1974 Text book War:  The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Karl C. Priest, M.A.-  June 1, 2009
Columnist EducationNews.org

For 35 years, nearly everything written about the Kanawha County (WV) Textbook Controversy (which launched the cultural wars) has been slanted to portray the protesters as violent religious fanatics. This is Part I of three articles that portrays the protesters in the positive way they deserve.

(Part I):  “The Bad” (A Protester Perspective)

BACKGROUND

In 1974 an event occurred in Kanawha County West Virginia that has been widely called “the first shot in the cultural war”.  Fundamentalist Christians, and their conservative allies, objected to anti-Christian and anti-American textbooks.  Their protest shut down West Virginia’s largest school system (over 45,000 students) along with many major businesses and the bus system of the capital city (Charleston).

This year (2009) is the 35^th anniversary of that event and it is time the true story is revealed.

I was a young Christian in 1974, had been married two years, had an infant son, and had just completed my second year as a teacher.  There were many legitimate reasons for me not to get involved, but that event motivated citizens, especially Christians, to step up and speak out.  The event has been called both the “Textbook Controversy” and the “Textbook Protest”.  I call it the Textbook War (“A concerted effort or campaign to combat or put an end to something considered injurious”).   I was part of that Textbook War.  It is time to present an historical account from the eyes of a proud protester.

These articles will portray the POSITIVE truth of the Textbook War.  The NEGATIVE truth has been reported ad nauseam.  The articles could be categorized as the good, the bad, and the ugly, but not in that order.  Part I (“The Bad”) will shine new light onto the bad things that happened.  This light will allow objective readers to view the bad things from a perspective not obtained from the darkness cast upon the protest up to now.  The second part, “The Ugly” category, will reveal some little known information about how educators felt about the protested books.  In the conclusion (Part III—“The Good”), I will present the protesters as they really were--good people, with a just cause, which history has proven correct.

The protest garnered national attention by being covered by all three national television news sources and many major newspapers from coast to coast as well as by mainstream media in other countries.

June of 1974 was when the protest broke out in full force (it had stirred since April).  In the third part I will provide some details of protest events, but for this introduction I want to deal with the headlines that have cast aspersions on the protesters.

First, I must differentiate between liberals and fundamentalists.  For the purposes of these articles I will use the word “liberal” as synonymous to those who were pro-books (pro-bookers).  Actually using “liberal” in that way is an insult to true liberals.  (See the David Horowitz comments below and the term I coined for most of the pro-book crowd in Part II.)  The dictionary states that attributes of liberals are not being “bound to authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; being free from bigotry;” and “tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded”.  Those characteristics do not fit the pro-bookers, but it’s simpler (until my new term catches on) to call those who are the opposite of fundamentalist—“liberals”.

Being a fundamentalist, contrary to what liberals have propagandized, is nothing to be ashamed of just by the attachment of the term.  (See my article “FIRMly FUNdamentalist”. http://insectman.us/misc/fundamentals.htm)  For example, the definition of fundamental is “relating to the foundation”.  A good baseball player needs to master the fundamentals of his position.  So, a liberal who lives the basics of liberalism is actually practicing the fundamentals of liberalism.  Fundamentalism is often associated with a religious viewpoint, but it is nothing more than adherence to “fundamental principles” whether these principles are religious or secular.  The dictionary includes terms like “rigid adherence” and “intolerance of other views”, and those traits also fit liberals who feel strongly about their philosophy.

Where one needs to be wary (and others have a right to be critical) is when the fundamentals of a particular belief promote violence and destruction.  Violence and destruction are not the fundamentals of Christianity and anyone exhibiting those actions is not practicing what the Bible teaches, no matter how loud the liberal claim.

Christian fundamentalism began in the late 1800’s in reaction to Protestant secularism.  In 1974, the Textbook War was basically the same thing, but instead of trying to salvage the churches, those with fundamental Christian beliefs (most of the protesters) tried to prevent secularists from taking complete control of schools.

The way the protesters engaged the battle was far and away peaceful--which is rarely mentioned.  Nevertheless, a small amount of negative activities occurred (some more serious than others) and this article will address those, but in a context that has (to my knowledge) never been done before.  The three categories of vexation for the protesters that have been expounded upon in great detail are violence, racism, and censorship.

