The Kanawha County textbook controversy was a violent school control struggle in the 20th century United States. It led to the largest protests ever in the history of Kanawha County, West Virginia, the shooting of one bystander, and extended school closings. The controversy erupted in 1974 when new, multicultural textbooks were introduced that some parents considered blasphemous. 1974 school board ruling In 1970, West Virginia's Superintendent of Schools signed a proposal for funding to ensure the training of teachers to "induce change" so that children in the state's educational system could elevate and expand above their own cultural surroundings that the state viewed as limited. On 12 March 1974, the English Language Arts Textbook Committee of Kanawha County, West Virginia recommended 325 books and textbooks to the school board for use in Kanawha schools ranging from kindergarten to 12th grade. The books were selected by the Committee based on state guidelines that had been set, including but not limited to some that books should be "multicultural in content and authorship". An English teacher on the committee stated that although she held strong conservative values, she felt that removing books that showed opposing opinions would be equivalent to "telling lies by omitting ideas I know exist". Among these were titles such as America Reads and Language of Man. These textbooks were part of a new state curriculum that included for the first time the concepts of multiculturalism and egalitarianism in textbook writing. Most school board members saw no reason to question the state's decision. Alice Moore Alice Moore had previously campaigned against sex education being taught in the county and was elected as the only member of the Kanawha County School Board that did not have a college degree. Moore also had four children attending county schools. Moore was concerned by the term dialectology, which implied the teaching of Appalachian English and African American Vernacular English as "equally correct" dialects. Historian Carol Mason writes that Moore did not want White children to learn language used by African Americans with the belief that it would cause the White children "to speak in ghetto dialect." The school board moved to review the books before sending them to schools. Upon receiving the review copies, Moore was offended by a quote from the Autobiography of Malcolm X in which he referred to Christians as "brainwashed"; she requested and received all 300 textbooks, and claimed that