Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin has dropped a new campaign ad starring a mom who freaked out when her son was asked to read Toni Morrison’s classic novel Beloved at in an AP English class at school. Eight years ago, as detailed in a 2013 article from The Washington Post, Laura Murphy tried to get the Pulitzer Prize winner banned from Fairfax County classrooms after it gave her son—then a high school senior—what she called night terrors. The novel by the Nobel Prize winner tells the harrowing story of a family of former enslaved people following the Civil War and exposes some of the horrors of slavery. Blake Murphy said at the time that the book was “disgusting” and “hard for him to handle,” so he eventually just stopped reading it. In the new ad, Murphy never mentions that it was Beloved that she tried to get banned, but talks about her campaign to force schools to tell parents if books in their kid’s curriculum contained potentially objectionable content, and complains that Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe vetoed the move. Politico reports Murphy’s son is now a lawyer for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
