By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
When the UB Dance Theater Workshop presented an adaptation of “The Inner City Mother Goose” in 1970, director Billie Kirpich told the Courier-Express that the collection of poems is “a bitter comment on the paradox of what a child’s life Is supposed to be like — the innocence — and what it’s really like in urban areas.”
The UB ballet adaptation dealt with the book’s themes of poverty, like old Mother Hubbard’s bare cupboard.
“The ballet tells about the hunger for food and the hunger for the chance to live,” reported Tom Putnam in the Courier.
Poet Eve Merriam adapted nursery rhymes to reflect and dramatize the realities of urban living, but the book was never meant for small children. When the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library bought a copy in 1970, it was filed under “Literature and Fine Arts.”
When the volume was purchased by Buffalo Schools through a grant meant to enrich life in the inner city, it was placed in high schools, to be used with a teacher’s discretion.
In 1972, a controversy gaining nationwide attention erupted when Councilman William Duria railed against the book in a meeting discussing what he saw as the misuse of “Model City” grant funds.
Immediately, Mayor Frank A. Sedita ordered the book off the shelves at Buffalo Schools.
A week later, Erie County Judge William Heffron empaneled a grand jury to investigate the book.
“This book of so-called nursery rhymes advocates the commission of certain crimes,” Heffron told grand jury members.
He read several of the poems out loud to the jurors, including, “Jack be nimble, Jack be quick—snap the blade and give it a flick. Grab the purse—it’s easily done. Then just for kicks, just for fun, plunge the knife and cut and run.”
Heffron said that at least eight of the poems attack policemen and one attacks a judge. He read that one aloud as well.
“A wise old judge sat in court,
“The case was long, his judgement short.
“Why change the way it’s always been?
“Convict the man of darker skin.”
“We have to realize that 70% of the crime committed in Erie County is committed in a 40-block area in the core of our city,” railed the judge. “To teach these little children to commit crimes is something that I think should be stopped.”
Newspapers in Chicago, Phoenix, and other cities around the nation offered editorials in support of the judge and the removal of the book from schools—although the Buffalo Public School system said the swirling controversy surrounding giving this book to little children was completely misplaced.
Buffalo Schools Associate Superintendent Eugene Reville told reporters that the book “has never been available for elementary school children to read” and “that it is not the policy of the school system to make the book available to such children in the future.”
The grand jury investigation ended with Erie County District Attorney Michael Dillon assuring the panel and the judge that the book wasn’t available to students through the school district.
