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Debate over teaching books by Black authors has roots in violent 1974 clash in West Virginia
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Debate over teaching books by Black authors has roots in violent 1974 clash in West Virginia
A volunteer leads morning prayers at the Faith Gospel Tabernacle Elementary School in Kanawha County, W.Va., on April 24, 1975. The school, housed in a church basement, was one of a dozen private Christian schools that sprang up as makeshift alternatives to public schools as a result of Kanawha County’s textbook battle, which involved boycotts and bombings. (AP)
By Sarah Posner
October 29, 2021 at 12:19 p.m. EDT
The final days of the campaign for Virginia governor are turning to a surprising degree on Toni Morrison.
Republican Glenn Youngkin is making part of his closing argument with an ad featuring Laura Murphy, who in 2013 sought to ban Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “Beloved” from Fairfax County Public Schools. Murphy’s son, who is now a lawyer for the Republican Party, claimed as a high school senior in an Advanced Placement English class that the book was “disgusting and gross” and gave him night terrors.
In the ad, Murphy contrasts Youngkin with his Democratic rival, Terry McAuliffe, who in his previous term as governor vetoed a bill allowing parents to opt their children out of reading books they considered objectionable. Youngkin, she says, “listens. He understands. Parents matter.”
If this line of attack represents an unlikely turn for the country’s highest-profile race in a time of global pandemic and economic upheaval, it is not new. The template for this political strategy — and for the nationwide debate over how race is taught in schools — was drawn up nearly half a century ago, in West Virginia’s Kanawha County.
The Kanawha County protests, which would lead to bombings and racist threats, were instigated by Alice Moore, a school board member, fundamentalist preacher’s wife and activist against sex education.
In June 1974, in accordance with new federal education guidelines that public schools include in their curriculums writings by and about people of color, the school board took under consideration a new set of textbooks for the district. Moore objected to language arts textbooks she claimed would teach students “ghetto dialect” instead of “standard American speech.” She opposed including, as an optional text for a high school Advanced Placement class, former Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver’s prison memoir, “Soul on Ice.”
Kanawha County Board of Education member Alice Moore makes one of many motions that were defeated Nov. 8, 1975, in Charleston, W.Va., as the board voted to return most of a list of disputed school books to classrooms. (Barry Thumma/AP)
{snip}
Robed and hooded members of the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross at Witcher Hollow and pledged their support for the Kanawha County anti-textbook movement in Charleston, W.Va., on Feb. 15, 1975. The cross-burning culminated a four-hour conference that officially established the KKK in Kanawha County. (AP)
{snip}
Sarah Posner is the author of “Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency, and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind.”
By Sarah Posner
Sarah Posner is the author of "Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump," and a reporting fellow at Type Investigations. Twitter https://twitter.com/sarahposner
Debate over teaching books by Black authors has roots in violent 1974 clash in West Virginia
A volunteer leads morning prayers at the Faith Gospel Tabernacle Elementary School in Kanawha County, W.Va., on April 24, 1975. The school, housed in a church basement, was one of a dozen private Christian schools that sprang up as makeshift alternatives to public schools as a result of Kanawha County’s textbook battle, which involved boycotts and bombings. (AP)
By Sarah Posner
October 29, 2021 at 12:19 p.m. EDT
The final days of the campaign for Virginia governor are turning to a surprising degree on Toni Morrison.
Republican Glenn Youngkin is making part of his closing argument with an ad featuring Laura Murphy, who in 2013 sought to ban Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “Beloved” from Fairfax County Public Schools. Murphy’s son, who is now a lawyer for the Republican Party, claimed as a high school senior in an Advanced Placement English class that the book was “disgusting and gross” and gave him night terrors.
In the ad, Murphy contrasts Youngkin with his Democratic rival, Terry McAuliffe, who in his previous term as governor vetoed a bill allowing parents to opt their children out of reading books they considered objectionable. Youngkin, she says, “listens. He understands. Parents matter.”
Link to tweet
If this line of attack represents an unlikely turn for the country’s highest-profile race in a time of global pandemic and economic upheaval, it is not new. The template for this political strategy — and for the nationwide debate over how race is taught in schools — was drawn up nearly half a century ago, in West Virginia’s Kanawha County.
The Kanawha County protests, which would lead to bombings and racist threats, were instigated by Alice Moore, a school board member, fundamentalist preacher’s wife and activist against sex education.
In June 1974, in accordance with new federal education guidelines that public schools include in their curriculums writings by and about people of color, the school board took under consideration a new set of textbooks for the district. Moore objected to language arts textbooks she claimed would teach students “ghetto dialect” instead of “standard American speech.” She opposed including, as an optional text for a high school Advanced Placement class, former Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver’s prison memoir, “Soul on Ice.”
Kanawha County Board of Education member Alice Moore makes one of many motions that were defeated Nov. 8, 1975, in Charleston, W.Va., as the board voted to return most of a list of disputed school books to classrooms. (Barry Thumma/AP)
{snip}
Robed and hooded members of the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross at Witcher Hollow and pledged their support for the Kanawha County anti-textbook movement in Charleston, W.Va., on Feb. 15, 1975. The cross-burning culminated a four-hour conference that officially established the KKK in Kanawha County. (AP)
{snip}
Sarah Posner is the author of “Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency, and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind.”
By Sarah Posner
Sarah Posner is the author of "Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump," and a reporting fellow at Type Investigations. Twitter https://twitter.com/sarahposner