I am working on an MLIS research paper. The Denver fotonovela fight raises important questions of access and collection defense. To my knowledge, this is the first time an upfront attack on immigrants has popped on the convenient mask of concern over sexual and violent materials. But perhaps you know of others. Historical would be fine - recent or otherwise.
I want to know about other cases in which library services to "populations identifiable by language and culture" have come under attack, the form of attack and what was the response of librarians.
The basic point of the paper is that collection and challenge policies are well and good, but won't protect from raging political attacks. Only bigger, broader, better counterattack can do that. But I need context.
Several Librarians contributed to this answer.
1.
You might try contacting the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom (http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/intellectual.htm). I didn't catch anything by skimming through their web site quickly (and searching the ALA site is a pain, as you may have noticed), but they do keep track of challenges and might have some records (or at least ideas of where to look) that might be useful.
2.
In Library Literature, the search: multicultural* and attack* gets 2 hits; multicultur* and collection* gets 56 hits but may miss the mark on this one.
In ERIC, possible searches include: multicultur* and librar* and politic* (32 hits). Lexis Academic is a much trickier source on this one - the Legal Research / Law Reviews ? all aval dates search: ethnic! and (challenged books or challenged materials) gets 12 hits, possibly worth looking into a couple of them:
Copyright (c) 1983 Texas Law Review Texas Law Review, October, 1983, 62 Tex. L. Rev. 197, 48339 words, ARTICLE: The Search for Constitutional Limits on Governmental Authority to Inculcate Youth., Tyll van Geel*;
and POSSIBLY - Copyright (c) 1987 Michigan Law Review Michigan Law Review, November, 1987, 86 Mich. L. Rev. 266, 40013 words, ARTICLE: SYMBOLS, PERCEPTIONS, AND DOCTRINAL ILLUSIONS: ESTABLISHMENT NEUTRALITY AND THE "NO ENDORSEMENT" TEST., Steven D. Smith
Still in Lexis Academic/Legal Res/Law reviews / All years, the search: immigrant! and (challenged books or challenged materials) seems less promising; it gets 12 hits, but "challenged materials" seems to be mostly LEGAL materials, etc. in specific trials. Possibly a search in Lexis / Legal News would help; but figuring out a strategy is even dicier there: challenged books gets only 5 hits in ALL years, full text. Before trying Legal News, I would first try: challenged books in General News/Major Papers - 67 hits in "all dates"/"Headline, Lead Paragraph..."
Lexis involves a lot of plowing through text (and references if you look at Law Reviews), but the "KWIC" format will usually tell you if an article or review is worth looking through.