BEHAVIOR

>Violence<

Most protester arrests were for typical civil disobedience activities such as sit-ins at the Board of Education and violations of court injunctions involving picketing.  Those were strategies perfected by the Civil Rights activists in the 1960’s. 

There were various degrees of violence from both sides.  The protester side had a small element (about 12 out of several thousand) that resorted to serious property damage (setting off explosives in empty school buildings was the worse).  The guilty individuals were wrong and paid for what they did under the penalty of the law. Not extensively reported is that a leader of the pro-book group shot an individual and at least two protesters had their cars set ablaze.  Alice Moore’s (Mrs. Moore was the Board member who brought the content of the books to the attention of the public.) house was guarded by an off-duty deputy due to threats against her.  At the same time (mid-October) the worse that the opposing Board members reported was “mild harassment”.

The U. S. attorney, who prosecuted those that participated in the bombings, said that there were people who opposed the books, but felt strongly against the violence and helped with the investigation.   He also pointed out that two top investigators (a federal agent and a state trooper) both opposed the books.

Interestingly, a prominent and prolific critic of the protesters--James Haught (See part III.), was a bomb maker in his youth (including using stolen dynamite) and, but for the Grace of God, one of his pipe bombs could have maimed or murdered some innocent people.   I don’t know the ages and maturity levels of everyone involved with the serious protest vandalism, but it is quite apparent that Haught should not be throwing stones.

I was present during the December 13 Board of Education meeting that ended in a minor melee.  Not long after I addressed the Board, a man ran forward and punched Board Member Doug Stump.  During the fracas, a woman swatted Board Member Matthew Kinsolving (who was perceived as a turn-coat) with a stack of papers.  Superintendent Underwood took a punch, but I think it was because he tried to intervene along with another administrator who was also hit.  The two Board Members who had always favored the books were not hit.  News reports said that mace was sprayed, but I did not notice it and I was standing very close to the table where the Board Members sat.  Some claimed, and it seems valid, that the mace fumes assisted in breaking up the rhubarb.  The whole thing lasted a few seconds.  One protest leader (Charles Quigley) said that Underwood, Stump, and Kinsolving had aggravated the audience throughout the meeting.  Afterwards, many protesters (including Avis Hill) went forward to apologize and I am sure, had there been serious injury, the protesters would have been the first to offer assistance.

Of course, the assault was wrong and this was one of the incidents that led to breaking the back of the protest.   The National Education Association panel (See part II.) made it a point to report that there were racial and anti-Semitic shouts.   There was so much commotion that I doubt if any statements could have been distinguished.  I can attest, without hesitation, that there was more love and respect for black folks and Jews in the overall protester community than I have ever observed in my association with self-righteous and hypocritical liberals.  Casting the protesters as racist bigots was a powerful weapon used by the pro-bookers and their liberal media friends. 

One protest leader, Marvin Horan, had a point when he said that Board of Education members provoked protester anger over the several month period of the protest.    In the previous spring, Board Member Russell Isaacs, said some of the books were “absolutely profane” and Board Member Harry Stansbury said, “I have seen the books and frankly, I’m disturbed about some of the language and stories.”  In a September Charleston Gazette article Board Member Matthew Kinsolving was quoted as saying that he “sympathized with the objections protesters have with the books.”  Another time Kinsolving said “I agree with her (Alice Moore).  I have looked at this from a personal standpoint and I don’t want it taught to my children.”  Kinsolving was quoted at another time saying that the books gave a distorted view of America.  Both Isaacs and Kinsolving ended up endorsing the books.  They were joined by a very vacillating Board Member Dough Stump who always seemed stumped on which side he would take.

Teachers (mainly) and non-boycotting parents have received a lot of press coverage, to generate sympathy, by bemoaning that pickets yelled at them as they entered school buildings.  I find it odd (if not hypocritical) that their sensitive feelings were hurt from being heckled, yet they had no qualms about offending parents and their children with the objectionable textbooks.

saw no problem with his own single (liberal) group directing education. 

