"The most violent curriculum dispute in American history"

A conversation with Professor Carol Mason about the template for conservative attacks on progressive education, set in 1974

Good morning, skippie!

I hope you’ve had a pleasant week. On a sunny note, I write to you today from New Orleans. I’m soon heading out to the Whitney Plantation, the only former plantation site in Louisiana with an exclusive focus on the history of slavery. I can’t wait to get very sad.

First things first! Today, I’m sharing my conversation with Carol Mason, a professor at the University of Kentucky. Professor Mason is the author of Reading Appalachia from Left to Right, which examines the legacies of a pivotal 1974 curriculum dispute in West Virginia that heralded the rightward shift in American culture and politics. In our conversation, Professor Mason illuminated the lasting lessons conservatives gleaned from the cross-class coalition that allied against diverse textbooks in 1974.

A condensed transcript edited for clarity is below. You can also access the audio of our conversation (~30 minutes), which includes further exploration of Professor Mason’s experience as a student during the dispute, the white supremacist groups that coalesced in the years following, and more:

"The most violent curriculum dispute in American history"

By the way, I have a couple of interviews next week, one on the history of anti-Asian racism in the US, and another on the government’s weird penchant for secret-keeping since World War II. If you have any related questions, let me know! I’ll be happy to include them.

Your skipper,

Ben

The look of a professor who doesn’t believe that the cut on your face came from “a soccer game”

Ben: Professor Mason, I’m very excited to chat with you today. Thanks for being here.

CM: Thank you, Ben, for having me.

Ben: To ground our conversation, let’s begin with Brown v. Board of Education (1954). As we’ve explored at various points on Skipped History, much of the resistance to the Supreme Court’s decision to integrate schools was rooted in old-fashioned racism. 

But how did opposition to Brown v. Board mix with fears of communism as well?

CM: Well, there was enormous opposition to public education from the anticommunist right. They saw new books and new ways of engaging students in the 50s and the 60s as Stalinesque techniques to brainwash kids. Instead, the anticommunist right wanted to educate kids about the free market, and they attacked anything that suggested the market wasn’t working for some folks—in other words, any teachings that smacked of equality or multiculturalism—believing those ideas were an anti-American ruse. 

Ben: Differing fears that at heart, all seem to stem from a deeper fear of the changing social order amid school integration and later the shifts of the 60s.

CM: Right. Related, when we get to Kanawha County in 1974, some of the African American people who were promoting new, more representative schoolbooks actually painted the new curriculum as an extension of desegregating our schools. 

To back up for a second, the controversy started because of a mandate from the state to have a more multiethnic language arts curriculum. After a ten-month study by a textbook committee in 1973, the good parents and school board members of Charleston, West Virginia (the largest city in Kanawha) were ready to adopt a new, nationally admired curriculum in 1974.

Ben: Just to be clear, Kanawha is pronounced like kuh-naw?

CM: Yes, it’s almost two syllables, even though it’s spelled like three. I've had lots of other media people say Kanawa, but locals pronounce it with two syllables.

Ben: There you go, readers/listeners: now you know how to fit in when you visit.

So residents of Charleston were about to adopt a new curriculum in 1974. What happened next?

CM: They got blindsided by one person who objected to the books.

Ben: And this is, of course, Alice Moore.

CM: Mm-hmm.

Ben: How does she connect to the anticommunist/racial resistance to Brown v. Board?

CM: Mrs. Moore came up from Mississippi to West Virginia. She was not a local.

Ben: I take it she pronounced the county’s name with three syllables.

CM: Ha! I'd have to review the audio of school board hearings to confirm.

But she followed her husband, a preacher, up to West Virginia. She was definitely seen more as a southern lady than a mountain mama. In 1970, she decided she’d campaign for the board of education on the basis of opposing sex education. Her motto was “put a mother on the board.”

Of course, Mrs. Moore was ensconced in all sorts of anticommunist ideas. Though she denies it, the evidence suggests she was connected with the John Birch Society (JBS), a far-right organization that had spearheaded this kind of anti-sex ed work. She was also connected with groups like the Christian Crusade, which was based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and had also been pushing against sex ed. These organizations’ arguments helped shape how Mrs. Moore would later argue against the multiethnic language arts curriculum. 

Ben: In her (ultimately successful) campaign to “put a mother on the board,” she described the need to thwart attempts to “control children's minds”—an argument that reflected the views of the John Birch Society, and which also seems to be an extension of the “parents’ rights” arguments that we’ve also explored on Skipped History previously.

CM: Absolutely. Notably, her approach gained a lot of attention from a burgeoning group at the time called the Heritage Foundation, which would later help shape the conservative movement.