Note: Julia Garnett uses she/they pronouns, and both will be used in reference to quotations throughout the article.
When Julia Garnett ’28 spoke at her first school board meeting as a high school junior in Nashville, Tennessee, to advocate for a book in danger of being banned, she had no idea that it would be the start of a powerful series of activism.
Garnett’s mother, a special education teacher, came home one night and told Garnett that their school district was attempting to ban “A Place Inside of Me” by Zetta Elliot. The picture book — held in elementary school libraries in Garnett’s school district — details the emotions of a young Black boy after a girl in his community is killed by police.
“It was a book that I felt really passionate about that should stay in the library. As a queer student, I know how important it is to have diverse stories, and so I felt really moved to write a speech that night to give at the school board the next night,” they said.
Garnett, who had never attended a school board meeting, recalled a hectic environment in light of the proposed ban. “Eventually the whole school board room was full and people were sitting on the floor, because that’s how much the community was divided over this book, and I was really surprised,” she said.
As Garnett nervously began her speech in support of “A Place Inside of Me,” the audience responded. “I just remember gripping the podium really hard […] and I got to this line in my speech that I’d written in that was like ‘I shouldn’t have to be here arguing against adults who are acting like children’ and there was a lot of grumbling [in the room] but people started cheering, and I was like, oh, so I’m okay,” they said.
After Garnett finished her speech the audience erupted into applause. Following the meeting, a video of Garnett’s speech circulated to thousands of people online and gained traction.
As library books in her school district continued to face scrutiny, Garnett began to show up to school board meetings consistently. When her school district targeted Stephen Chbosky’s “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” Garnett decided they needed a more active role in the book banning process.
After discussions with their high school principal, Garnett successfully got a seat on the book’s review committee — a position a student in her school district had never previously held. Despite being the only student on the committee, Garnett made sure her fellow students would be heard.
“I came in with this entire binder of information. I typed up Supreme Court cases, book quotes I had gotten, paragraphs from other students about what they thought, because I was like, if they can’t come with me […] then I’m going to bring their voices with me,” they said.
Censorship in schools was not restricted to Nashville, pushing Garnett to take their activism to the national level. This brought her to The National Coalition Against Censorship’s summer program for high school students where she attended trainings with various lawyers and advocates. With their knowledge, Garnett started a club at her high school to educate other students on engaging in advocacy through speech. In the fall of 2023, Garnett was invited to the White House to be recognized for her youth activism alongside other advocates and to meet Jill Biden.
Garnett said she is passionate about education and fighting censorship, as the two are critically connected to many other social justice movements which censorship often attempts to restrict. “I think that’s why we see so many attacks on books and what we can even learn in college, like curriculum and what can be discussed and […] it comes down to when you can control what someone is reading or learning then you can control what they’re thinking,” she said.
Garnett considers their queer identity an important factor of her activism and spoke in the Trevor Project’s “Pride in Action” campaign to discuss being a queer advocate. “I think I have less to lose in a way when I’m speaking out and when I’m advocating, because my rights have been under attack. My identity has been under attack since I came out, since I discovered my queer identity, and I’m already fighting just to be who I am. So why not fight for diverse books and inclusive materials in libraries,” they said.
Since arriving at Smith, Garnett has continued their activism. During her first semester on campus, she co-chaired National Banned Books Week and spoke on a panel following a Northampton screening of the documentary “Banned Together.” Garnett also took a First Year Seminar about banned books, which was particularly special to her.
In a month, Garnett will co-host another literary festival in South Carolina. According to Garnett, attending Smith has inspired her activism and given her hope, especially following President Donald Trump’s reelection and new threats of censorship.
“I’ve seen [Smith’s] beautiful campus rebound after November. I think it was a beautiful pause in that it was really heartbreaking and it was really hard, but then we all kind of came together as a community, and that’s what I was looking for, coming from the south. I was looking for that really beautiful community, and I’m really glad I found it,” she said.
As for her future advocacy, Garnett says she’ll maintain her philosophy of going where her advocacy and support is necessary. “I go where I’m needed and I speak where I’m needed, and I don’t push it and not everything’s gonna work out […] one door closes and another one opens, and so I just kind of go where I’m needed, and that’s the plan,” they said.
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