The protesters were accused of being racist even though their leadership supported the only black candidate running for the legislature.  The major pro-book religious leader did not endorse that candidate.

I taught in the eastern end (“Coal Country”) of the county as well as the western end and the inner-city for several years in each area.  My schools ranged from those with a totally white population of students to schools where black students were a huge majority. I observed no significant racism from any area in which I taught.  The most beloved and respected (by students and parents) teacher I worked with, in what liberals would call a racist area, was black.

One of the protest leaders, Avis Hill, went to Washington to request help from the federal government.  While there he chose to attend a black church and led the singing during the service.  During the prote

Liberals want to overlook those of their crowd who were violent in that era.  A liberal icon, Bill Ayers, co-founded the violent Weather Underground in 1969.  His group engaged in terrorists tactics into the 1970’s.  They conducted a campaign of bombing multiple buildings; a “Days of Rage” which included widespread vandalism, bloody police confrontations, general mayhem, burglary, theft, a jailbreak; and the throwing of gasoline filled Molotov cocktails at a judge’s house.  One of their bombs exploded during production or they would have carried out what one of their members said was to be "the most horrific hit the United States government had ever suffered on its territory"—a bombing of a Fort Dix (NJ) club for military personnel. 

The Ayers group was allied with the Black Panthers, embraced Marxism, and issued a Declaration of War against the United States.  I am positive the Ayers gang would have been pro-textbook had they taken time away from their war against America. Now Ayers is a “Distinguished Professor of Education” at the University of Illinois (teaching future teachers) and a current cohort of President Barack Hussein Obama.  So, I ask, why do liberals magnify, with multiple articles, the violence of a miniscule minority of textbook protesters, while ignoring the extreme acts of their own?  Two words come to mind:  censorship and hypocrisy.

>Racism<

A subset of the racism issue is “multiculturalism.  The protesters did not object to the emphasis of curricula on “multiculturalism”.  They did find it odd that their cultural group (a large majority of the county population) took issue with numerous textbook passages while the other cultures saw nothing wrong with the books.  Alice Moore said, “Multicultural textbooks had nothing to do with it.  We’ve had that kind of content in books for years.  We’ve never had any problem like that and trying to create one is scraping the bottom of the barrel.”  Mrs. Moore was concerned with the negative portrayal of blacks as urban thugs.  She also objected to the “hatred portrayed between the races”

A newspaper ad by the Business and Professional People’s Alliance for Better Textbooks (of which I was a member http://insectman.us/testimony/teacher-chapter.htm) quoted the county superintendent as saying, “If public education is ever directed by a single group, it’s the death of public education.”  Of course, the superintendent st, Hill consistently complained that the textbooks portrayed blacks as having no hope of leaving the ghetto.

The protesters did object to some material by black authors.  To not do so would have been patronizing to blacks.  The Business and Professional People’s Alliance for Better Textbooks  president, Elmer Fike tried to reach out to the black community.  He went to the local NAACP and tried to convince them that the books made it appear that blacks lacked opportunities in America.  While trying to read from the black author, George Schuyler,  Mr. Fike was rudely shouted down.   Ironically, Schuyler served a sentence for going AWOL from the US Army.  He embraced, and then rejected socialism.  Later Schuyler became a conservative and wrote for the John Birch Society and (in 1966) opposed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s award of the Nobel Peace Prize.  He satirized both the KKK and the NAACP in a novel Black No More.  The NAACP was angry at his philosophical point of view and unconcerned that he was a successful black man.  An important point is that the Business and Professional People’s Alliance for Better Textbooks publically denounced the Klan.

Protesters understood and honored blacks’ objection to “Little Black Sambo” and “Huckleberry Finn” and expected the same respect for protester objections to other material.

