What Happened When One Community Defunded Its Library

Like many public libraries across the country, the main branch of the Craighead County Jonesboro Public Library in Jonesboro, Arkansas, set up a variety of displays for Pride Month in June 2021. There were showcases of books by LGBTQ+ authors, an exhibit that explained the different community flags and a section of kids books featuring LGBTQ+ characters.

According to its staff and supporters, the library hadn’t had any obvious issues celebrating Pride prior to 2021. But that month spurred community backlash that contributed to the county voting the following year to cut library funding in half.

More than a year after the vote, the cuts have finally gone into effect, and the results are dire. The library and its other branches (there are eight, including the main branch) are now forced to operate with reduced hours and smaller staffs and have had to cut services that community members previously relied on.

“The Pride display in June 2021 was a huge catalyst and the main reason why the library was defunded,” Dean MacDonald, a supporter and advocate for the CCJPL, told HuffPost.

Conservatives across the country began targeting public libraries during the backlash to the sweeping social justice movements that took hold in 2020 in the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Using the guise of “parental rights,” conservatives whipped up a moral panic: first about children learning about the United States’ racist past and then about kids learning about LGBTQ+ rights, falsely asserting that members of the LGBTQ+ community were preying on children or that books about gay or trans people should be treated like pornography.

“When the children’s [Pride] display went up, that’s when it really hit the