Officials at an Illinois prison suspended an educational program for inmates, launched two internal investigations and removed 200 books from a prison library because many had “racial” content or addressed issues like diversity and inclusion, according to records obtained by the Tribune.
Danville Correctional Center officials also prohibited for use in the University of Illinois program several classic books of African American history, including “The Souls of Black Folk,” the anti-slavery novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and the memoir of former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
Hundreds of pages of records released by the Illinois Department of Corrections in response to Freedom of Information Act requests paint the clearest picture yet of the origins of the dispute between IDOC and the Education Justice Project. And while the department’s public statements about the controversy emphasized that the books had not been appropriately reviewed, internal IDOC emails and other documents show that the program was swiftly suspended and the books removed after the race-related themes of the some of the content were flagged.
Prison officials suspended the program and removed books only after finding what were described as “racially motivated cartoons” and “other items of concern,” including a Movement for Black Lives pamphlet on “Black Power, Freedom & Justice,” along with excerpts from a comic book that included sexually explicit images, the records indicate.
“We acknowledge this situation could have been handled differently,” IDOC Acting Director Rob Jeffreys told lawmakers at a hearing in July. He said the situation prompted the department to hire a volunteer coordinator and make “long overdue” revisions to its review procedure.
The Education Justice Project teaches seminars and for-credit courses to inmates at Danville Correctional Center, with offerings ranging from calculus to Intro to Critical Race Theory in Education, and the group has its own space and library at the prison. The program has operated at Danville for a decade, but amid growing tensions between EJP and prison officials, it was suspended for weeks and the books withheld by corrections officials for months before they were returned to the prison in June, the records show.
IDOC did not answer questions about the controversy from the Tribune or explain the seeming discrepancy between its public statements and the records. But some state lawmakers also wanted answers following a report by Illinois Newsroom, a downstate public media collaboration, about the book removal, and three legislative committees met jointly in July to discuss the dispute.
At that hearing in Chicago, Jeffreys didn’t talk about why the books were removed — saying he didn’t “want to hash into” it — and attributed the dispute to a lack of “sound process” and “much-needed policy oversight.”