In the United States Constitution the First Amendment says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…” ("First Amendment.”) How is it in a country where freedom of speech is held so sacred, we are unable to read about it in books? Another question might be, why are we unable to protect our children from such harmful materials? These are questions asked by many as we experience censorship on a regular basis. Censorship is mainly focused on books that children and schools are reading in America. The idea of Censorship and book banning is to protect the youth from potentially harmful ideas or thoughts, but some would argue that in doing so it goes against the First Amendment rights. On one side of this argument we have people who disagree that books should be banned. …show more content…
Also that these books have an artistic and cultural values. Here are a few examples of books that have been challenged; “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain, “Go Tell It on the Mountain” by James Baldwin, and “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou. These books were challenged mainly for sexual, racial, and or violent materials. Other books have been banned for having gay and lesbian issues. This list is just a small portion of all the books that have been banned throughout the years. Book banning is not uncommon nor is it just a thing of the past, it still happens to this day all around the US. It is said that these books are found to be offensive especially the ones with racial