By Hola Iowa
July 18 event at The 1619 Project creator’s hometown high school will give out thousands of free books to children and adults in a state that has removed 3,000 books from library shelves
Overview
The 1619 Freedom School Read-In will bring a major literary event to Waterloo, Iowa, on Saturday, July 18, with free books, author readings and conversations at Waterloo West High School. The free public event will feature Nikole Hannah-Jones alongside bestselling authors Jason Reynolds, Angie Thomas and Renée Watson. Register here.
Waterloo, IA – The 1619 Freedom School will host its second Read-In on Saturday, July 18, at Waterloo West High School, bringing three of the country’s most celebrated authors for young readers to Nikole Hannah-Jones’ hometown for a free public literacy event.
The event will take place from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Waterloo West High School, 425 East Ridgeway Avenue. Doors open at 10:30 a.m., and free parking will be available. Families, students and community members are encouraged to register in advance through the 1619 Freedom School event page.
A free event with books, authors and community
Award-winning, #1 New York Times-bestselling authors Jason Reynolds, Angie Thomas and Renée Watson will join 1619 Freedom School founder, Pulitzer Prize winner and Waterloo native Nikole Hannah-Jones for the event. The program will include author readings, moderated conversations, audience engagement, book giveaways and book signings.
The Read-In comes at a time when Iowa remains at the center of a national debate over book bans and who gets to decide what children can read in schools.
Iowa’s book ban debate
During the 2023-2024 school year, Iowa ranked second only to Florida in documented instances of school book bans, driven in large part by SF 496, a 2023 state law that Penguin Random House, publisher of The 1619 Project, has sued the state to overturn. The law resulted in more than 3,000 books being removed from Iowa public school shelves, including Angie Thomas’s novel The Hate U Give, as well as titles by Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou and many others. Waterloo’s public schools have the highest proportion of Black students of any district in Iowa.
In February 2025, the Waterloo district withdrew from a statewide African American Read-In after determining that a selected children’s book might not comply with federal anti-diversity directives. The decision prevented thousands of children — Black, white, Latino and Asian — from taking part in the annual Black History Month literacy event. The 1619 Freedom School, a free after-school literacy program founded in Waterloo by Hannah-Jones, stepped in and hosted the event independently, drawing more than 800 attendees from across the country and giving away nearly 3,000 free books.
Why the Read-In is returning
Book bans continue to rise across the country. Just last month, a Tennessee school district banned Alex Haley’s epic American story, Roots. PEN America has found that communities banned 3,743 unique titles last school year, and that nearly half of all books pulled from public school and library shelves feature characters or people of color.
That is why the 1619 Freedom School is bringing back its Read-In this year as a continuation of last year’s community response and in solidarity with communities resisting book bans nationwide. Every family in attendance will leave with books at no cost, including works by the featured authors.
Reading as liberation and resistance
“Access to books featuring Black characters and about Black history transformed my life as a young reader, and books about different types of people and from cultures I did not belong to opened my mind and fueled my empathy. That is why reading has always been an act of liberation and, in this political moment, it is also an act of resistance,” said Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of The 1619 Project and a graduate of Waterloo West High School. “The same authors whose books are being pulled from school libraries across Iowa and across this country are coming to Waterloo to put those books directly into the hands of our children. No law, no executive order, and no school board vote can stop a child from reading a book they already own.”
Hannah-Jones said it is rare for authors of this caliber to visit smaller cities like Waterloo, and that the city has likely never seen such a powerful group of authors share one stage.
“I am lucky enough that when I reached out to these very busy, very esteemed authors and asked them to join our fight against book bans in my hometown, each one enthusiastically said yes,” Hannah-Jones said. “Our community deserves access to the greatest literary minds and Black stories deserve to be told and shared in a community where Black students struggle to succeed academically and seldom see themselves in literature.”
The authors coming to Waterloo
Reynolds, Thomas and Watson are among the most widely read authors writing for young people in the country and among the most targeted by organized book ban movements.
Reynolds, a #1 New York Times bestselling author, MacArthur Fellow and former National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, has described book bans as rooted not in the content of books but in fear of what children might learn and think. Watson, a #1 New York Times bestselling author with more than one million books sold and a Newbery Medal recipient, is co-author with Hannah-Jones of The 1619 Project: Born on the Water. Thomas, whose debut novel The Hate U Give was among the books cited in PEN America’s documentation of Iowa book removals, is a #1 New York Times bestselling author whose work has been adapted into two major motion pictures.
About the 1619 Freedom School
The 1619 Freedom School Read-In is the culminating celebration of the organization’s summer reading programming. Founded in 2021 by Hannah-Jones in her hometown, the 1619 Freedom School is a free after-school literacy program serving Waterloo public school students in grades 3 through 6 who are reading below grade level.
Inspired by the Freedom Schools launched during Freedom Summer across the South, the program combines rigorous literacy instruction with culturally grounded education centered on Black American history. The school does not receive government funding and is not subject to federal anti-diversity directives or Iowa’s SF 496.
How to attend or support the event
The 2026 1619 Freedom School Read-In is made possible through the support of sponsors and community partners including the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Dahlstrom family, Richard O. Jacobson Center for Comprehensive Literacy and Macmillan Publishers.
The Read-In is free and open to the public. Attendees are encouraged to register at www.1619freedomschool.org. Community members who wish to support the Freedom School’s literacy programming may donate at www.1619freedomschool.org/donate.
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