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Photo by Taylor Bright.
New members of the Shelby County Library board are sworn in by Judge Matt Fridy in July. Pictured from left are: Andy Martin, Paul Garris, Kasandra Stevens and Sam Gaston.
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Photo by Erin Nelson Sweeney.
Kate Etheredge, the former director for the North Shelby Library, stands in the children’s section at the library in August.
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Photo by Taylor Bright.
Below: New members of the North Shelby Library board, from left: Paul Garris, Kasandra Stevens and Sam Gaston at their first meeting as board members in July.
The storm came with a display of children’s books. Books like “Juliane is a Mermaid,” “Mr. Watson’s Chickens” and “Grandad’s Camper.”
The books stood upright on a three-shelf display, along with an 8.5-by-11-inch laminated sign that said “Take Pride in Reading.” All of the books selected had either an LGBTQ+ theme or messages of acceptance.
For the last 13 years, the staff at the North Shelby Library had displayed books in the adult, young adult and children’s sections coinciding with Pride Month, an annual June recognition of the LGBTQ+ community, without objection.
But, in 2023, the objections came in force to the community library — a backlash that would see the library board removed, six employees leave (including the library director) and a new board of trustees installed by members of the state Legislature.
Now the community has been split into two camps: the supporters of the old library board, which refused to force the display to be taken down, and those who objected to the display and found support in the local legislative delegation.
“It has been a not-great year,” said Kate Etheredge, the director of library services, who has resigned to take a job at the Homewood Public Library. Her last day will be Sept. 6.
That not-great year has been filled with both criticism and support of the library since June 2023. The critics who have come to the meetings and submitted comments argue that LGBTQ+ books should either be removed from the children’s section or be removed entirely from the library.
Critics said the display was not age appropriate. Others said the display was “sexually confusing,” an “indoctrination into gay and transgender lifestyle” and would “‘normalize’ LGBTQ+ life to children.” Some referred to “grooming.”
The disagreement rapidly escalated, with the library receiving 29 emails from both supporters (18) and critics (11) in the first week.
The display hadn’t been up for three days before the first email complaint came. It came not from a resident, but from board member Lucy Edwards, telling fellow board member Kay Kelley the display was “not age appropriate for this area.” Further, she wrote that she had heard complaints from patrons.
“I know last year many people complained about the Pride colors used on the ice cream cone ... this year there is a Rainbow color paintbrush in the Lobby that has the rainbow colors - many may see this as another Pride display,” she wrote. “I just wanted to let you know that people are upset about this & will probably be contacting the library and we really need our Patrons!”
This was a warning of what was to come.
By the time the June board meeting rolled around, both sides were prepared. Local and state media attended the event. Before a full house in the board’s meeting room, Edwards made a motion to allow the board to direct library staff to take down displays that were “age-inappropriate” or “questionable.”
The motion failed 4-1, in a victory for those who had supported the display. Edwards resigned mid-meeting.
“The librarians start getting called groomers, start getting abused by certain members of the public,” said Morgan Barnes, the former chairman of the library board, a former Air National Guard member and a self-described “registered Republican.” “We get told we are making bad decisions about the welfare of children coming into the library, and this is said in public comments in follow-up meetings from that point on.”
Soon the fight escalated from a disagreement over the one-month LGBTQ+ display to control of the board.
Legislators take control
The Legislature created the Shelby County Library District in 1988 as a nonprofit organization. During the creation of the district, the Legislature mandated the board be elected by a vote of residents of the library district, who all pay a tax that funds the library. That board oversees the operation of the North Shelby Library on Cahaba Valley Road and the Mt Laurel Library.
In practice, the board was often composed of members who ran unopposed or were appointed by the library board to fill out unfinished terms, as mandated by the 1988 law. Those who served on the board were typically active in the local library community, having often been involved in the North Shelby Friends of the Library, a volunteer group dedicated to supporting the library.
Those who objected to the display found a powerful ally in Rep. Susan DuBose (R-Hoover), who represents a portion of the district. In February, Dubose co-sponsored a bill introduced by Rep. Arnold Mooney (R-Indian Hills) and fellow co-sponsor Rep. Jim Carns (R-Vestavia Hills) that would change how the board was constituted.
No longer would there be an avenue for a district-wide election, nor could the board fill its own vacancies. Those would be picked by the legislators representing the library district — five in total, who are currently all Republicans. Gov. Kay Ivey signed the bill into law in April.
“The problem was the books displayed were primarily about introducing transgenderism to youth,” DuBose said.
In late July, those new members, selected by the Shelby County legislative delegation, were seated to the library board. No members of the old board remained — DuBose said none of them had applied.
Barnes, a retired resident of Meadowbrook, said he had no interest in serving on the new iteration of the board.
“What kind of stupid do you think I am?” he said. “Why would I want to be on a board where the strings are being pulled by the Shelby County legislative delegation?”
DuBose said the new board will have final say on any displays in the library now.
With the new board seated, some residents worry they will begin removing books.
“We all know that’s the outcome,” said Elizabeth Anderson, a resident of the library district who is also the Democratic nominee running against U.S. Rep. Gary Palmer.
