The Shirley Smith Story
(A Case Study of Shoddy Scholarship)

By Karl C. Priest January 16, 2020 (revised 1-17-20)

NOTE: I welcome any evidence that brings a clear contradiction to my conclusion.

INTRODUCTION

In the Textbook Protester Truth pages I have two goals: (1) To show that the Kanawha County Textbook Protesters were NOT narrow-minded, ignorant, religious fanatics, censors, violent, or racist. (2) To show how researchers and writers have used each other’s material which mostly comes from news reports from the liberal Charleston Gazette and compromising conservative Charleston Daily Mail. For the latter goal, “A Tale of Three Tiny Tomes” is quite revealing. What has happened, since 1974, is a fabrication-fantasy-fiction narrative passed off as journalism and academic research.

Thanks to a great Kanawha County Public Library (KCPL) librarian who is interested in truth, I got a copy of "Silent, no more: The 1974 Kanawha County textbook controversy and the rise of conservatism in America" (2006). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. West Virginia University, by Justin J. McHenry.

In McHenry’s paper I found:

Shirley A. Smith succinctly put it. Smith worked for the Kanawha County Public Library and had to make frequent visits to these new, upstart schools, and her impressions take you to a place of dirt and disorder. “There was an air of absolute hostility about the place,” Smith says of Faith Gospel Tabernacle School: “They seemed to HATE us, to blame us for making them [into] what they were doing.” Which he attributed to: Shirley A. Smith, FGTS—A Visit and Impressions (Charleston: Kanawha County Public Library, May 23, 1975), 2. FGTS stands for “Faith Gospel Tabernacle School.”

“Impression: an idea, feeling, or opinion about something or someone, especially one formed without conscious thought or on the basis of little evidence.” (https://www.lexico.com/definition/impression) From the same source, “an air of” is “an impression” and “seemed” is to “give the impression.” Whoever made the slur based it upon his/her subjective feelings and exhibited an obvious distain for the against the Kanawha County Textbook Protester children observed.

That comment did not seem likely to have come from Shirley Smith because I had read her fair-minded report published in the School Library Journal. I quoted her in two Textbook Protester Truth pages:

(1) Not Censors

Certainly the textbook controversy should not be confused with library book selection: they are separate problems entirely. The school child is part of a captive audience and subject to indoctrination. His rights must be protected. A classroom situation however is not the same as a library situation…At the heart of the matter is whether tax-supported schools should reflect their communities’ needs and whether legally responsible parents should have a say in what their minor charges are taught. Smith, Shirley A. “Crisis in Kanawha County: A Librarian looks at the Textbook Controversy.” SLJ-School Library Journal, January 1975: 35

(2) Not Narrow-minded

The protesters have been caricaturized as uneducated, strange-talking hillbillies by the national media which has not attempted to understand these people, their position, or the reasons for their actions…The most outstanding characteristic of these people and the one most pertinent to the textbook controversy is their religious heritage…Claiming that their religious freedom is at stake, the protesters will not compromise their belief in absolute values of right and wrong and accept situation ethics. Over the past few years, books have been rewritten to accommodate the needs of ghetto Blacks and other minority groups: are the deep-felt religious needs of Appalachians of less importance? One woman wrote to the local press saying, ‘I have every right to say that my children not be taught disrespect to law officers, parents and most of all to God.’ This woman has a valid point. As minors, children do not have the right to intellectual or academic freedom if their parents veto it…Much criticism has been leveled at the protesters on the grounds that they are narrow-minded, provincial, intolerant and even illiterate, that they haven’t read the texts, and they have brought about a state of near anarchy. But it is also true that many persons far better educated contributed to the polarization of factions by having lent the weight of their prestige to approve the whole book package with little or no knowledge of the contents or understanding of the community. Smith, Shirley A. “Crisis in Kanawha County: A Librarian looks at the Textbook Controversy.” SLJ-School Library Journal, January 1975: 35.

