Legendary activist Alice Whitehurst Moore, who sparked the first “textbook wars” in 1974 while serving on the Kanawha County Board of Education in West Virginia, passed away last month at 82. Her efforts changed the course of American history, but ultimately failed to remove dishonest books and extremist indoctrination from public schools.
The movement that Moore helped lead foreshadowed the ongoing battles over porn in schools today. As readers of The Newman Report know well, books and materials normalizing every kind of perversion — from raping babies and bestiality to gender confusion and cannibalism — have become a lighting rod of criticism in recent years. Parents nationwide have reacted with horror, but the evil continues to grow.
Moore’s activism began in 1974 when, as a schoolboard member, she learned that new “language arts” books in the district were promoting “multiculturalism.” That absurd notion that today has become ubiquitous thanks to indoctrination in public schools holds that all cultures are essentially of equal value — except for Western civilization, which because of its biblical foundations is said to be uniquely terrible.
After reviewing the books, Moore objected to the propaganda and tried to stop them from being used in her district. When that failed, Moore called for boycotts of businesses supporting the trends that news reports said “paralyzed” the local community and surrounding counties. The whole sage eventually became known as the “Kanawha County Textbook Controversy.”
The public reaction to the books was furious. News reports from the time suggest that some of the protesters even resorted to violence, although Moore herself always called for peaceful methods to protect children. One activist who lived through the saga suggested to The Newman Report that there may have been shady tactics including possible false flags by the education establishment to discredit critics.
Multiple reports about the controversy say that it became a rallying point for the then-fledgling Heritage Foundation as well as the fast-growing Christian conservative movement seeking to restore and protect traditional values. Ronald Reagan was inspired by it, too. Unfortunately, though, after almost 50 years and countless millions spent on “school reform” by conservatives, government schools are worse than ever.
In fact, today, the books Moore was objecting too would be considered far too conservative by the radical education establishment. The books parents are objecting to in the modern era are so explicit and perverted that they have been properly described as obscene and even child pornography. In the 1970s, teachers would have almost certainly been arrested for providing such filth to children.
By contrast, today, the FBI and the Biden Department of Justice have been terrorizing parents who speak out to vociferously at school-board meetings using “counterterrorism” resources. Parental-rights organizations such as Moms for Liberty, meanwhile, have been put on “hate maps” and “anti-government extremist” lists by fringe leftwing groups working with the Biden administration.
Moore, a mother of five children and wife of a pastor, passed away at her home in Tennessee surrounded by loving family members. She is survived by her children, 9 grandchildren, and 6 great grandchildren. But her legacy of trying to protect innocent children from government indoctrination masquerading as “education” will live on as she inspires this generation of parents to stand up.
Moore’s valiant efforts made millions of concerned Americans aware of the dangers lurking in government schools and the textbooks they use to brainwash children. Unfortunately, though, the horrors in the books and schools are orders of magnitude worse today than they were then. It is time for conservatives and Christians to recognize that government schools cannot be reformed — they must be abandoned.
