He took his school to the Supreme Court in the 1980s for pulling 'objectionable' books. Here's his message to young people
CNN
When school officials in New York removed 11 books they disliked from library shelves, 17-year-old Steven Pico joined a legal fight that would eventually take him and his school to the US Supreme Court.
In 1976, Pico was a high school student at the Island Trees Union Free School District in Levittown, New York when the school board ordered the removal of several books from the junior high and high school libraries, including "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut and "Best Short Stories of Negro Writers" edited by Langston Hughes. The books were part of a list of "objectionable" books that some board members obtained months before when they attended a conference by the conservative group Parents of New York United. When Pico learned about the board's actions, he and a few other students filed a lawsuit in 1977 with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union to try to get the books back into the libraries.
This month marks 40 years since Pico's fight in court ended as the Supreme Court recognized the First Amendment rights of students in Island Trees Union Free School District v. Pico and ruled that school boards may not remove books because they dislike the ideas contained in those titles.
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