Revisiting The Great Textbook War

Us & Them

Fifty years ago this month, a fierce controversy erupted over newly adopted school textbooks in Kanawha County, West Virginia. The fight led to violent protests in West Virginia. Dynamite hit school buildings. Bullets hit buses. And protesting miners forced some coal mines to shut down - because of the new multicultural textbooks. The classroom material focused on an increasingly global society, introducing students to the languages and ideas of diverse cultures. The material was an affront to many Christian social conservatives who felt the books undermined traditional American values. They saw their religion replaced by another belief system: secular humanism. Many of those frustrations boiled over in Kanawha County in the summer of 1974.