Contemporary Censorship of Mother Goose

One of the first contemporary incidences of censorship of Mother Goose may have been in 1969 when the Xerox Corporation and co-publisher Arno Press were pressured into withdrawing their Legendary Library Facsimile edition reprint of Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes and Fairy Tales, which was first published in 1895. This early version includes two rhymes, out of 217, that are offensive to African-Americans ("Ten Little Niggers," renamed "Ten Little Indians" in later editions and dropped altogether in new versions) and to members of the Jewish faith, (the opening rhyme of the book accuses a "rogue of a Jew" of "cheating" a golden egg seller named Jack "out of half of his due.") Although the publisher must have originally felt the reintroduction of the classic edition was appropriate and met with the objectives of their Legendary Library series, they included this disclaimer in the forward: "some of its statements are deplorable when they are not confusing." (“Xerox Withdraws 'Mother Goose,' “1969). Later, when the book received public condemnation, the publisher issued an apology letter to the American Jewish Congress, who had brought the original charges. A representative of Xerox Corporation wrote "I share your concern, and unfortunately can offer no justification for the printing of this edition" (“Xerox Withdraws 'Mother Goose,'" 1969); the volume was withdrawn from publication.

The May 15, 1969 report in Library Journal about this incidence goes on to say that Xerox and Arno were criticized by fellow publishers that the withdrawal was "silly and not a very wise precedent" and quotes another civil rights agency as saying, "We've stopped worrying about the classics years ago. There are more pressing issues these days." This tolerant attitude toward historical scholarship over racial sensitivity may also be reflected by the fact that the next similar episode of censorship did not happen again until 1983, when a Miami Metro Commissioner challenged the 1913 Mother Goose: Old Nursery Rhymes, illustrated by Arthur Rackham, for the same anti-Semitic rhyme (Krug, 1983). It is usually this version and this challenge that is referred to when Mother Goose is included in Banned Book lists and displays. Considering the number of issues and versions of Mother Goose sold and read throughout the years, this hardly represents a threat to its continued existence.

Other incidences of censorship and banning related to Mother Goose have occurred more frequently with alternate versions of the rhymes. The most notable of these is the often-controversial Inner City Mother Goose by Eve Merriam.

The rhyme, written by Eve Merriam, for this image is as follows:

Hey, diddle diddle,
Hem haw and fiddle;
How do we integrate?

A jot and a tittle,
Too late and too little,
That's how we integrate.

This book, originally published in 1969, expanded and self-published in 1982, and revised and reissued in 1996, has never been meant for children (The first and second editions of the book were directed at an adult audience, the third edition is considered to be for young adults.), but perhaps by the use of the child-friendly moniker of Mother Goose in its title, the alluringly familiar meter of the rhymes themselves, and the fact that it was written by a noted writer of poetry for children, the fear over its discovery by children may be the motivating factor for its opponents. The book has been called "undeniably powerful" (Phelan, 1996), "obscene and degrading" (Knights of Columbus Resolution as reported in Darling, 1972), "a little powder keg" (Coats, 1970), "lacerating little rhymes" (Review from Booklist, 1970), "part of a nationwide plot to just cause this nation to disintegrate" (Hyman A Pressman, Baltimore City Comptroller as reported in Darling, 1972) and "just about the most banned book in the country" (Merriam herself in her introduction to the 1982 edition, reprinted in Merriam, 1996) - strong language for a Mother Goose collection. Those who would like to see it forever banned often denounce its contents as being anti-society and "inciting violence" (Lodge, 1996), but the use of one particularly vulgar word that follows five lines taken verbatim from an original Mother Goose rhyme, in the poem "Boys and Girls Come out to Play" (the first poem in the 1969 Inner City collection) is enough for many parents and school systems to summarily dismiss the text altogether. Or maybe it's just the subject matter that some find distasteful. In a Baltimore television station editorial, commenting on city comptroller Hyman Pressman's demand for censorship of the book, it was said, "The Inner City Mother Goose… deals with the truth. Perhaps that's why it offends some of us." (Darling, 1972)