The ultra-conservative John Birch Society opposed the books.  Some liberals claim this group was behind the protest and had even brought in Alice Moore as its operative.  That theory has as much plausibility as alien abductions.  Whatever the John Birch Society involvement in the protest, it certainly was not nearly as sinister as liberal conspiracy theorists proclaim.  According to Wikipedia the John Birch Society is “a political education and action organization … (which) supports traditionally conservative causes such as anti-communism, support for individual rights, and the ownership of private property. It promotes U.S. independence and sovereignty and opposes globalism… Its website states: “In the United States, however, a conservative is one who seeks to support and retain the traditional institutions of the U.S. government, including the rule of law under the Constitution, and the political doctrines of individual rights and freedom as espoused by the Founding Fathers."…Its stated aim is to achieve "Less Government, More Responsibility, and — With God's Help — a Better World."   The John Birch Society is no more racist than the NAACP.

Regrettably the main group to leech on to the protest movement was the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).  The KKK seized upon the protester frustrations at getting treated unfairly.  Although KKK members got involved well after the protest was under way, it was a mistake for protesters to have the slightest association with that group.  Of course the media jumped on that unholy relationship to make it seem the protesters were racists.  Could the protest leaders have feared the consequences if they removed the KKK members from the stand, or stopped a rally because of the presence of the KKK?  Avis Hill found 17 bullet holes in his church one morning.  He believed it was the Klan who did it because he refused to put up with their foolishness.

I think the people (probably women) unwisely held up “We are KKK” signs (once?) just to mess with the minds of media and Board of Education members.  Sure, just like in the black community, the protester community contained some racists.  They were a small minority.  The only experience I had with the KKK was at a meeting of a hundred or so protest participants.  The floor was opened for ideas.  A man rose and identified himself as a KKK member and offered to help.  His comments went over like a lead balloon.

Most leaders of the protesters disowned and declined association with the KKK and one of the top protest leaders, Avis Hill, refused to stand on a platform with a KKK member. 

Dr. Carol Mason (see Part II), certainly no friend of the protesters, said, “In White Supremacist Resurgence, I explain why those few ‘extremists’ involved in the Kanawha County textbook controversy are worth examining even though they did not comprise the majority of the protesters.” and “It is absolutely wrong to characterize the textbook protesters in toto as white supremacists.”

Liberals love Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) who, early in his political career, was a member of a prominent Democratic Party group that opposed desegregation and civil rights.  But that pales in comparison to the fact that Byrd was a KKK member!  Byrd recruited 150 others and formed a KKK chapter of which he was closely involved for several years.  He said he, “would never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side."  And that he would rather, "die a thousand times…than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels."  Byrd urged promotion of the Klan all over America.   Why doesn’t that get into public school textbooks?

Black clergy, who should have shepherded their flocks to save their children, led them astray.  Liberals hook-winged black folks who (except for the variation of melanin in their skin), as a group, were not much different--in their hearts-- than the mass of mostly white protesters.   Blacks should have had the integrity to join the protest because the books were harming their children too.  Sadly, blacks marched to the liberal tune as most have done since the 1960’s.  They missed the point raised by Martin Luther King about being more concerned with the content of a man’s character than the color of his skin.

One of the protested books was Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice which contained (along with bad grammar) profanity.  Cleaver was a serial rapist, ex-con, and a Black Panther (the black KKK) member.  His life spiraled downward until he became a born again Christian.  In 1978 he wrote Soul on Fire.  I don’t think that book ever made it on a Kanawha County School reading list.

David Horowitz was the son of members of the American Communist Party and he became the editor of a prominent left-wing magazine.   Now, he is a conservative because of something that occurred in 1974.  While working with the Black Panthers he discovered the Panthers were really “criminals and murderers and not the victims the left claimed them to be”.

Horowitz refers to liberals as “progressives” (I prefer a term I introduce in Part II.) because he thinks conservatives are the true liberals since conservatives believe in hearing both sides of an issue.  He says, “Progressives are adept at speaking the language of peace and love and justice; but these words are just a smokescreen for their real goals which are search and destroy. Anybody who has ever encountered a progressive up close in any kind of political disagreement knows that this is a hate movement.” 

Kanawha County (and outside) liberals, who were 99% white, beat the drum for the black retreat from the protest.   In 1974 there were no blacks on the Board of Education, few (if any) in the county school administration, and to date only two blacks have ever been Kanawha County Board members.  It seems to me, black leaders should have focused their concern upon the real discrimination of the county education establishment rather than the incorrectly perceived prejudice of the protesters.

