From Textbooks to Tea Parties: An Appalachian Antecedent of Anti-Obama Rebellion

Abstract

The excitement over a new radio documentary about a 1974 curriculum dispute in Kanawha County, West Virginia, blended with the excitement over anti-Obama administration tea party gatherings in the summer of 2009. By fall of that year, people were listening to “The Great Textbook War of 1974” on West Virginia Public Radio and declaring that “Kanawha County Held the First Tea Party 35 Years Ago.” 1 This essay argues that the famous textbook controversy was one among many precursors to the current conservative rebellion, and warns against romanticizing or demonizing West Virginia protesters whose links to national organizers and conservative supporters, which are often overlooked, strengthen their likeness to today’s tea partiers. Drawing from more extensive arguments in Reading Appalachia from Left to Right: Conservatives and the 1974 Kanawha County Textbook Controversy, this essay situates the conflict in the evolving right-wing dis courses of the times, as well as in the context of cultural assumptions about Appalachia. 2 Doing so helps acknowledge the influence of the West Virginia dispute on today’s uprisings without reducing the multiple issues and variety of protesters involved then and now to a simplistic, dualistic feud. Quick Comparisons At first glance, there are some compelling similarities between the Kanawha County textbook controversy and tea party protests. For instance, the earliest objections to the controversial language arts curriculum were made in 1974 by Alice Moore, a white conservative Christian woman whose maternity functioned as de facto moral authority. Tea party hero and 2008 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin bears a striking historical resemblance to her in terms of conservative agendas and controversy surrounding their gender. The Charleston Gazette implied a connection when it reported in 2010 that “at the age of 69, [Moore] paid $560 to cheer Sarah Palin at the National Tea Party Convention at Nashville. Moore told reporters that troubles arose because 1960s radicals became schoolteachers