Boycott and Violence
The boycott escalated quickly. Nine thousand out of 45,000 elementary school students in the county were kept home from school. Thousands of miners, bus drivers, and trucking workers joined in the boycott. The Department of Education called for a compromise, but Reverend Horan denounced them, demanding that the boycott continue until the books were permanently removed and the supporting members of the school board fired. Bombs were planted at an elementary school and a school board building; another elementary school was dynamited, school buses were attacked with shotguns, and the homes of children who continued to attend school during the boycott were stoned. Alice Moore herself fled town during this time.
Reverend Charles Quigley asked Christians to pray that God would kill the three board members who voted to keep the books, leading one student to point out, "They're shooting people because they don't want to see violence in books." Kanawha's sheriff asked for state troopers to be sent in, but West Virginia Governor Arch A. Moore, Jr. denied the request. Schools were closed several times to avoid further violence.
In April 1975 Marvin Horan was sentenced to three years in prison on charges related to the bombings, effectively ending the demonstration. In Fall 1975 the school board restored the full line of books that they had approved before to all county schools.
Read more about this topic: Kanawha County Textbook Controversy
Famous quotes containing the words boycott and/or violence:
“Take away from the courts, if it could be taken away, the power to issue injunctions in labor disputes, and it would create a privileged class among the laborers and save the lawless among their number from a most needful remedy available to all men for the protection of their business interests against unlawful invasion.... The secondary boycott is an instrument of tyranny, and ought not to be made legitimate.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Violence upon the roads: violence of horses;
Some few have handsome riders, are garlanded
On delicate sensitive ear or tossing mane,
But wearied running round and round in their courses
All break and vanish, and evil gathers head:
Herodias’ daughters have returned again.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)