a north carolina library had a rainbow book logo for 14 years. three people complained. the mayor brought up reading rainbow.

via WITN and WCTI

"I believe we all grew up with Reading Rainbow."

That is Alex Joyner, the mayor of Farmville, North Carolina, a Pitt County town in the east of the state, explaining to WCTI why he is upset about a library logo. For about 14 years, the Farmville Public Library's logo was an open book fanned out in blue, pink, yellow, green, purple and orange pages. It is gone. The library's website now carries a plain green circle with the name around the edge, saved under a filename that begins with "temp."

WCTI reports three residents complained to a town commissioner, and that the complaints "reportedly involved both the logo's resemblance to a rainbow and the library's LGBTQ programming." WITN, which had the story first on Oct. 12, says the commissioner took it to the town manager, who asked the library to change it.

the town says it's just branding

Town Manager Andrew DeIonno told WITN the library was asked to update its logo to match Farmville's branding, not because of the rainbow. He said the town has spent more than $300,000 on branding and that the library is the only town department that does not use the new Farmville "F." Fair enough, as far as it goes. The temporary logo does not use the "F" either.

The mayor is not buying the timing. "When a longstanding, multicolored logo is suddenly removed following complaints about LGBTQ+ programming, we have a responsibility to ask difficult questions about the motivation behind that decision," he said in a statement WITN published. To WCTI he said seeing "an action like this take place in the dead of night behind a curtain is really concerning," and added: "For a handful of people to be able to decide who is welcomed and who is not here is unacceptable in my eyes."

His statement also asked, a little wearily, "is changing a library logo really where our priorities should be?" Yes, Mr. Mayor, apparently it is. One resident, AC Salaam, told WITN she did not think the logo itself was a big deal, but that prejudice in town was. "We have no right to interfere with another individual's life," she said.

Residents get their say at the town commissioners' meeting on Nov. 2 at 5:30 p.m. at Town Hall, per the town, where WCTI says the new logo is expected to come up. Libraries keep ending up as the front line, from a Tennessee county that fired its director over the gay books to a North Carolina town fighting about which colors a drawing of a book is allowed to be.