The Folk Devils Keep Changing, But the Panic Stays the Same

What a 1948 comic book burning in West Virginia tells us about today's anti-trans hysteria

In the fall of 1948 in Spencer, West Virginia, a 13-year-old boy named David Mace, dressed in black and white like some kind of child preacher, stood before 600 of his schoolmates on the edge of the school grounds. Under the direction of a teacher, Mabel Riddel, the kids had spent weeks collecting nearly 2,000 “objectionable” comic books from around their town, creating a colorful pile six feet high.

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In a chilling call-and-response that resembled a religious ritual, the boy asked: “Do you, fellow students, believe that comic books have caused the downfall of many youthful readers?” The children obediently replied, “We do.” After a few more exchanges, he declared, “Then let us commit them to the fire,” lit a Superman comic and threw it on the pile, creating a blaze reaching into the sky. Some of the kids cheered as their beloved heroes burned to ash; some wept; and one, Orton Jones, who’d dutifully brought a few ratty old comics to be burned, but “left all of them that were any good at home,” recounted years later that his friend Lenzy Reynolds had been forced to commit a brand-new one to the flames. “That thing had cost a whole dime, and he hadn’t gotten to read half of it.”

Some of the teachers at the Spencer Graded School had objected to the book burning that day, Jones remembered.