Salinger has been a controversial book ever since it was first published. The novel has long ignited disapproval, and it was the most frequently banned book in schools between 1966 and 1975. Even before that time, however, the work was a favorite target of sensors. In 1957, Australian Customs seized a shipment of the novels that had been presented as a gift to the government by the U.S. ambassador. The books were later released, but customs had made its point that the book contained obscene language and actions that were not appropriate behavior for an adolescent. In 1960, a teacher in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was fired for assigning the book to an eleventh-grade English class. The teacher was appealed and was reinstated by the school board, but the book was removed from use in the school. The following year in Oklahoma City, the novel became the focus of a legislative hearing in which a locally organized censorship group sought to stop the Mid-Continent News Company, a book wholesaler, from carrying the novel. Members of the group parked a "Smutmobile" outside the capital building during the hearing and displayed the novel with others. As a result of public pressure, the wholesaler dropped the critcized books from its inventory. In 1963 a delegation of parents of high school students in Columbus, Ohio, asked the school board to ban Catcher in the Rye, BRAVE NEW WORLD and TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD for being "anti-white" and "obscene." After a decade of quiet, objections arose again in 1975 in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, and the novel was removed from the suggested reading list for an elective course entitled "Searching for Values and Identity Through Literature." Based on parents' objections to the language and content of the book, the school board voted 5-4 to ban the book. The book was later reinstated in the curriculum when the board learned that the vote was illegal because they needed a two-thirds vote for removal of the text.