Something that has been ignored (perhaps censored) is that the roots of the Kanawha County Textbook War go back to a black man.  Alice Moore credited Arizona State School Board President, Stephen S. Jenkins, for inspiring her to stand up for better textbooks.  Jenkins spoke at a school board convention in Texas attended by Mrs. Moore.  The subject of his address was textbook selection.  As a successful black man (retired Air Force officer and IBM computer marketing representative) Jenkins was interviewed (in February 1975 while the protest was still fairly “hot”) by Human Events magazine.  The article said that Jenkins “empathically agreed with Mrs. Moore that the textbooks portrayed blacks in a very negative way” and he thought “‘she was correct in wanting to get other textbooks into the schools’”.   Mr. Jenkins said that Arizona was in the process of reviewing some of the protested books and, “We found that many of them were objectionable.  They were objectionable from the standpoint of content and vulgarities and obscenities, (and) they were objectionable from the standpoint of very, very low quality.”

>Censorship<

The protesters were commonly condemned for censorship.  Related to the charge of censorship is that liberals claimed that protesters took excerpts out of context.  Protesters responded that the actual context made the quotes even worse.  Part II will give a good example of that claim.  

The protesters pointed out that liberals sought to censor classics such as Little Women.  Also, the Business and Professional People’s Alliance for Better Textbooks pointed out that some of “the classics had been changed to convey a different message than the original version”.   Elmer Fike related that a committee had made a list of the profanity in the textbooks and in one case the objectionable word was a quote from Admiral Farragut (“Damn the torpedoes!  Full speed ahead!”).  Of course the liberals hooted at this.  It turned out that the context in the textbook was ridiculing the admiral’s quote.

There was an objection to “Jack and the Beanstalk”, but it was in the teacher material that insidiously guided the children to accept the situation ethic that it could be acceptable to sometimes steal.

“Androcles and the Lion” was compared to the biblical account of “Daniel in the Lions’ Den” in a way that led children to identify the Bible story as a myth.

The attacks upon Christianity were both explicit and implicit (see the Addenda).

Renowned author Jesse Stuart was “surprised” and “furious” when he found out a story of his, which was in the controversial textbooks, had been edited to remove the lesson he taught about cheating being wrong.  Stuart said (about the publisher), “It’s underhanded piracy in editing.”

Some of the protesters have been criticized because they objected to the books before they had read them all. What has not been publicized is that Board policy had been for Board members to not read the books until they were adopted.  Only because Alice Moore started reading the books was the public alerted to the content of the books.  It was Mrs. Moore and protesters that placed the books in public sites, such as a library, and encouraged citizens to read the books for themselves.

The Textbook Selection Committee (made up only of five teachers) got to consider all eligible books which were on display in the Board office.  (For more about the selection process, see Part III.)  There were literally hundreds of books—probably more than a thousand.  No citizen (or professional for that matter) could have determined what books to read, let alone had the time to read them cover to cover.

At the April 11 Board meeting Alice Moore found out which books had been selected.  The Textbook Selection Committee made a typical presentation about how hard they worked and the Board president complimented them.  Mrs. Moore caught a reference to “non-standard” English which was made by the Textbook Selection Committee presenter.  Proper grammar (See Addenda.) was important to Mrs. Moore so she requested a delay in accepting the books.  The Superintendent informed her of a deadline imposed by state law, so, she made a motion that the Board adopt the books, but delay a vote to purchase them.  The motion passed.  Moore had the books delivered to her house the next day.  Once she saw what was in them she requested (within a week of the April 11 meeting) a private conference with the other Board members.  She was trying to avoid making it a public fight. 

The Board met in executive session and Mrs. Moore showed them eight books that she had randomly chosen to read.  She was the only Board member to have looked closely (if at all) at the books.  Three of the four other Board members were alarmed at what was in the books. (Albert Anson, refused to comment until he spoke to the teachers who selected the books.  Anson later resigned and was replaced by Doug Stump.)

