Tal, I sat on the Souderton Area School Board during the entire "The Color Purple" debacle mentioned in your link. We did not ban the book "The Color Purple". This book was on a required reading list for our 10th graders. We had it removed from the required reading list but not banned from the high school library.
The SASD was a predominantly white school district in 1992. For many of our students, this book would have been their first look into the lives of African American families. I personally felt the book was a poor representation of the African American community as a whole. Kids at that age are so terribly impressionable. It dealt with incest and brutality. IMHO "To Kill A Mockingbird" was a better choice. I enjoined the NAACP to help me in my quest to remove the book from the sophomore required reading list. This book was not banned from our school library. It was simply replaced on the required reading list but remained as an optional selection .
That book was not banned. Your article is incorrect regarding SASD and The Color Purple.