Ms. Smith received a memo regarding her article (February 25, 1975. Original at WV Archives) from far-left liberal Charleston Gazette editor Don Marsh. He said, “In the past, I would have applauded the even handed way in which you treated the protesters. I’m afraid my opinion is beginning to change. (The protesters) are representatives of the dark side of American character that prospers wherever fear, bigotry and ignorance are found.” Hmmm. The Charleston Gazette city editor, Don Marsh, referred to the protesters as the “crazies.” (Rupp, Carla Marie. “Charleston Editors Wrestle with Antitextbook Crusade.” Editor and Publisher Nov. 2, 1974: 9.) So much for open-minded liberalism! Would it be reasonable to think that the Gazette would slant its news against the protesters? There is more about Marsh’s hypocrisy on pages 24-25 of Protester Voices—The 1974 Textbook Tea Party.

Additional information (not on the “Not Narrow-minded” page) is in Protester Voices—The 1974 Textbook Tea Party (25-26):

A key figure at the Gazette during 1974 was Don Marsh. Marsh referred to the protesters as “the crazies.” Mr. Marsh refused to publish my November 1974 letter-to-the-editor because it exceeded 300 words and I requested it not be edited. I think his real motive was that he did not want to promote a teacher who was a protest leader. Marsh was exercising editorial selection, not censorship, of course.

Marsh was a little hot-headed. He fired off an angry letter to me in response to a letter of mine criticizing the Gazette…Marsh could not tolerate an opinion such as Smith’s. He wrote, “The more I see and deal with these people who are against the books, the more discouraged with the future I become…” and “…they are representatives of the dark side of American character that prospers wherever fear, bigotry, and ignorance are found.” Could one perhaps be cynical of the objectivity of the press?

Don Marsh is an emblem of liberal narrow-mindedness and hatred toward the Kanawha County Textbook Protesters. Sadly, many jiving journalists and shamming scholars have sunk to the low standard set by Mr. Marsh.

INVESTIGATION

I unsuccessfully tried to reach Shirley Smith via the West Virginia Library Commission and Kanawha County Public Library (KCPL). I also tried to find her phone number via an Internet search. That experience was interesting, but fruitless. I was successful in contacting Mr. McHenry.

The evidence shows that Mr. McHenry falsely concluded that Ms. Smith made the inflammatory remarks. Following is the evidence for the reader to make his/her own conclusion.

1. A 12-2-2019 Dec 2, 2019 email from another librarian (West Virginia Archives), dedicated to truth, told me:

“I looked through the volumes of scrapbooks we got from Shirley Smith with no success, but then went back and looked at another collection of articles and materials we had taken in from Mrs. James Randall back in the early 1990s, and did find mimeographed copies of the articles referenced. They don’t explicitly state that Shirley Smith was the author, but I think this is what you are looking for. I’m attaching scans of those two articles, with a total of five pages.”

2. A 12-3-2019 email from Alice Moore (of the Kanawha County Textbook Protest fame) told me:

“Barbara Randall ran against me in my second election, she and seven others, none of whom got many votes. She was the teachers' union/NEA sponsored candidate.”

3. A 12-4-2019 from the West Virginia Archives librarian told me:

“(T)he two things I copied and sent you were in a folder labelled text protest. There are a couple of folders labelled with dates, like 11/74 and 12/74, another folder labeled textbook controversy, and a couple with no labelling. The folder with the pieces I sent you is mostly articles from different media sources, and copies of the policies of KCPL for selection of books and materials from 1959 and 1974. One article written by Elmer Fike is accompanied by a letter from Mr. Fike sending it to Shirley Smith at KCPL.

“This whole box of the Randall collection deals with the textbook controversy. The scrapbook is full of clippings and the folders are a mix of other articles and materials relating to the issue.”

