Charles E. Collins (politician)
Charles Edwin Collins (16 January 1929 – 16 September 2012) was an American politician and activist. He was an independent candidate for President of the United States in the 1996 presidential election and sought unsuccessfully to run again in 2000. Bay County, Florida book controversy In 1986, Collins, who was a former Bay County, Florida school board official, challenged the use of I Am the Cheese and other books at the Mowat Junior High School his granddaughter attended. He wrote letters to the parents of all the students, and placed an advertisement in the Panama City News-Herald. At a school board meeting Collins submitted what he claimed was about 9,000 signatures petitioning the use of the book, though a television reporter later found the number to be 3,549. The case's first national coverage came from The Washington Post, which in the cover story of the Sunday magazine section reported on the case and the death threats that had been received by the teachers and parents defending the book and by the television reporter, Hill. Hill's apartment was attacked by arson and a bomb threat placed on her car required the summoning of a police bomb squad, though the device proved