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:
“Women are the people who are going to relieve us from all this oppression and depression. The rent boycott that is happening in Soweto now is alive because of the women. It is the women who are on the street committees educating the people to stand up and protect each other.”
—Nontsikelelo Albertina Sisulu (b. 1919)
“Men are rewarded for learning the practice of violence in virtually any sphere of activity by money, admiration, recognition, respect, and the genuflection of others honoring their sacred and proven masculinity. In male culture, police are heroic and so are outlaws; males who enforce standards are heroic and so are those who violate them.”
—Andrea Dworkin (b. 1946)