Brickbat: Reading Is Fundamental
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Staff at the Danville Correctional Center in Illinois have removed more than 200 books from the library, most of them dealing with race, including works by Booker T. Washington, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Cornel West. Outgoing Illinois Department of Corrections director John Baldwin says he was told by the warden the books did not go through the review process to come into the prison but said he had no idea how staff identified which books had not been reviewed. NPR Illinois reports that emails show that at least some of the books were, in fact, approved by prison staff to come into the facility.