can’t touch the house made of bricks. Moral of the story: Hard work pays off.

Editions of the book date to 1840s England, but the story is believed to be much older.

Hawthorne claimed that, in Whitman’s modern edition, “clever integrationists are using the tale to brainwash youngsters” by portraying the black pig as superior because he cleverly built his house out of brick, trapped the wolf in the chimney and survived.

“This doesn’t go as far as the rabbit story,” he told the Miami Herald. “But you can see what they’re doing. It’s kind of a brainwash material, and that’s a Communist tactic.”

He wanted the book banned from all school and public libraries shelves.

But that was all huff and puff, according to the Wisconsin-based publisher.

“Black and white are sharply contrasting colors as shown by black ink being universally used for printing words on a white page,” Whitman’s Loyd E. Smith told the Associated Press. “For this uncomplicated reason, black and white animals are sometimes shown together in children’s books.”

Note that the publisher doesn’t push back like Disney did with DeSantis and the Legislature on the company stance against the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, and venture to say: “So what if the clever pig is black?”

It wasn’t until 1962 that the Black is Beautiful movement, a fight against negative ideas fostered by white supremacy, was born. And it would be decades before corporate America began to embrace a culture of diversity, equity and inclusion.

A braver Legislature

But, surprisingly — unlike in today’s Florida, where one unhappy, ultra-conservative parent can get a book sacked — guess what happened to Hawthorne and his complaint?

Legislators declined and sent him back to Miami, where he presided over the racist Dade County Property Owners Association, which fought desegregation efforts in white neighborhoods.

Imagine that: A Florida Legislature in the Jim Crow South having more sense and courage than our 21st century one!

Baggs’ column could easily be republished today — and feel relevant.

In it, there’s implied criticism of a nation whose time is as consumed with watching television as we are today with social media.

“Don’t you keep up with the news?” the librarian asks the book-seeking father trying to turn his child into a reader.

“No, ma’am, we just look at TV.”

And Baggs doesn’t spare anyone, left or right, liberal or conservative, from criticism.

He goes on to discuss how many popular classics could potentially offend some group. The slippery slope of censorship was as clear to him as it is to me.

Baggs’ name should ring familiar.

He’s the journalist after whom the state park on the southern end of Key Biscayne was named during bygone times when journalists were admired truth-tellers, not members of a profession vilified by the governor’s office and some right-wing colleagues and readers.

Baggs was part of a small group of southern editors who supported the fight for civil rights for African Americans. An environmental champion, he’s also described as “an active anti-Communist” who published many anti-Castro editorials and articles during the early years of the Cuban regime.

He’s historical proof that liberals can be all those things, despite Republicans’ favorite go-to insult: If you’re against me, you’re a Communist.

Facing nationwide backlash and ridicule, Florida’s governor recently tried to deny that the state has been banning books, calling it “a hoax.” But state newspapers and the non-profit Pen America confirmed its existence with school teachers and librarians.

No doubt: Some Florida schools were directed to empty libraries and classroom bookshelves to comply with new laws.

The atmosphere of censorship, intimidation and racism is a redo of the state’s shameful racist history.

And worse.

At least, a braver Legislature dismissed the white supremacist’s complaint while ours coddles them.