Alice Moore requested a private meeting with the Board and the Textbook Selection Committee.  She was trying to avoid embarrassing anyone and wanted to allow the teachers to save face by quietly choosing less controversial books.  Someone informed the media that Mrs. Moore wanted to censor library books.  Since the issue was no longer private, the superintendent opened the meeting to the public and the discussion was held at the May 23 Board meeting.

At the May 23 Board meeting Mrs. Moore announced that the books were “trashy, disgusting, and unpatriotic”.  Her comments seemed to be of no avail.  She pointed out that the other Board members still were unaware of what was in the other books. That meeting convinced Mrs. Moore that the Board majority was going to vote to purchase the books without a careful review by the Board.  She started taking the books to public forums (mostly, but not limited to, churches) in her end of the county.

Kanawha County is geographically large and stretches out along the Kanawha River.  The eastern end is rural and is where a lot of coal miners live.  The center is the capital city urban area.  Mrs. Moore lived in St. Albans which is on the far western end of the county which is more suburban.

Naturally, word would have spread throughout the county, but the crowd at the June 27 Board meeting arrived (See Part III), Kanawha County citizens--from one end of the county to the other were becoming informed of what was happening.  After the June meeting, the whole state became informed.

The easily checked facts of the protest reveal it was not the protesters who sought to censor.

BOTTOM LINE

Liberals have aggressively protested many things that offend them.  They have violently reacted to several forestry and fishing activities.  They have viciously tried to impede important scientific investigations which use animals.  In May of 2009, in West Virginia, 17 liberal protesters were arrested for obstructing the free enterprise of mining coal using a technique called “Mountaintop Removal”.

Honest liberals know that there is no ultimate compromise with those who have values and viewpoints different than theirs.  Liberals will fight for their pantheistic or atheistic religious dogma and their socialistic political agenda.  Regarding the public school curriculum in 1974 (and to this day), liberals and the protesters had two opposing worldviews and neither wanted the other to control the up-bringing of their children. 

A profound editorial appeared in a nearby community (Hurricane) newspaper during the controversy.  The author concluded with a premise of “no compromise” which was based upon the November Kanawha County Board of Education meeting that involved putting some of the books into the classroom.

The editorialist pointed out that the protesters could not be “half Christian and half atheist, half moral and half immoral, and half patriotic and half unpatriotic.”  He took the “intellectual elite minority” to task.  “You (liberals) actually seem to think that you are so much better than a coal miner who disapproves of the school books his children will be required to read….At least these ‘uneducated’ ones don’t try to impress anyone as you intellectuals try to do with your self-assumed superiority….I don’t care for the attitude of those who attempt to make the children of others study subject matter that the children’s parents find objectionable.”   I couldn’t say it any better than that.

In the editorial, teachers were also knocked off their pedestal by the logic of being a different breed than the teachers of the 1950’s and before.   I will deal with the subject of educators extensively in Part II. 

Compromising Christians were chastised too.  The editorialist pointed out that some Christians were so confused that they could not discern evil and the blame was laid on the pulpits of the pastors who saw nothing wrong with taking the name of God in vain as long as it was done in context.

The editorial articulated an argument echoed by conservative commentators for the next 35 years.  “No school board has the right in any way to cause children to question the beliefs of the children’s parents.”  Now, many people have come to realize what the protesters proved, in 1974, is true today:  “Christians cannot compromise.” 

The 1974 Kanawha County Textbook War was the first call for Christians to remove their children from the public schools (What may be the last call is now being sounded.  (See Exodus Mandate-WV http://insectman.us/exodus-mandate-wv/index.htm.)  Many people, in 1974, thought they could reform the public schools.  History has proven them wrong.  In Part III we will see how history has proven the protesters right in an important way.

There were some bad things that happened in 1974.  This article has shown that liberals are hypocritical for their incessant dwelling upon those few bad things.  Liberals want to deflect the impact of the protesters’ points. The protesters said the books were “anti-moral, anti-social, anti-American, anti-religious, anti-free enterprise, and anti-patriotic” with a “complete lack of balance”.  How did educators feel about the books?  Part II will put educators, especially teachers, in the spotlight of truth.

(See Part III for citations.) 

(Part II): “The Ugly” (Told by a Teacher)

(Part III): “The Good” (Proud Patriots)