Book Binds

By Kathleen Kennedy Manzo

Charleston, W. Va.

There are no visible scars from the bomb that ripped through a darkened classroom at Midway Elementary School here a quarter-century ago. Evidence of the dynamite and pipe bombs left in and around several other Kanawha County schools, and of the bullets that hit school buses and police cars, is also gone. The threatening phone calls, too, are all part of the painful past for the educators targeted by protesters in one of the largest and most violent textbook controversies in the nation's history. In fact, just about everything in this 30,000-student district appears to have gotten back to normal years ago.

But as the community learned when friends and relations turned against each other in the conflict over what and how students should be taught, not everything is as it appears. Though the name-calling has ceased and the fear subsided, all is not forgotten.

Periodic aftershocks from the dramatic events of the fall of 1974—when protesters shut down schools and coal mines in an effort to censor what they said were "dirty" and "godless" texts—still ripple through the ranks of teachers, administrators, and residents in the West Virginia capital and in the county's...