4. A 12-1-2019 from the West Virginia Archives librarian told me:

“Unfortunately, I don’t have anything prior to those two pages. And these materials are from Sc93-3, Scrapbook, Kanawha Textbook Controversy, which was donated by Mrs. Randall.”

5. A 12-4-2019 email from the West Virginia Archives librarian told me:

“I have no idea how the statements were attributed to Shirley Smith – I saw nothing in the folder that would lead me to make that conclusion.”

6. A 12-10-2019 email from the Kanawha County Public Library librarian told me:

“I found an article listing Shirley Smith as head of circulation in 1977. All can find for the bookmobile in the paper is the schedule.  I find that a Mrs. WG Miller was over the extension services in 1968 when we bought a new bookmobile.  However I don't know that she would have driven the bookmobile or that she was there in the 1970s.”

7. I asked the Kanawha County Public Library librarian if the head of circulation would have been over the bookmobile. In a 12-23-2019 email from the Kanawha County Public Library librarian told me:

“I don't know. I imagine they might have filled in, but I don't know.”

I asked Mr. McHenry, “My question is, how did you know that Shirley Smith made that report that contains your quote? It is totally out of character from her 1-75 School Library Journal article she wrote (‘Crisis in Kanawha County: a librarian looks at the textbook controversy’)”

In a 12-11-2019 email Mr. McHenry told me:

“That is a good question. I’m not really sure what led me to believe that Mrs. Smith wrote that report. You’re right the report and her School Library Journal article don’t have the same tone to them. Unfortunately, I have not kept any of my notes or research from my theses so I can’t check and figure out my logic back then. It could have been something in one of the other sources that led me to believe that. Or maybe it was just an assumption on my part.”

CONCLUSION

The unsigned quotes used by Mr. McHenry are 3-15-1975 and 5-23 1975. Shirley Smith was employed by the Kanawha County Public Library on 7-16-1975 according to the letter written to her by Elmer Fike. According to the Kanawha County Public Library librarian Shirley Smith was head of the KCPL extension service in 1977. According to the West Virginia Archives librarian, the Blue Book lists Shirley Smith working for the West Virginia Library Commission in 1982.

I could not confirm if Shirley Smith was part of the bookmobile staff while she worked for the Kanawha County Public Library. The letter addressed to her from Elmer Fike is likely why Mr. McHenry attributed the unsigned hostile quotes to her. That is understandable, but not excusable.

The writer of the highly negative quote attributed to Shirley Smith, and the core of this study, wrote with utter contempt toward the Protesters. His/her 3-15-1975 report could be the template for almost all of the diatribe that has drenched the Protesters since 1974.

In the highly unlikely case that Shirley Smith wrote the negative quotes, she would have had to have had a complete change of heart after her objective January 1975 article and before the biased reports of March and May 1975.

Therefore, the logical conclusion is that the Shirley Smith Story is a perfect example of shoddy research and biased “reporting.”

ADDITIONAL EVIDENCE

From Protester Voices—The 1974 Textbook Tea Party (247-249) a former student of the Faith Gospel Tabernacle school wrote (in part):

“My mom was a strong advocate for a quality education for her children…Near, the end of summer, before I was to enter fifth grade, members of Faith Gospel Tabernacle opened a Christian school in our neighborhood. Sharing the same burden as so many parents, Faith Christian School was born. My parents made the decision to send my brother and me to the school…The classrooms were in the basement of the church for my fifth grade year. I loved the school from the very first day. It was a smooth, eventless, transition for me to go from the public school system to a private Christian school. The fall of my sixth grade year, the school moved from the church to a building on Bonham Hollow…My life has been amazingly blessed and enriched as a result of a mother with a burden for getting her children the best education she could find.”