But DuBose said the constituents who came to her were more concerned about how the books were displayed than the books themselves, saying “nobody has asked me to ban the books.”
“If they had never been displayed in the middle of the room, I don’t think anyone would have said anything,” she said.
Community split, staff in the crossfire
But the critics did say something and ultimately gained control of the board, further cementing the divide between those who supported the display and those who objected to it.
“It has definitely become a them and us kind of thing,” Barnes said.
There is still strong support for the old board.
Of the comments received by the board both in person and online, supporters outnumbered critics 67-45. Since the June 2023 meeting, there have been 48 people who have spoken in support of the old board and 26 people who have voiced their opposition to the display.
The fight has not been without its casualties. Etheredge said five staff members have left the library since the display was targeted.
“We try and stay positive,” Etheredge said prior to announcing her own resignation.
Barnes is far more pointed in his assessment of what has happened to the staff.
“There has been increased animosity, and it has gotten to the point where the employees of the library fear they will be persecuted and prosecuted if they don’t agree with everything the board puts out there,” he said.
The new board members and DuBose did not plan on changing the staff, they said, and had complimented Etheredge on the job she was doing. But by August, less than a month after the new board took their seats, Etheredge had informed the board she was taking a job at the Homewood Public Library.
“It’s just been a really hard year,” Etheredge said.
Prior to that decision, Etheredge had spoken about how she saw her job at North Shelby Library.
“The library is for everyone,” she said. “That is our mission. To make sure the library has access. There are books on the shelf I don’t like, but it’s not my job to provide books I only like.”
But, Etheredge said, it’s “up to each board to decide where those lines are.”
For Jarrett Dapier, the author of “Mr. Watson’s Chickens,” which was one of the books that was included in the display, the lines are clear.
“It’s incredibly shameful on several levels. Robbing the public of an elected library board is not only anti-democratic and unjust, but installing an appointed board because the previous board sided with the public majority regarding a Pride display smacks of strong-armed, hateful authoritarianism,” Dapier wrote in an emailed statement. “The opponents of Pride books and displays will not be allowed to erase LGBTQ+ folks from existence. They are our friends, family, and fellow neighbors, and deserve to be included, honored, and respected in our public spaces.”
The controversy at the board may have already had the critics’ desired effect. Etheredge said there was not a Pride display put out at the library this past June.
2025 bill would put librarians in same category as strip clubs, XXX theaters
A bill pre-filed by Rep. Arnold Mooney (R-Indian Springs) would put libraries in the same category as strip clubs, XXX theaters and adult bookstores under Alabama’s criminal code.
HB4, which Mooney prefiled on July 8, would put librarians side by side in the Code of Alabama’s obscenity laws with pornographic professionals, setting up an avenue to prosecute librarians for materials housed in their libraries.
Mooney and two other local legislators — Susan DuBose, R-Hoover, and Jim Carns, R-Vestavia Hills — have signed on as co-sponsors of the bill. The three make up a majority of the legislative group that now selects the board for the North Shelby and Mt Laurel libraries.
The new procedure for board selection came after a decision by the old board not to ban a display at the North Shelby Library that featured LGBTQ+-themed children’s books. Previously, the board was elected by a vote of the library district, though many members ran unopposed.
Craig Scott, the president of the Alabama Library Association, says libraries are easy targets for activists.
“Why have we been targeted?” Scott asked. “Do we have that sort of material in our kids department? Absolutely not.”
The proposed addition to the state’s obscenity laws includes public libraries and K-12 school libraries, but it does not include university libraries.
The bill also sets up a process where libraries would be forced to formally respond to any local resident who filed a complaint about materials held at the library and either move materials to an “age-restricted” area, ban materials or decide the materials do not violate the law. If the libraries respond that no further action will be taken, the resident who complained may take the copy of the original complaint and the library’s response to the police.
DuBose said libraries had previously been sheltered from the state’s obscenity laws under an education exclusion, but “book content was very different.”
“The fact is we have to be very careful in curating the selection of books,” she said. “Our librarians and our boards have to make careful decisions about what is housed in our libraries.”
That may mean “it’s time for a book to be removed,” DuBose said.
But, she said, she doesn’t want librarians to suffer the penalties. She imagines a library would be fined if they were found guilty under the new law.
“I don’t think that librarians should be sent to jail,” she said.
At the root of the bill, Scott believes, is a targeted effort by activists to remove any book that has LGBTQ+ themes from Alabama’s public libraries.
“The books they’re focused on are all of the LGBTQ stuff,” said Scott, who also acts as the library director in Gadsden. “The 30 books that have been challenged here in Gadsden, 90% are LGBTQ.”
Niki Smith, the author of “The Deep & Dark Blue,” which sat on the top shelf of the Pride Month display at the North Shelby Library that led to the Legislature’s changes to the library board, said efforts to keep LGBTQ+ literature hidden is part of a movement to “quietly and subtly” ban books.
“When diverse voices are silenced and oppressed, we all suffer,” Smith said. “Treating LGBTQ+ experiences as something 'obscene' that need to be censored is incredibly harmful to young readers who are just desperate to know they're not alone.”
