The Pennsylvania State University the Graduate School College of The

The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of the Liberal Arts ORGANIC CLASSROOMS: RHETORICAL EDUCATION AT THE HIGHLANDER FOLK SCHOOL, 1932-1961 A Thesis in English by Stephen Schneider © 2007 Stephen Schneider Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2007 The thesis of Stephen Schneider was reviewed and approved* by the following: Keith Gilyard Distinguished Professor of English Thesis Adviser Chair of Committee Jack Selzer Professor of English Jeffrey Nealon Professor of English Ronald L. Jackson II Associate Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences Robert Caserio Professor of English Head of the Department of English *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School. ii ABSTRACT Organic Classrooms: Rhetorical Education at the Highlander Folk School, 1932-1961 evaluates the programs taught at one of the twentieth century’s most controversial educational institutions. Highlander, a residential adult education center located in Appalachian Tennessee, became famous (and infamous) for its work with the Southern Labor Movement and the Civil Rights Movement. Specifically, this study attends to the ways that the school prepared students for symbolic action—or the rhetorical use of local cultural media—within their communities and larger social movements. My dissertation describes the development of the folk school’s educational programs— particularly drama, labor journalism, music, and literacy education—as agencies for promoting and achieving social change. These programs proved important not just for the various skills and strategies that were taught to students, but also for the ways in which they organized students into larger communities. In this way, Highlander staff saw education for social change not simply as a question of curriculum, but rather as a means of political action. iii CONTENTS Acknowledgements ………..……………………………………………………….…v Introduction …………………………………………………………………………….1 Chapter One: Origins of the Highlander Idea …………………………………………24 Chapter Two: Labor Drama, Collaboration, and Communication ………………..…...75 Chapter Three: Labor Journalism, Identification, and Organization ….…………….117 Chapter Four: Music Education and Collective Action ……………………………..163 Chapter Five: Literacy, Community Organization, and the Civil Rights Movement ..200 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………252 Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………….260 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It goes without saying that I wouldn’t have been able to complete a project of this size without a lot of emotional, intellectual, and logistical support. I’m most grateful for the advice, mentoring, and open door of my dissertation director, Keith Gilyard, who knew when to support and when to challenge my ideas. I’m also indebted to the rest of my committee: Jeff Nealon, Jack Selzer, and Ron Jackson. This manuscript reflects their commitment to the project as much as it does mine. The intellectual environment at Penn State was central to the development and revision of the project, as was the support of several faculty members: Michael Bérubé, who constantly urged me to think more broadly and more deeply about social and cultural theory; Elaine Richardson, Cheryl Glenn, Xiaoye You, Richard Doyle, and Jenny Edbauer, for the constant conversations and support; Clement Hawes and Carla Mulford, for helping me to think about my work in term of English Studies as well as rhetoric and composition; Amitava Kumar, for always urging me to write essays, not papers; Robert Caserio, Janet Lyon, Jon Eburne, and Brian Lennon, for teaching me how to read; and Stuart Selber, for teaching me how to write. A special word of thanks needs to go to Keith Miller, who supported this project from the start and offered thoughtful advice at key moments during its development. Many of the graduate students I met at and through Penn State have also been instrumental in shaping this project: Mark Longaker, who helped me in no small way to navigate what it means to be a researcher; Vorris Nunley, who never failed to pose the right question; Steve Thomas, for always bringing a critical eye and genuine interest to v whatever I was working on; and Tony Ceraso, who has long been my most challenging critic. John Muckelbauer, Dan Smith, Holly Flint, Kem Crimmins, Jamie Ebersole, Scott Wible, Jessica Enoch, Jeremiah Dyehouse, Adam Banks, and Amy Clukey also provided much needed conversation, correctives, and counsel. And finally, I need to thank my family for all the support they’ve provided over the last seven years. My mother, Ann, and father, Rudi, have long been the two people I most look up to; this manuscript is in no small way a testament to all the guidance and inspiration they’ve provided over the years. My brother, Jay, and sister, Suzie, along with Roberta, Jaclyn, and Laila, have always been a constant source of warmth. My new family—Martha, Rob, Kathryn, and the rest of the Mozer gang—continue to make the United States a real home away from home. Finally, my wife Robin deserves special mention for picking up so much of my slack while I got this project written, and for reminding me daily just how lucky I am. Finally, my heartfelt thanks go to Oma and Opa Schneider, who first made all this possible. I can only hope they’re happy with how it turned out. vi INTRODUCTION: RHETORICAL EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE Historian John Glen has commented that “[t]he name ‘Highlander’ rarely evokes a neutral response” (1). Throughout its thirty-one year history, the Highlander Folk School became one of the most controversial educational institutions of the twentieth century. Among the individuals involved in establishing and supporting the school were John Dewey, Norman Thomas, Reinhold Niebuhr, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Chief among its opponents were J. Edgar Hoover, the Georgia Commission on Education, the Tennessee state legislature, and the Ku Klux Klan. Whether described as a heroic contributor to the Southern Labor and Civil Rights Movements, or as a “communist training school,” Highlander’s enigmatic role in the history of the American South is indisputable. This enigmatic reputation has inspired many writers to record Highlander’s story, and reflect on the meaning of that story for American society. John Glen has provided the most comprehensive history of the school and the broader social milieus that influenced its programs. Aimee Horton has further provided a general discussion of the development of the school’s pedagogy and the range of programs initiated at Highlander. Journalists Frank Adams and Thomas Bledsoe have provided more positively biased assessments of the school and its contribution to social change in America, while sociologists Aldon Morris and Franscesca Polletta have further elaborated on the contribution of the folk school to the development of the Civil Rights Movement. Further studies of the school have been completed by students in education, theater studies, and mass communication. 1 Despite the range of scholarly and journalistic work on the school, the Highlander Folk School has received less attention by scholars working in the field of rhetoric and composition. Only two dissertations within English Studies have considered the contribution of Highlander to our understanding of rhetorical education, and in both cases the consideration is limited to a chapter at the most. Nonetheless, the field of rhetoric provides a powerful lens through which to analyze Highlander’s programs and assess the relationship between rhetorical education and social change. In particular, rhetorical theory provides a means of describing the ways in which the folk school’s staff members articulated the relationship between education and social change. Education for Social Change Arguably, the most sustained theoretical effort to define the relationship between education and social change has come from field of critical pedagogy. Scholars of critical pedagogy have rightly identified the role that schools have played as “agents of socialization,” and have argued for a more democratic conception of this function (Theory and Resistance 45). As Peter McLaren puts it: Critical pedagogy commits itself to forms of learning and action that are undertaken in solidarity with subordinate and marginalized groups. In addition to interrogating what is taken for granted or seemingly self-evident or inevitable regarding the relationship between schools and the social order, critical pedagogy is dedicated to self-empowerment and social transformation. (Critical Pedagogy 32) 2 I quote Peter McLaren’s definition in its entirety to emphasize both the scholarly and social contributions that critical pedagogues attempt to make. In Henry Giroux’s words, critical pedagogy tries “to provide the foundation for using the schools as important sites to wage counter-hegemonic practices” ( Theory and Resistance 71). Responding to these political claims, Harold Entwistle has cautioned that “[t]he notion that the schools is hegemonic threatens to become one of those slogans which frequently serve as substitutes for detailed consideration of our educational arrangements” (1). While this statement is potentially too strong, it nonetheless points out to the often narrow way that hegemony is often defined by critical pedagogues. As I argue below, this has led to a focus on curricular reform within traditional classrooms as counter-hegemonic practice, often to the exclusion of alternative conceptions of education for social change. Critical pedagogy’s

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