News media could have easily observed the conditions described by the anonymous bookmobile staffer. Instead they found (videos of actual schools in 1974):

4:25 through the end: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CuhlZYPZmk Textbook War Video II

1:28- 3:50: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euE_7KC-FRA Textbook War Video I

BOTTOM LINE

Occasionally misinformation about the Kanawha County Textbook Protesters is (as in the McHenry case) an innocent mistake. Usually the misinformation is intentional malice that contains slurs and lies. Either way, the malicious statements get perpetuated by others. For example, Mr. McHenry is cited (#57 Chapter 7 pg. 281 “The Right Rebuilds in Adversary”) in White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement By Allan J. Lichtman Grove Press, NY, 2008. This book is by a Harvard Ph.D. who also wrote The Case for Impeachment, laying out multiple arguments for the impeachment of Donald Trump.

Dr. Lichtman (313) wrote at the end of his first full paragraph, “Protesters decried the inclusion of excerpts by black authors such as Eldridge Cleaver and James Baldwin who used ‘filthy language.’ And ‘non-standard English.’ And presented a negative, ‘race-conscious’ view of American life.” Putting aside the definition of “excerpt (https://www.lexico.com/definition/excerpt), I have plenty of evidence that the Protesters were not racists.

Dr. Lichtman provided the following citation at the end of his paragraph:

57. Edward B. Jenkinson, Censors in the Classroom: The Mind Benders (Carbondale: Southern University Illinois Press, 1979), 17-27, 108-32, Alice Moore on page 18; Justin J. McHenry, “Silent, No More: The 1974 Kanawha County Textbook Controversy and the Rise of Conservatism in America,” Ph.D. dissertation, West Virginia University, 2006.

In a January 15, 2020 email Mr. McHenry told me that, “Reading over the paragraph, I’m not really sure why Litchtman cited my thesis. Most of that paragraph did not really include information or ideas from my thesis. The only part would be is the brief mention of “secular humanism.” I put more emphasis on that than I think most other writers about the textbook controversy. (I could be wrong though.) So maybe that is why my thesis pops up there.”

I have the Jenkinson piece. Alice Moore is mentioned on page 18, but the term "nonstandard English" is on page 19. I do not see "filthy language" on pages 18-19. Eldridge Cleaver is mentioned on 19.

I found no reference to Edward B. Jenkinson in McHenry’s thesis. In fact, Lichtman wrongly called Mr. McHenry’s master’s thesis a “Ph.D. dissertation.”

On the same page, Dr. Lichtman wrote that “Kanawha County degenerated into mass protests, vandalism, shootings, arson, assaults, and bombings…and one protester hurled a death curse against three school board members” before bring in the Ku Klux Klan. That is not scholarship! It is slimy sensationalism (the presentation of stories in a way that is intended to provoke public interest or excitement, at the expense of accuracy. https://www.lexico.com/) and is not worthy of respect. It does not even rise to the level of shoddy scholarship.

Besides passing on a fabrication-fantasy-fiction narrative claiming to be journalism and academic research, this shows that Harvard Ph.D.’s are not immune from the egregious efforts (whether intentional or not) to defame the Kanawha County Textbook Protesters.

Thank you, Shirley Smith!

The Shirley Smith Story represents why the book Protester Voices—The 1974 Textbook Tea Party and website Textbook Protester Truth are necessary. The Kanawha County Textbook Protesters were overwhelmingly the opposite of what has been widely reported since 1974. If liberals were almost always identified as Antifa, how would they feel? True liberals, if any still exist, should join me in exposing the lies told about the Kanawha County Textbook Protesters.

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Mr. McHenry’s thesis does show WHY THE KANAWHA COUNTY TEXTBOOK WAR IMPACTED THE ENTIRE NATION.

Also see “Indisputable Ignoble Ignorance and Insolence” and “Dr. Durst Duplicates and Designs Disinformation”.

The TRUTH is that the Kanawha County Textbook Protesters were true patriots and heroes. They consisted of thousands of humble people who have suffered humiliation because they stood up for children and America in 1974. The Kanawha County Textbook Protesters deserve to be honored.  Please read THE FACTS.

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