Zoia Horn

Zoia Markovna Horn (née Polisar; March 14, 1918 – July 12, 2014) was an American librarian who in 1972 became the first United States librarian to be jailed for refusing to share information as a matter of conscience. Horn, an outspoken member of the American Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Committee, worked at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, in the early 1970s. Horn was jailed for nearly three weeks for contempt of court after refusing to testify for the prosecution in the 1972 conspiracy trial of the "Harrisburg Seven" anti-war activists.

Early life

Horn was born in Odesa, Ukraine in 1918, to a secular Jewish family of small businessmen and shopkeepers. Berrigan, a Roman Catholic priest and anti-war activist, was serving a sentence in a nearby federal prison for burning draft files concerning the Vietnam War. Berrigan, from his jail cell, was alleged to be plotting along with six other individuals (Harrisburg Seven), to blow up heating tunnels beneath Washington, D.C., and to kidnap Henry Kissinger, the national security adviser to President Richard Nixon.

Boyd Douglas, a prisoner in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary on a work/study program who also worked at the Bucknell library, relayed letters, allegedly including anti-war plot details and love letters, from fellow anti-war activists, including Sister Liz McAlistair, to Berrigan in prison. Horn and another library employee at Bucknell testified before a grand jury. During the trial, they were subpoenaed to testify for the prosecution, but Horn refused to testify at the trial on the grounds that her forced testimony would threaten intellectual and academic freedom.

On her first night in prison, a group of about 20 people sang outside the jailhouse protesting for both her and Philip Berrigan's releases. "for refusing to testify for the prosecution in the sensational trial of anti-war activists accused of a terrorist plot." Horn continued to speak out on issues of intellectual freedom, including writing an article on a small-city Oklahoma librarian who was dismissed by the City Commission after being accused of supplying "subversive" materials (including subscriptions to The Nation, The New Republic and Soviet Russia Today) at the library. She also defended a gay librarian in Oakland, California, who was "attacked for creating a display of gay library materials," and speaking out against the Patriot Act. In 2002, she was awarded the Jackie Eubanks Memorial Award and the Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award.

Opposition to Patriot Act

Horn was outspoken in her opposition to the provisions of the Patriot Act concerning library surveillance, and allowing the FBI to obtain a warrant from a secret court for library or bookstore records of anyone connected to an investigation concerning terrorism or spying. Interviewed at age 84 by the San Francisco Chronicle, Horn was asked about the FBI's monitoring of America's libraries. Horn said that her first thought was: "Here we go again." which "honors Californian people, groups, and organizations that have made significant contributions to intellectual freedom in California." Horn said of the award named in her honor: "I have especially warm feelings toward this honor because the CLA has been very supportive of my efforts."

Works