From School Librarian to Activist: ‘The Hate Level and the Vitriol Is Unreal’

One Sunday morning two years ago, Amanda Jones, a middle school librarian in Watson, La., woke up and saw an email on her phone that left her shaking and breathless.

The expletive-laced message from a stranger accused her of being a pedophile and a groomer, and concluded with a threat: “You can’t hide. We know where you work + live. You have a LARGE target on your back,” it said. “Click … Click … see you soon!”

It was part of a deluge of online threats and harassment that Jones has faced since the summer of 2022, when she was one of around 20 people to speak out against book banning during a July meeting at her local public library.

A fight broke out over whether the library should remove books with content that some deemed inappropriate for children. Like many librarians across the country, Jones found herself caught in a vicious battle over which books belong in libraries — a debate that has divided communities and school boards as book bans have surged in the United States.

But the attacks on Jones have been particularly intense, and unrelenting, because of her response: She fought back.

After commenters on social media accused her of seeking to sexualize children, Jones filed a defamation lawsuit against two men and the organization Citizens for a New Louisiana, a group that has pushed to have books that they consider erotic or sexual removed from the children’s section of libraries. She co-founded Louisiana Citizens Against Censorship, which lobbies against legislation that would place new restrictions on libraries. And she’s highlighting the threat of censorship and the pressure that librarians face in a memoir, “That Librarian,” which Bloomsbury published last month.