Conservative Christian Activists and Coal Miners in the Kanawha County (WV) Textbook Protest of 1974

In September 1974, a faction of parents in Kanawha County, West Virginia, agitated for a boycott of public schools. These parents—many of whom hailed from rural churches— took issue with the language arts curricula that school board officials had adopted for the 1974-75 school year, believing that the new textbooks inculcated “humanist” worldviews antithetical to conservative Christianity. They failed to achieve the system-wide boycott for which they had hoped. Yet opening-day attendance was off by 20% from the previous year.

Two days after the public schools opened, coal miners in Kanawha County and in two neighboring counties walked off the job. The striking miners claimed solidarity with anti-textbook forces and pledged to stay out of the mines as long as the new language arts books remained in the schools.

The unlikely alliance of coal miners and conservative Christians offers a window onto late-twentieth century grassroots activism. The two constituencies seem like odd bedfellows; conservative Christians have become reliable Republicans, while organized labor supports Democrats. And in fact, the ad hoc coalition of coal miners and conservative Christians split up in relatively short order. Republican institutions like the Heritage Foundation swooped into West Virginia and claimed the anti-textbook cause as their own, while miners’ attention turned to a nationwide strike in November. But the two groups did work together—successfully—for a brief period. Their campaign suggests that an undercurrent of populism animated early Christian Right activism. Looking closely at the Kanawha County saga, this paper challenges overly simplistic accounts of the connections between corporate interests and evangelical activists. I argue that the anti-textbook protest highlights underlying fissures in contemporary conservatism, fissures that have begun to appear in recent political contests.