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But the protest's beginning can be traced to a routine Kanawha County Board of Education meeting that took place on April 11, 1974. The main item up for consideration on that date was the adoption of a new language arts curriculum for grades K-12.

A five-member panel of teachers and a principal spent 10 months poring through new texts produced by an assortment of mainstream publishers to determine — among other things — which series best met new state-mandated guidelines. The West Virginia Board of Education had recently directed that language arts classroom material "must accurately portray minority and ethnic group contributions to American growth and culture" and "depict and illustrate the intercultural character of our pluralistic society."

The texts the panel planned to propose for adoption had been on display at the Kanawha County Public Library for two months to give the public a chance to look them over, and up to that point had generated no public controversy.

Textbook recommendations approved unanimously

During the April 11 meeting, selection committee members described the books they recommended and the process used in choosing them. In a discussion period that followed their presentation, Alice Moore was the only school board member to voice an objection.

Moore, the wife of a Church of Christ minister, had been elected to the school board four years prior, promising to work to remove sex education from the county school system — a pledge that in large part, she fulfilled.

According to a ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä Daily Mail account of the April 11 meeting, buried on page 9B, Moore complained that parental input had not been involved in the selection process. She also said many textbooks then on the market "are just out-and-out anti-American. They show the good points of Russia, the good points of China, but everything in America is downgraded."

Despite her objections, Moore moved that the selection committee's recommendation be adopted, but not purchased, pending a review period by board members. In order to receive funding for the texts, the state Board of Education needed to receive word by the following week that the county board had adopted the recommended series of more than 300 titles.

The motion passed on a unanimous vote, and the board moved on to name a new school board treasurer and discuss school lunch program expenses.

At the end of the meeting, Moore later wrote, her husband, Darrell, brought to his wife's attention a passage from a supplemental reading for advanced placement students that included a passage from the "The Autobiography of Malcom X." The passage included the quote, "All praise is due Allah that I moved to Boston when I did. If I hadn't I probably would still be a brainwashed Black Christian."

The "brainwashed Christian" portion of the quote rankled the Moores.

"Look at what you just approved," Darrell Moore remarked to his wife.

"The next day, I had 325 books delivered to my home, and I started reading," Alice Moore later recalled, and the Kanawha County textbook controversy was underway.

325 books came under attack

One of Moore's first actions was to contact Mel and Norma Gabler, founders and operators of Educational Research Analysts, a conservative Christian non-profit dedicated to fighting "textbook modernization by humanist social engineers" who want to "democratize" American family structure.

The Gablers had by then experienced widespread success in their native Texas and were developing a national presence in aiding Christian conservatives in screening new textbook adoptions to weed out books that allegedly questioned religion or cast shade on the American way of life.

During the spring of 1974, Moore was joined by a growing number of like-minded parents, pastors and members of the public in digging into the new texts to look for other examples of writing that Moore described as "disparaging Christianity" and "alienating children from traditional views," as she believed the passage from "The Autobiography of Malcom X" had done.

Objections were also raised over the use of curse words and depictions of sexual situations that appeared mainly in supplemental readings accompanying the textbook series.

But attacks on the books soon expanded beyond particular titles and passages, and spread to include all 325 books and supplemental readings recommended for adoption. They included such mainstream works as:

• "The Old Man and the Sea," Ernest Hemmingway
• "The Great Gatsby," F. Scott Fitzgerald
• "Moby Dick," Herman Melville
• "Republic," Plato
• "The Good Earth," Pearl S. Buck, a West Virginia-born Pulitzer Prize winner

Protest leaders and parents challenged bringing many of the new texts into classrooms, terming them "godless," "filthy" or "un-American," and challenging the "depressing, non-uplifting" representations of American life said to be presented in some.

Protestors displayed excerpts from the books at meetings and rallies across the valley to solicit support for not allowing the texts into Kanawha County schools. Adding to the furor was the circulation of fliers containing excerpts of explicit sexual material purportedly gleaned from the texts that had in fact been lifted from sources with no connection to the selected text series.

5 ministers, 1 month, 12,000 signatures

Alice Moore and her allies, including a coalition of more than two dozen Kanawha Valley ministers, publicly denounced the texts. They soon began speaking out publicly against the new "anti-Christian" and "un-American" textbooks at meetings, marches and rallies.

A group of five ministers eventually emerged as leaders of the protest: Marvin Horan and Charles Quigley, both of Campbells Creek; Ezra Graley of Nitro; Henry Thaxton of Sissonville and Avis Hill of Alum Creek.

Within one month, Moore and the pastors aligned with her cause had collected more than 12,000 petition signatures from those opposing adoption of the books.

"If Alice Moore hadn't been a member of the school board, probably none of this would have happened," said Karl Priest, a Kanawha County teacher at the time and author of "Protestor Voices — The 1974 Textbook Tea Party."

"I call her being there — at that time — a God-wink."

Moore died at 82 on Sept. 9, 2023.

Meanwhile, the state Human Rights Commission, the state chapter of the NAACP and the West Virginia Council of Churches went on record supporting the new texts. In a statement explaining its position, the Council of Churches maintained that "any treatment of questions like war and peace, racism, religion and patriotism, is bound to raise disagreements and stir emotional response" among public school students. "But we know of no way to stimulate the growth of our youth if we insulate them from such real issues."

Jim Lewis, who moved to ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä during the opening weeks of the protest to serve as minister at St. John's Episcopal Church, soon became the key spokesman for those favoring adopting the textbooks.

On June 21, 1974, a representative of McDougal, Littell and Co., publisher of a number of the controversial texts, told school board members that he had received few complaints about the texts, and that similar text selections had been approved in 15 other states without incident.

