It’s tempting to think of the so-called Kanawha Textbook Wars as a relic from the past, but this Banned Books Week, we should ask ourselves just how far we’ve come since 1974.
That year, pro-censorship forces descended on the Kanawha Valley to gin up outrage over multicultural textbooks in public schools. Buses were shot, the KKK marched on the Capitol, a school was bombed, and a protester was shot in the chest.
But don’t let the black-and-white images of those turbulent times fool you — the right to read what we want and learn about our world is still under assault. The pro-censorship side is just getting started and it has some familiar allies.
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