|
Showing 1 - 2 of
2 matches in All Departments
During the spring semester of 1975, Wayne Woodward, a popular young
English teacher at La Plata Junior High School in Hereford, Texas,
was unceremoniously fired. His offense? Founding a local chapter of
the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Believing he had been
unjustly targeted, Woodward sued the school district. You Will
Never Be One of Us chronicles the circumstances surrounding
Woodward’s dismissal and the ensuing legal battle. Revealing a
uniquely regional aspect of the cultural upheaval of the 1970s, the
case offers rare insight into the beginnings of the rural-urban,
local-national divide that continues to roil American politics. By
1975 Hereford, a quiet farming town in the Texas Panhandle, had
become “majority minority,” and Woodward’s students were
mostly the children of Mexican and Mexican American workers at
local agribusinesses. Most townspeople viewed the ACLU as they did
Woodward’s long hair and politics: as threatening a radical
liberal takeover—and a reckoning for the town’s white power
structure. Locals were presented with a choice: either support
school officials who sought to rid themselves of a liberal
troublemaker, or side with an idealistic young man whose
constitutional rights might have been violated. In Timothy
Bowman’s deft telling, Woodward’s story exposes the sources and
depths of rural America's political culture during the latter half
of the twentieth century and the lengths to which small-town
conservatives would go to defend it. In defining a distinctive
rural, middle-American “Panhandle conservatism,” You Will Never
Be One of Us extends the study of the conservative movement beyond
the suburbs of the Sunbelt and expands our understanding of a
continuing, perhaps deepening, rift in American political culture.
During the spring semester of 1975, Wayne Woodward, a popular young
English teacher at La Plata Junior High School in Hereford, Texas,
was unceremoniously fired. His offense? Founding a local chapter of
the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Believing he had been
unjustly targeted, Woodward sued the school district. You Will
Never Be One of Us chronicles the circumstances surrounding
Woodward's dismissal and the ensuing legal battle. Revealing a
uniquely regional aspect of the cultural upheaval of the 1970s, the
case offers rare insight into the beginnings of the rural-urban,
local-national divide that continues to roil American politics. By
1975 Hereford, a quiet farming town in the Texas Panhandle, had
become "majority minority," and Woodward's students were mostly the
children of Mexican and Mexican American workers at local
agribusinesses. Most townspeople viewed the ACLU as they did
Woodward's long hair and politics: as threatening a radical liberal
takeover-and a reckoning for the town's white power structure.
Locals were presented with a choice: either support school
officials who sought to rid themselves of a liberal troublemaker,
or side with an idealistic young man whose constitutional rights
might have been violated. In Timothy Bowman's deft telling,
Woodward's story exposes the sources and depths of rural America's
political culture during the latter half of the twentieth century
and the lengths to which small-town conservatives would go to
defend it. In defining a distinctive rural, middle-American
"Panhandle conservatism," You Will Never Be One of Us extends the
study of the conservative movement beyond the suburbs of the
Sunbelt and expands our understanding of a continuing, perhaps
deepening, rift in American political culture.
|
|