This is an opinion column.

Miss Holderness. She may have been married but in elementary school, every adult was addressed “Miss” or “Mister,” “ma’am” or “sir.”

Miss Holderness was the librarian at Paul Laurence Dunbar Elementary School during my earliest years there. Beyond her name, I remember little about her.

Yet I remember having a library card. And that it was a big deal. Back in the days before children needed laminated IDs hanging around their necks to walk into school, it was a kid’s first identification card. Their first “official” possession with their name on it.

Nerd kids like me were at the library all the time. Curious kids. Kids seeking to know. To grow.

Libraries are places of wonder. Places to wander and explore.

Places to check out—not just books, but ideas, authors, and perspectives. To check out experiences and thoughts that either differed from mine or reinforced them. That piqued my thinking.

That challenged me.

Places our parents sent us not fearing what we might find. Not fearing we might come upon a writer who thinks differently. Or lives differently. Or loves differently.

Not places to fear—as some now make them to be. To fear like spooky, haunted dungeons with books lurking to leap from the shelves and scare the bejeesus out of young people with ideas, perspectives, and experiences that differ from theirs.

Libraries are sanctuaries of discovery. Libraries are America.

Yet John Wahl, chair of Alabama’s GOP, wants to attack them as if they are a threatening insurgent.

He sits on the board of the Alabama Public Library Service (APLS) yet is also slated to speak next month to a group stoking fear of libraries—fear of ideas, perspectives, and experiences that differ from theirs.

Absurdly named Clean Up Alabama, the group is just one in the state frothing in its fear. It’s deemed 101 books dangerous for young people (whom they always call “children” to make you believe librarians are pole-dancing for first graders), books it claims on its website to contain “pornographic and obscene materials.”

Books which, in truth, contain only ideas, perspectives, and experiences that differ from theirs.

Books that aren’t in the “children’s” section at all but may be accessible to teens, who should digest ideas, perspectives, and experiences to know and grow.

I stand with another group, Read Freely Alabama (RFA), which is challenging fear-mongers seeking to stifle the senseless book censorship campaigns statewide.

I stand with folks like Fairhope pediatrician Dr. Jennifer Walker and the Rev. Jenny Allen, a retired minister. They spoke Monday at what was thankfully a civil convergence of residents at a meeting of the Fairhope Library Board, most of whom came to support the library.

“I think we can all agree that we want safe spaces for our children to learn and grow in,” said Walker, as reported by Mary Helene Hall. “The idea of a library banning books based on a specific organization’s opinions is antithetical to the idea of our library being one of those spaces.”

“It’s the hardest thing we do as human beings, is raise people,” Allen shared. “I don’t believe it’s anyone’s duty to demean someone because of what they believe, because each one of us chooses what we choose to believe.”

As also reported this week, by my colleague Williesha Morris, RFA wrote a letter to APLS stating that Wahl “actively spread misinformation about Alabama library collections and publicly suggested revising laws that would allow for prosecution and imprisonment for librarians.”

It cited a recent appearance by Wahl on the Jeff Poor Radio show when the GOP chair lobbied for legislation that would turn librarians into criminals by removing the obscenity exemption that protects libraries and educational institutions from zealots who declare any idea, perspective, and experience that differ from theirs to be “obscene.”

“Libraries are abusing their status here in putting explicit sexual material in front of children in children’s sections,” Wahl charged on the show without, of course, citing any specific examples. Without offering any truth.

“I think the legislature is well within its bounds to say, ‘Look, if you’re going to do obscene material, you might not should have that exemption in the law for the obscenity provisions where the law does protect children in other areas of media.”

… do obscene material. Those dang pole-dancing librarians!

On Wednesday, Wahl tried to temper his earlier remarks and insisted there was no conflict of interest in attending the meeting.

“I work very hard to try to be genuine, to try to be a peacemaker,” Wahl said. “I really do want to get to the bottom line of things and talk about the issues and have a respectful conversation.”

Legislation that would criminalize librarians is cropping up around the nation.Many, thankfully, have failed.

RFA charged Wahl’s words may conflict with his responsibilities as an APLS board member, and said it was “are happy to hear” Wahl’s clarification. Still, his words certainly conflict with common sense, with the library as an oasis of knowledge.

Of ideas, perspectives, and experiences that differ from theirs.

Attacking them–and good folks like Miss Holderness–is obscene.

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I’m a Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary, a member of the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame, and winner of the Edward R. Murrow prize for podcasts for “Unjustifiable,” co-hosted with John Archibald. My column appears in AL.com, as well as the Lede. Check out my new podcast series “Panther: Blueprint for Black Power,” which I co-host with Eunice Elliott. Subscribe to my free weekly newsletter, The Barbershop, here. Reach me at [email protected], follow me at twitter.com/roysj, or on Instagram @roysj