Eve Merriam, 1916-1992, was an award-winning writer, playwright and poet for both children and adults. Merriam dedicated her life and most of her work championing the virtues of poetry and wrote extensively on how to read, write and enjoy language and poetry. As her reputation grew in the sixties and the seventies, she, like other poets of her time, "shifted her concerns to reflect the inner emotional conflicts and stark realities of the world facing children: anxieties, alienation, racial and social injustice, war, in-humane technology, and the struggles of urban life." (Zaidman, 1987) This concern over social issues undoubtedly motivated her to write the Inner City Mother Goose rhymes, and her choice of Mother Goose as the pattern for her satirical messages pays homage to the political derivation of the original rhymes. Merriam explains in her introduction to the 1982 edition (and reprinted in the 1996 edition), "…when I wanted to comment about some social and political issues of our time, I was following an old tradition of using Mother Goose characters. What modern situations would they face, and where would they live?"

The first edition of Inner City Mother Goose was released in 1969 and sold over 100,000 copies. It was illustrated with black-and-white photographs, by Lawrence Ratzkin, depicting many of the conditions Merriam was writing about. It was very well received and acclaimed by literary critics and heatedly rejected by many government agencies, police groups, schools authorities and parents. However, the public opposition did not prevent it from being made into a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, Inner City , which ran in the 1971-72 season. Perhaps because it was so vehemently opposed and she knew she had hit a nerve, it was the one book Merriam herself "was most impassioned about." (Lodge, 1996) In 1982, in preparation for a new version of the musical entitled Sweet Dreams, she revised the original text, removed some dated rhymes, added some rhymes more fitting to the materialistic eighties, and changed the order in which the rhymes appear. She did not, however, "censor [herself] by removing the single epithet or any of the themes that originally came under attack." (Introduction to the 1982 edition, reprinted in Merriam, 1996) She tried unsuccessfully to have this revision published, but perhaps due to publishers' fears of negative publicity, Merriam ended up self-publishing only 1000 copies, which she gave away to the theater audiences. Thankfully, the 1982 contents were finally published posthumously as the third edition in 1996, with new illustrations by Caldecott Medal winner David Diaz. The earlier objections and calls for banning have not resurfaced yet, perhaps because, in the re-ordering of the book, the rhyme with the offensive word has been moved further into the text, or perhaps because our culture has become desensitized to this type of reality-based literature and we are much more accustomed to vulgar language and images of violence.

As the title suggests, Eve Merriam's rhymes themselves take a straight forward look at the realities of life in the inner city, just as the original rhymes give us a glimpse of what life was like at the time they were written. This aspect of Mother Goose rhymes, which may have appealed to Merriam, is eloquently observed by Betty Carter (1996) in her review in The Horn Book Magazine, "The voice most often heard in the traditional rhymes is that of a solid peasant, sometimes anxious, sometimes querulous, but most frequently pragmatic, an unbiased observer of the immediate surroundings. Neither emotional nor judgmental, the Inner City's descriptive narrators perfectly imitate this detached bystander." Carter points out that, unlike other alternative versions of Mother Goose that use the childhood icon's popularity to sell their issues of morality or acceptability, Merriam only wants to provide the reader an opportunity to observe the reality of the inner city plight; and she refrains from proposing "solutions" or giving unsolicited advice.

Despite the fact that Mother Goose rhymes were written several centuries ago, their obvious appeal and our common, universal familiarity with them, make them not only a visible target for politically correct censorship, but also a powerful vehicle for a modern message.

In June, 2006, the BBC reported the Madhya Pradesh government in India has banned the teaching of English nursery rhymes in primary schools to "reduce Western influence" on children. It's goodbye to Baa Baa Black Sheep and Humpty Dumpty for children in primary schools in a central Indian state.

And so it goes. . .