Moms for Liberty Is Riding High. It Should Beware What Comes Next.

Everyone loves moms. Everyone. And that’s a problem for groups like Moms for Liberty.

The group revels in its inflated reputation as a “national powerhouse,” but its century-old playbook has always had a fatal flaw.

As the 1970s story of Alice Moore shows, white conservative mothers have always had great initial political success, but that appeal tends to spiral quickly out of their control.

Moore’s story might sound familiar. She rocketed into national prominence in 1974 by taking over her local school board, blocking books and fighting for “parents’ rights.” She ran as a nonpartisan “mother,” but in truth, she was an experienced activist for conservative causes. Long before she ran for school board, she had fought against abortion rights and against sex education in schools. She railed against public schools’ alleged progressive agenda, accusing them of “destroying our children’s patriotism, trust in God, respect for authority and confidence in their parents.”

Once on the school board of Kanawha County, West Virginia, Moore ignited a dramatic boycott of a new series of textbooks. She inflamed conservative opinion nationwide by claiming that the books trampled on parents’ rights. Moore warned that the new books would force white kids into feeling guilt and anguish about America’s racism.

Moore did not invent her powerful political persona. She modeled her career on that of Texas’ Norma Gabler. Gabler had become a national powerhouse in the 1960s by blocking history textbooks and forcing publishers to tell a more conservative story. Though Gabler always called herself just a “Texas homemaker” or “Longview housewife,” she ran a staff of eight, combing through textbook copy to sniff out progressive content.

Gabler, in turn, modeled her organization on that of the Daughters of the American Revolution. As far back as the 1920s, DAR leaders campaigned to keep America’s public schools “fundamentally Anglo-Saxon.” Back then, DAR claimed almost 200,000 members. Anne Rogers Minor, DAR’s national leader at the time, claimed that it was their role as patriotic mothers to “Guard well your schools.” Minor warned that too many teachers taught ideas that parents might not like. As Minor put it, “We want no teachers who say there are two sides to every question.”

DAR’s activism was powerful and lingered for decades, but their sprawling, angry organization always ranged beyond the control of the national leaders. In 1963, one DAR member in Mississippi humiliated the group with her violent opposition to a widely used children’s book. The book, The New Our New Friends (1956), had been read for years in Mississippi public schools. It told cheerful moral stories about cute baby animals, as when Bobby Squirrel discovered he could get a nut just by asking for one. One local DAR leader, though, accused the book of spreading subversive socialism by teaching children, like Bobby Squirrel, to expect a “collective welfare system.” DAR had worked hard to maintain their reputation as America’s maternal conscience. This kind of strident, frenzied activism, however, opened up the group to mockery from all sides, as when historian James Silver sarcastically praised the Mississippi DAR for keeping the state’s children safe from the dangerous “story of the squirrel storing nuts.”

By the 1970s, Alice Moore’s career repeated the pattern. Just like Norma Gabler and DAR, Moore attracted huge support, seemingly overnight. Her warnings about new textbooks led to a boycott of local public schools. The fledgling Heritage Foundation scrambled to send support. The White House, too, voiced its enthusiasm for Moore’s vision. President Ford’s commissioner of education, Terrel Bell, opposed any textbooks that “insult the values of most parents.”

As Alice Moore quickly found, however, her meteoric success came at great cost. Her inflammatory language about public schools and teachers led to a spate of bombings and shootings. The school board building was rocked by a dynamite bomb. Two elementary schools were firebombed. Nonconservative members of the school board were physically attacked and pummeled at a public meeting. The district’s superintendent went into hiding, moving from couch to couch every night to escape incessant death threats. Soon school buses came under hails of sniper fire. Along the turbulent picket lines, two people were shot; thankfully, both survived.

Moore disavowed the violence, but she couldn’t escape the fact that her rhetoric had directly caused it. Similarly, when the Ku Klux Klan rolled into town to support the boycott, Moore insisted she had nothing to do with their campaign. She also said she had nothing to do with the burning cross outside the school district’s headquarters in 1975, and it seems very likely she was telling the truth. Yet when the Klan’s local leader articulated his vision for public schools, his language was the same as Moore’s. Just like Alice Moore, the Klan promised to “return patriotism and Christianity to our schools.” They claimed to be joining the national campaign to stop “the breakdown of morals among our children.”

Alice Moore denounced it all, but the damage was done. The boycott—now indelibly associated with the Klan—fizzled. A student march in favor of the controversial books attracted thousands of supporters. The books remained in schools, though parents had to sign a permission slip for a few of the titles.

The lesson for Moms for Liberty is clear. It is easy to get quick support by standing up for children and parents’ rights. It is simple to spread alarm about teachers as “groomers” and the possibility that white children might feel guilty about racism. But that support can be dangerous.

The political dangers have become painfully obvious. Moms for Liberty has always struggled to control its message. One local group in Tennessee embarrassed the organization in 2021 by calling for a ban on a book about seahorses because the book was “too sexy.” More recently, another local chapter infamously quoted Adolf Hitler. The national leadership scrambled to explain the obvious. The quote was not meant to endorse Hitler, but rather to endorse parents’ rights.

But the backpedaling only underlined the obvious point: The Moms were out of control. It’s not only about embarrassing gaffes. Just as earlier conservative women attracted the support of violent right-wing men, today’s Moms are also supported by militant right-wing groups. At some school board meetings, Moms have been backed up by menacing ranks of Proud Boys. The Proud Boys have threatened and fought with parents for wearing COVID masks or supporting the rights of LGBTQ+ children.

With or without intimidating backup from the Proud Boys or other right-wing organizations, threats have become an ominous part of the Moms’ playbook. Local leaders have been convicted of harassment for threatening their neighbors. As one victim described on the witness stand, a local Mom “said she’d find my family.” In Livingston County, Michigan, the chair of the local Moms chapter made no attempt to soft-pedal her warning. As she told the school board: “We’re coming after you. Take it as a threat. Call the FBI. I don’t care.”

Moms for Liberty has found that, like Alice Moore before them or DAR before that, speaking in the name of “Moms” can lead to rapid growth. But it is frighteningly easy for that growth to spread out of control, making it difficult to avoid violence and the threat of violence.

By maligning schools and smearing teachers as sexual predators, Moms for Liberty is playing with the same ideological dynamite that wreaked havoc in Alice Moore’s Kanawha County. It is terrifyingly easy to predict what’s in store: more violent extremists will heed the Moms’ call to seize control of schools, using whatever means necessary.