Of Rabbits & Races

Two little rabbits, a white rabbit and a black rabbit, lived in a large forest. They loved to spend all day playing together. "Let's play Hop Skip And Jump Me" said the little white rabbit. "Oh, let's . . . I wish you were all mine!" said the little black rabbit . . . All the other little rabbits came out to see how happy they both were, and they danced all night in the moonlight. And so the two little rabbits were wed and lived together happily in the big forest, eating dandelions . .

--The Rabbits' Wedding

It seems incredible that any sober adult could scent in this fuzzy cottontale for children the overtones of Karl Marx or even of Martin Luther King. But last week in Florida, Columnist Henry Balch thundered in the Orlando Sentinel (circ. 100,000): "As soon as you pick up the book, you realize these rabbits are integrated. One of the techniques of brainwashing is conditioning minds to accept what the brainwashers want accepted." In Alabama, State Senator E. O. Eddins agreed: "This book should be taken off the shelves and burned." Off it went from the regular shelves of the Alabama Public Library Service Division, and onto the closed shelf reserved for works on integration or those considered scatological (circulation by special request only). Indeed, by the very fact of having bought copies of The Rabbits' Wedding (Harper; $2.50), the Alabama library service had become "controversial," stood a good chance of losing pending legislative appropriations.

In California, Author and Illustrator Garth Williams mused on the nonsense of it all. Said he: "The Rabbits' Wedding has no political significance. I was completely unaware that animals with white fur were considered blood relations of white human beings. It was written for children from two to five who will understand it perfectly. It was not written for adults, who will not understand it because it is only about a soft furry love and has no hidden messages of hate."

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