Two years after the U.S. Senate held hearings on the threat that comic books purportedly posed to American youth, a Rhode Island commission reported its findings on the subject to the state legislature. "After months of study of this demoralizing material, it seems to us that what's at stake here is the decency of society," the 1956 report said. "The issue is not censorship but one of self-defense."
Although "we can do little other than urge the publishers or producers to clean house," the commission said, "there is a definite responsibility on the distributor and retailer alike to avoid feeding our children a constant diet of crime, horror, sex, violence and depravity." The report recommended a ban on the sale of such material to minors and the appointment of "a permanent Commission" to "educate the public concerning such publications."
