Editor's note: This article has been updated to include comments from the NAACP.
The board decided 4-3 with members Stephanie Walker, Stephanie Kraybill, and Hugh McManus dissenting, for a testimonial-style hearing with each side receiving 20 minutes to make their arguments for or against allowing an AP class at Ashley High to use the book.
The board has yet to set a date for the public hearing.
But in the meantime, competing political ideologies have ramped up their rhetoric.
[Note: You can read the statements released by the GOP and Democratic Chairs, as well as the NAACP at the end of this article.]
The New Hanover County Democratic Party is helping to support a rally called, “Let Freedom Read — Stop the Ban” hosted by people like party chair Jill Hopman and local education activists Peter Rawitsch, Sandy Eyles, and Kelley Finch.
The rally takes place at 4 p.m., an hour ahead of the Tuesday board meeting. As of Monday morning, the Facebook event has posted that 74 people are going, and 209 are interested.
What are the scope and the stakes of the decision?
But Board Chair Pete Wildeboer and Vice-Chair Pat Bradford have said that the media and the public have got the stakes of the impending hearing wrong.
Bradford said at last week’s agenda briefing that the hearing to possibly remove the book would only affect AP Language and Composition teacher Kelli Kidwell’s classroom, and the vote would not necessarily affect the district’s libraries and other classrooms.
Wildeboer told WWAY on July 11 that the board is not talking about “burning books or banning books, we’re talking about hearing a parent and a parent has a right to be heard.”
However limited the decision about Stamped may be, it is taking place amid other, much broader discussions about regulating or removing books.
For example, the board, led by member Melissa Mason, has been looking at instituting its own book review committee, one that would possibly remove certain books, and is different from the way in which the district’s policy 3210 operates. This policy outlines the process for parents to challenge materials. There have also been state legislative efforts, including SB-90 — currently stalled out — which would have removed state protections for librarians and teachers when it comes to material deemed obscene or harmful.
Additionally, Bradford and Mason openly campaigned in November 2022 to remove certain books from the district.
The complaint
The parent who’s contesting the book, Katie Gates, has been attending the Call to the Audience consistently since July 2021, openly discussing biased teaching in the district. She claimed the book indoctrinates students with Marxist and socialistic principles.
Gates’ daughter, a student in Kidwell’s class, was offered and accepted an alternative assignment and has since finished the course.
In public emails from December 2022, when Gates started reaching out to Bradford about the book, Bradford wrote to her, “Please send us (all) excerpts of materials you are speaking about in this email? [sic]”
But six hours later, Bradford wrote to Gates, “Ignore my previous email re: examples please. This is horrifying.”
However, Board Member Josie Barnhart made a statement on July 26 to Nick Craig, a conservative talk show host, who also oversees digital content for the New Hanover County GOP, saying, “We are not able to make up our mind before the hearing. And we will be presented with all the information to be able to make a decision, that decision could include a few different things: Is this thing from just this library, is this thing to have limited access to checking out, is it removing it from the whole district, or removing it from the AP course itself? And so that is yet to remain unseen [sic], because we do have some flexibility in what we could be taking action on, but no action has been taking [sic] at this time,” Barnhart said.
Craig called the local media’s coverage of the book hearing and its possible removal “disgusting”.
New Hanover County party chairs weigh in
On July 28, Hopman put out a press release to support the Tuesday rally. Within it, she said the Supreme Court case Board of Education v. Pico confirms that school boards “may not remove books from library shelves” based on “narrowly partisan or political grounds” or “simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books.”
Hopman also cited the fact that parental choice was honored, in that the student was given an alternate book to read. She also mentioned that a prior committee decided the book could stay in the teacher’s classroom.
She also claimed, much like McManus, that the removal of the book would become a slippery slope for banning other books in the district.
Hopman also used more colorful language at the end of her release saying, “If we really want our children to succeed, we would ban extremist bulls**t, not books. And you can quote me on that [asteriks in the original].”
The following day, on July 29, the New Hanover County GOP Chair Nevin Carr, III, also released a statement, saying that “our school board needs your support,” referencing the four Republican members — implicitly leaving out Republican Stephanie Kraybill, who has been vocal in allowing the book to stay, saying she trusted the decisions of the two district committees who reviewed it (Kraybill was censured by the county GOP last year).
Carr said that America is moving into a “dark time.” He said that lies and propaganda have been fed to public school students. He bolded, “Children are not being taught about the rights of the individual, the blessings of liberty, the importance of self-goverment and the duties required to keep it.”
Carr called out "Ibramin X.," referring to Ibramin X. Kendi., one of the writers directly, for creating anti-American sentiment in New Hanover County (Jason Reynolds adapted his version of Stamped from Kendi's work).
He also took issue with Kendi’s Tweet on July 13:
Carr said he called out “by name a dedicated mother in our community,” in order to question this “vile book.” Kendi was retweeting a Port City Daily article with her name embedded.
Gates had made a public comment previously that took issue with the historical fact that some slaveowners used the Bible to justify slavery. Reynolds used primary sources to show this evidence.
Carr said that Kendi is “inspiring a mob of out-of-town radicals to descend upon our school board meeting to shout down the will of New Hanover County parents.” Carr then specifically mentions the rally hosted by the local chapter of the Democratic party.
He ended by asking parents to attend the meeting and sign-up for the call to the audience saying, “The urge to be taken care of will forever be exploited by immoral people seeking your servitude to advance their own delusional ends.”
NAACP weighs in
The North Carolina and New Hanover County chapters of the NAACP called the upcoming hearing on Stamped "censorship based on racism and politics."
The state and local NAACP released a joint statement that read, in part:
"The North Carolina NAACP and its membership are aware that the increase in elected officials’ interest in the banning of books from schools and public libraries around the country is being driven by radical groups who are targeting books about race, culture, women's issues, disability issues and LGBTQ issues for political gain. The nation’s oldest Civil Rights organization will not stand by when the rights of historically marginalized people to be represented and protected are threatened," according to a press release sent last week.
“A true education is realistically informing students of the past, present, and future. Eliminating parts of education is not acceptable. It does not produce a clear view," North Carolina NAACP President Deborah Dicks Maxwell wrote.
