about
blacklist is an index of Black books, history, art and speech that American institutions have banned, removed, restricted, surveilled or erased, from the anti-literacy laws of the 1700s to school library removals today.
Each entry records what was targeted, who did it, where, when, and what happened after, with a link to the source.
The index is not complete. Most removals are never announced, and many are never counted.
terms
- banned
- prohibited outright by a government, court or institution.
- removed
- taken off shelves, out of a curriculum, or off a website.
- challenged
- a formal attempt to remove or restrict it.
- restricted
- kept, but limited by age, permission or access.
- criminalized
- made illegal to own, teach, read, make or distribute.
- surveilled
- watched, filed on or disrupted by the state.
- censored
- cut, edited or kept off the air or the page.
- revoked
- a passport, license or post taken away.
- seized
- confiscated by officials.
- burned
- destroyed by fire, often with the press or school itself.
- erased
- cut from the official record, textbooks or archives.
sources
School ban counts come from PEN America's Index of School Book Bans, 2021–2025, which counts any removal or restriction of a book over its content, including removals pending review. Other entries cite legislation, court records, government archives, libraries and news reporting; each links to its own.
method
Each entry is one case, with one or more links to the page it came from.
Most school book entries rest only on PEN America's ban counts, . The other entries are cited one by one to legislation, court records, archives, libraries and news reporting.
Each entry shows a last verified date, and the sheet says which check it reflects. For most entries it is the date the source links were last checked and found to resolve. That confirms the links work; it does not re-read every page. For PEN America entries, the pages block automated checks, so the date is when the counts were downloaded from PEN's own index. Entries whose links could not be checked show no date.
Entries that group several school districts include a district-by-district breakdown, with the school years in which each district appears. Books tagged for AP African American Studies are grouped under the course's four units. The tags are keyword-based and approximate, and they are not College Board classifications.
references
Peer-reviewed work on book bans cited in this index:
- Goncalves, M. S. O., Langrock, I., LaViolette, J., and Spoon, K. (2024). "Book bans in political context: Evidence from US schools." PNAS Nexus, 3(6), pgae197. doi:10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae197. Uses PEN's 2021–22 counts of 2,532 bans. Reports that banning counties tended to be more Republican than their neighbors but had become less Republican over time, and that banned books were often children's books, many with characters of color or by authors of color.
limits
PEN America counts any removal or restriction, including books pulled pending review and books later returned. Critics say this inflates the totals. In a non-peer-reviewed analysis, Jay Greene, Max Eden and Madison Marino checked PEN's 2021–22 list against district library catalogs and found that 74 percent of the listed books were still listed as available in the same districts (read the analysis).
The index is not a count of every banned book. It lists the cases we could find and cite.
record
Compiled February 2026.