This Alabama City Faces a Culture War, With Its Public Library at the Center

U.S.|Utopian Dreamers Founded This Alabama City. Now, a Fight Over Books Is Dividing It.

The public library is one of the biggest civic buildings in Fairhope, Ala. Almost every day across its 40,000 square feet in the heart of downtown, retirees gather for book club in the auditorium, teenagers play chess upstairs, and toddlers learn their letters at story time. Its light-filled reading room features a vaulted ceiling that rises above a stained glass depiction of two owls poring over a book.

The library records more than 180,000 annual visits, one of the highest figures in Alabama, in a city of 25,000. It has been called Fairhope’s Taj Mahal.

Now, it is also a battleground. Residents have packed meetings of the City Council and the library board, debating books with sexual content or L.G.B.T.Q. themes. Some demand that those books be moved to the adult section. Others argue that amounts to censorship and discrimination. The acrimony resembles fights playing out in libraries across the country, as conservative parents and activists challenge such books.

In March, the conflict in Fairhope escalated when the state’s library board voted to pause funding to the library unless it moved certain books. Although some localities and counties in the country have moved to defund their own public libraries, the decision in Alabama may have been the first time a local public library was targeted for defunding by a state government, said Jonathan Friedman, who directs U.S. free expression programs at the nonprofit PEN America.