Protests led to threats, gunfire, explosions

More than 1,000 people turned out for a June 27, 1974, school board meeting, at which a vote on whether to buy the new textbooks would take place. Closed-circuit television monitors and loudspeakers were used to let the overflow crowd follow the proceedings.

After parrying complaints for more than three hours about the books and the process used to select them, the board voted 3-2 to purchase the series, with the exception of eight titles. The vetoed books included works by "Soul on Ice" author and early Black Panther Party leader Eldridge Cleaver; psychoanalysis pioneer Sigmund Freud, and modernist poet and author E.E. Cummings.

The eight-book exclusion did little to appease textbook protestors, who continued to rail against the selections throughout the summer, accelerating their activity as the 1974-75 school year approached, then keeping their children out of classes and picketing schools when fall classes began.

Anti-text picketers also disrupted operations at county schools and school bus garages, then went on to picket trucking companies, a major food distribution warehouse, a department store chain, the county's public transit system, coal mines and chemical plants in an effort to keep the books out of classrooms.

Two people were wounded by gunfire, and bullets damaged a number of school buses occupied only by their drivers, who were unharmed. Four elementary schools and the Kanawha County Board of Education office were damaged — but were quickly able to reopen — following nighttime detonations of dynamite or homemade fire bombs.

Threats of violence were made against school board officials, parents who continued to send their children to school, and to both pro- and anti-text leaders.

'They're going to shoot you'

One day while working at St. John's, Lewis was visited by ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä Police Chief John Bailes.

"He said, 'I'm going to take you home now, because word on the street is that to kick off the new school year, they're going to shoot you,'" Lewis recalled. "For the next few weeks, we had cops in the bushes outside our home and police taking our kids to school."

Law enforcement personnel also provided security for Alice Moore's home.

Hooded and robed leaders of the Ku Klux Klan took part in several textbook protest events, including a rally at the state Capitol, and held a cross burning on Witcher Creek.

Lewis said he received threatening calls from a suspected Klansman, and following Christmas Eve services at his church, found stickers on every door stating, "You have been visited by the KKK."

Klan, national voices get involved

With the arrival of the new year came the arrival of a number of outside organizations and individuals hoping to tap into the protest's energy to fuel their own causes.

"Regrettably, the main group to leech on to the protest movement was the Ku Klux Klan," Priest wrote in his memoir of the textbook controversy from an insider's viewpoint.

"The KKK seized upon the protestor frustrations about getting treated unfairly," wrote Priest, who was also a member of the Business and Professional People's Alliance for Better Textbooks, led by Nitro chemical plant operator and conservative commentator Elmer Fike.

"Although KKK members got involved well after the protest was underway," Priest wrote, "the media has over-emphasized that unholy small part of the protest."

In November 1974, Dale Reusch, state leader of the Ohio KKK, and Kanawha County resident Ed Miller, a regional organizer for the Klan, began their association with the anti-text movement when they took part in an interview with a Huntington radio station in which they voiced support for the protestors.

The KKK's presence took on a higher profile after anti-text leader Marvin Horan and five others were indicted on Jan. 17, 1975, by a federal grand jury with conspiracy charges to bomb two elementary schools.

The following day, Reusch, Miller and James Venable, leader of the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, dressed in hoods and robes and spoke at a rally at the state Capitol to show support for Horan, who had been released on $50,000 bail. They urged those in attendance to join the KKK and hosted a cross burning on Witcher Creek on Feb. 15 in a effort to drum up recruits in a state that had no organized Klan presence at the time.

"Marvin Horan did a really stupid thing by going to that rally they had," Priest said. While the KKK may have had hopes of increasing its membership and raising its profile by having a presence at the text protest, they garnered little support, according to Priest.

Priest said he attended a rally on ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä's West Side, during which a Klan member "got up and made his pitch. But when he was finished, there was no response — no one said anything."

Also rotating in and out of the ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä area to maintain an association with the protest was James McKenna of the newly created Heritage Foundation, a powerful conservative think tank, and more recently, a breeding ground for Trump administration appointees and "critical race theory" culture warriors.

McKenna, an attorney, was a speaker during at least one rally, and served as defense counsel for several textbook protestors, including Horan, who faced criminal charges for their activities during the protest.

Horan, others prosecuted

On April 14, 1975, a federal court jury found Horan guilty of conspiracy in the bombing of Midway and Valley Grove elementary schools and sentenced him to three years in a minimum-security prison in Pennsylvania. He was released after serving two years. 

Lewis said he spoke on Horan's behalf during his sentencing hearing.

He recalled a time during the heart of the protest when members of a New York-based Socialist organization came to ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä. "They wanted to meet with me and Marvin, saying they had an idea for a solution" to the controversy.

"Marvin said, 'Let's tell them we won't get involved with them.' We met them at the Quarrier Diner, and that's what we did — we said we'd solve our own problems, and that got those guys out of here," Lewis said.

Horan's sentencing, one year and three days after the protest began, effectively marked its end. Over the course of the controversy, scores of people were arrested for picketing activities.

"This textbook war has affected my whole life," Lewis said. "It still reverberates. It takes on new forms. It's like a whack-a-mole — you have to fight these battles over and over to help keep the march of justice moving forward."

"While the protest may be over, the battle over who owns the kids still goes on across the country," said Charles Quigley, the last of the five textbook protest leaders still surviving. At age 86, Quigley still referees church-league basketball games.

"Sometimes, people will still have to fight," Quigley said. "All you can do is stand up for what you believe in."