Your excellent coverage of the book "purge" at Heritage High ("Books suffer purge at Heritage," June 17) brought to mind an incident in Atlanta nearly a half-century ago. Lester Maddox was governor of Georgia, and I was education editor of the Atlanta Constitution. Governor Maddox was a notorious segregationist but a marvelously entertaining populist. Among other things, he listed his home number in the white pages and held occasional "Little People's Days" at the State House. People were encouraged to line up and talk to the governor on any topic.
Late one morning in 1969, a young man approached the governor and said he had just witnessed a DeKalb County school system truck discharge a load of books in the county dump. Mr. Maddox dispatched a state trooper who returned three hours later to report that this "little person" had been right: DeKalb had disposed of hundreds of books, including some of the same classics purged by Heritage 46 years later. And DeKalb's and Heritage's explanations were equally mystifying; they made no sense at all.
In today's digital era, it's harder for school people to purge books by locking them in closets or warehouses — or by hauling them to the trash. But seldom does a governor get on the case!
Mike Bowler, Catonsville