Barbara Brooks Parker, 83, a Nederland resident in the mid-2000s, died February 11, 2021, in Fairfax, Virginia, after complications from a fall.
Mrs. Parker lived most of her adult life in the DC area but moved to Nederland for four years before returning to Washington, where she had lived since 1973. In Nederland, she volunteered with the Community Library and the Backdoor Theater.
Born in Memphis, Tennessee, to Mr. and Mrs. Basil G. Brooks, Mrs. Parker, a writer, public relations executive, and later an avid volunteer for the Chevy Chase DC Public Library, was labeled “scourge of the censors” in a Washington Post column by Nat Hentoff for her anti-censorship work with People for the American Way (PFAW) in the 1980’s.
As PFAW’s director of the fledgling organization’s first major project, the Texas Textbook Project, Mrs. Parker led the group’s fight against the stringent Texas textbook guidelines that heavily influenced the nation’s school book publishers. In that role she testified before the Texas State Board of Education urging a more historically correct portrayal of American life including accurate accounts of slavery, the Holocaust, the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, and the women’s movement, among others. She also fought against the inclusion of creationism/intelligent design in science textbooks. For this work, the National Education Association awarded her its highest honor, the Friend of Education Award, in 1984.
Prior to joining PFAW, Mrs.Parker wrote the first major national story about the frequently successful censorship efforts of Mel and Norma Gabler, then two of Texas’s most prolific textbook reviewers. Her article, which appeared in the American School Board Journal where she was an associate editor, led to her recruitment by PFAW and was named a finalist in the 1980 National Magazine Awards and won first place in the Charles Stewart Mott Education Awards.
Op-eds by Mrs. Parker on textbook and library censorship appeared in The New York Times, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Miami-Herald and led to a Herblock cartoon in The Washington Post.
Her anti-censorship work led to numerous television appearances including the Today Show, the CBS Morning News, the Phil Donahue Show and the MacNeil Lehrer News Hour, among others.
She and her late husband Robert L. Parker moved from Reston to DC in 1986. That same year she left People for the American Way, and she and a partner formed Parker/Vogelsinger & Associates, a DC public relations firm. When the firm closed in 1993, she took on a number of freelance assignments as writer, editor, and PR consultant.
In 1999, she joined the staff of the National Education Association as a senior press officer. She remained in that position until her retirement in 2004. Since then she has been an active member of the Chevy Chase DC Friends of the Library and manager of FOLio, the group’s Saturday bookstore.
Her husband preceded her in death in 1991. A previous marriage to Marshall Marcus ended in divorce. She is survived by a daughter, Brooke Carole Marcus of Phoenix, two stepchildren Geoff Parker of Gainesville, Virginia, Eloise Parker of Falls Church, Virginia, a brother B.G. Brooks, Jr. of Nederland, and five grandchildren.
