PITTSBURGH, PA. - At the Three Rivers Film Festival, I was stunned by the documentary The Librarians, directed by Kim A. Snyder and executive produced by Sarah Jessica Parker.
The film presents an emotionally moving story of the intimidation, firings, and threats of physical violence faced by many librarians, particularly in the South. It’s also an inspiring portrait of how librarians are fighting back.
While groups like Moms for Liberty have faded from national headlines, their assault on educational freedom endures. During the 2024-2025 school year, PEN America recorded 6,870 book bans across 23 states and 87 public school districts. The book bans tend to target books geared towards LGBT audiences. Parents claim the books are sexually explicit and push to have them removed from school libraries.
As the film depicts, reading about sexual identity in libraries is one of the few ways that LGBT youth in small conservative towns have of finding acceptance. As one librarian shares, when a book ban was announced in her school district, students were crying because it felt like an attack on their identities.
Despite these attacks, courageous and inspiring librarians in the South are standing up. One Texas librarian cried as she recalled being fired for refusing to remove LGBT books. "I wasn't going to be complicit in their deaths."
The film depicts how groups like Moms for Liberty and Patriot Mobile are making this a new reality for librarians throughout the South, going after not just LGBT issues, but also race issues. They successfully appeal to Trump-supporting school board members in the Deep South by arguing that these books promote a “hate of America.”
"Why does a book entitled Hair Love need to be banned?" asks one Black librarian in Florida as he holds up a copy of the book, which encourages Black youth to celebrate their hairstyles.
In gut-wrenching scenes, the film depicts the emotionally charged fights at school boards as parents paint librarians as pedophiles and groomers. At one school board in Texas, a gay man in his early twenties stands up to denounce his mother for pushing for book bans.
The film is jarring in how it depicts the often violent and graphic harassment of librarians online. One Texas librarian states that the death threats were so bad that she plans an escape route whenever she is in public.
Arriving at a librarians’ conference in Fort Worth, Texas, one Texas librarian notes that the heavily armed security is something she would never have previously imagined during her decades-long career. While many librarians say that they were caught off guard by the initial push to ban books, they are now organizing in unprecedented ways to push back.
After the screening, the Three Rivers Film Festival hosted a panel of librarians fighting book bans, including Beth Shenefiel, a veteran librarian from the Pine-Richland School District. A few years ago, Christian conservatives took over the school board.
"In Pine-Richland, we actually went through book challenges and book bans, and we went through board changes, takeover of the school boards, pretty much what you saw in that movie," said Shenefiel.
Unlike the librarians depicted in the documentary, who live in Southern states that lack collective bargaining rights for public employees, librarians in the Pine-Richland School District were represented by the Pine-Richland Education Association, an affiliate of the 178,000-member Pennsylvania Education Association.
"We have a union in Pine-Richland and they were very, very supportive through everything that we have gone through over the last several years," says Sheneffiel. "We were protected by the union."
The union helped to back a slate named "Together for PR" composed of pro-union, anti-book-banning Democratic candidates. Not only did the slate criticize the school board for attempting to ban books, but also for their failure to pass tax increases necessary to stave off the effects of budget cuts.
In November, they defeated four conservatives on the school board, who held an 8-to-1 majority. Now, progressives have a 5-4 majority on the board.
"I'm shocked and humbled by the results," said Amy Cafardi, a Democrat, who won her race for school board. "I feel like the community came together and demanded change so now it's our responsibility to just start to heal and move forward, focusing on excellence for the district."
While librarians and educators in Pine-Richland, in union-heavy Pittsburgh, were able to fight back and win, not all librarians have been as fortunate. The documentary The Librarians bears witness to an assault on academic freedom playing out in small towns across America.
