Milton's Child, a novel by Kit Thornton
Publishers Place, Huntington,
233 pages, $13.95. paperback.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- One of West Virginia's most bizarre episodes -- the notorious 1974 Kanawha County fundamentalist uprising against "godless textbooks" -- has been retold by a sad victim.
Christopher "Kit" Thornton was a little boy whose evangelist father removed him from school to join marches against "evil" textbooks in the streets of Charleston during that stormy time. The father also flogged him savagely for trivial boyish behavior and denounced him as a 10-year-old "atheist" from the pulpit of his Witcher Creek church.
Thornton eventually broke free from his intolerant family, earned a degree in intellectual history at the University of Charleston, and took part in colorful events. (He once created a giant chessboard in the center of Town Center Mall, with costumed human pieces enacting a living chess game.) He went on to law school and now practices in Martinsburg.
Although his book is couched as a novel, he says its events actually happened to him as a child. It's a dismal tale of ugliness and ignorance. His narrow-minded father was self-righteous, judgmental against most of Kanawha Valley life around him. His mother meekly submitted in their Southern Baptist home. Here's his story:
The grade-school boy was whipped with belts endlessly by his raging father. The minister worried that authorities would discover purple welts and file child abuse charges.
One day in 1974, word spread among the church congregation that "wicked, communist, anti-Christian" textbooks were being adopted for Kanawha County schools. Fundamentalists flooded to the church and mobilized. A speaker from the Heritage Foundation roused the throng. Marches and rallies began. Women made signs saying "I have a Bible. I don't need those filthy books." Others made signs against "Jew books."
Dozens of evangelical preachers called a boycott of schools. Parishioners kept their children home. Makeshift religious schools were organized in church basements. The 10-year-old fifth-grader -- gifted with a sky-high I.Q. -- laughed at the sappy lessons. He was paddled ferociously for giving smart-aleck answers, then belted more by his father, who warned that the Bible mandates stoning for incorrigible sons.
The boy retreated into private reading, seated on rock ledges above Witcher Creek. He obtained a forbidden book from a Bookmobile: John Milton's arcane, archaic Paradise Lost
Milton's Child, a novel by Kit Thornton
Publishers Place, Huntington,
233 pages, $13.95. paperback.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- One of West Virginia's most bizarre episodes -- the notorious 1974 Kanawha County fundamentalist uprising against "godless textbooks" -- has been retold by a sad victim.
Christopher "Kit" Thornton was a little boy whose evangelist father removed him from school to join marches against "evil" textbooks in the streets of Charleston during that stormy time. The father also flogged him savagely for trivial boyish behavior and denounced him as a 10-year-old "atheist" from the pulpit of his Witcher Creek church.
Thornton eventually broke free from his intolerant family, earned a degree in intellectual history at the University of Charleston, and took part in colorful events. (He once created a giant chessboard in the center of Town Center Mall, with costumed human pieces enacting a living chess game.) He went on to law school and now practices in Martinsburg.
Although his book is couched as a novel, he says its events actually happened to him as a child. It's a dismal tale of ugliness and ignorance. His narrow-minded father was self-righteous, judgmental against most of Kanawha Valley life around him. His mother meekly submitted in their Southern Baptist home. Here's his story:
The grade-school boy was whipped with belts endlessly by his raging father. The minister worried that authorities would discover purple welts and file child abuse charges.
One day in 1974, word spread among the church congregation that "wicked, communist, anti-Christian" textbooks were being adopted for Kanawha County schools. Fundamentalists flooded to the church and mobilized. A speaker from the Heritage Foundation roused the throng. Marches and rallies began. Women made signs saying "I have a Bible. I don't need those filthy books." Others made signs against "Jew books."
Dozens of evangelical preachers called a boycott of schools. Parishioners kept their children home. Makeshift religious schools were organized in church basements. The 10-year-old fifth-grader -- gifted with a sky-high I.Q. -- laughed at the sappy lessons. He was paddled ferociously for giving smart-aleck answers, then belted more by his father, who warned that the Bible mandates stoning for incorrigible sons.
The boy retreated into private reading, seated on rock ledges above Witcher Creek. He obtained a forbidden book from a Bookmobile: John Milton's arcane, archaic Paradise Lost
. In secret, he read of Satan being cast from heaven and later deceiving Adam and Eve. He wondered why God allowed such troubles.
Daily textbook protests in Charleston's streets turned increasingly violent. Rocks flew through windows. Bullets were fired into schoolbuses. Dynamite shattered schools. Two people were shot. The Board of Education office was bombed. Ku Klux Klansmen rallied against the books. Coal miners went on strike to support the protests. Fundamentalists attempted to form a separate county in the upriver sector including Witcher Creek. Schools were closed. Some preachers were jailed, then released.
The book reprints a 1974 Gazette report on the escalating turmoil. It quoted striking miners who complained because black Charleston police were sent to keep peace: "They sent two coon detectives. You know, two niggers. N-I-G-G-E-R-S. Now, you print that."
Amid the dangerous chaos, the little boy's life disintegrated. During a church service, his father told the congregation, "there is sin in my house," and said his son had become an atheist. The child protested that it wasn't true, but was locked in a room at home.
The boy hatched a clever scheme. He faked a fever and was taken to a clinic -- where doctors saw welts on his back, buttocks and legs. He was removed from his father's custody and placed in a group home.
Church leaders pulled strings with state officials, and the evangelist wasn't charged. The grade-schooler eventually was sent home -- to a life of stony silence, banned to his bedroom, kept in limbo. Klansmen came to his home to consult with his father.
The fundamentalist war began to collapse. A different evangelist, the Rev. Marvin Horan, and some of his followers were jailed on school-bombing charges. Public sentiment turned against the protesters. Horan went to federal prison. The uprising fizzled.
The 10-year-old ran away from home, but was caught. His father engaged an exorcist minister to purge "demons" from him. The boy fought back by quoting Milton.
The book ends as the father prepares to move to a new church in Oklahoma, and police haul his son to the Dunbar juvenile shelter as incorrigible.
Various accounts of the 1974 tempest have been written. This evidently is the first through the eyes of a gifted child in a fundamentalist family.
Superbly written. All the characters -- even thuggish klansmen and an uneducated fundamentalist girl disgraced by unwed pregnancy -- are genuine, believable, understandable, true to West Virginia's hills. Recommended.
Footnote: Young Thornton later split from his parents in Oklahoma, returned to Charleston and became an outstanding U.C. student.
