Books and Bombs: Ideological Conflict and the Schools: A Case Study of the Kanawha County Book Protest

Abstract

On the two days after Labor Day 1974, Kanawha County, West Virginia erupted into the national media with what was to be the most prolonged, intense, and violent textbook protest this country has ever witnessed. Inflamed over language arts books which had been adopted the previous spring, protesters began a boycott on the first day of school which kept thousands of students out of the county's public schools--many for the full school year. On the second day, nearly all coal miners in Kanawha County, and many in neighboring Boone and Fayette Counties, refused to cross picket lines set up by the protesters. As the controversy gained momentum, there were shootings, strikes against other industries, threats against the lives and families of "probook" and "anti-book" people alike, fire bombings and dynamitings of school property, and dozens of arrests. The shock waves of that protest have been felt in schools and in the corporate offices of publishers across the country. More important, and more frightening to some, the protest demands an assessment of the basic assumptions underlying public education. The events which led to the furor were commonplace enough. In I am indebted to Philip W. Jackson for his encouragement and to the Spencer Fund at the University of Chicago for its support in permitting me to spend several weeks in Kanawha County collecting the printed materials, tape recordings, and personal interviews upon which this article is based.