Just Miles Away but Worlds Apart: Examining Jewish Participation in Integration Programs at Black Mountain College and Highlander Folk School, 1933–1964

Small liberal arts and folk schools attempted desegregation decades before other southern colleges and universities. Historians have long argued that Jews were active and influential in the fight for civil rights in the South in the 1950s and 1960s, but were Jews involved in these early attempts to enroll black students in historically white schools? If they were, were they successful and how did their Jewishness affect the efficacy of their attempts? In order to answer these questions, this article compares and contrasts two such schools, Black Mountain College in North Carolina and Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, which established “integration programs” in the 1940s. This research reveals that when Jews saturated a school, and were visibly involved in desegregation, their attempts to desegregate the institution were ultimately unsuccessful. When Jews supported a school through donations behind the scenes and occasional visits, however, the institution successfully desegregated.

Andragogy in the Appalachians

In the field of adult education, one of the better known concepts is that of the Six Assumptions of Malcolm Knowles. These assumptions, according to Knowles, divide the world of pedagogy, defined as the art and science of teaching children, from that of andragogy, conceived as the art and science of helping adults learn. In the realm of education for older learners, myriad schools and programs dot the educational landscape, but one particularly unorthodox institution of adult education, the Highlander Folk School, led by activist educator Myles Horton, stands out for its teaching roles in the Union Labor Movement of the 1930s and 1940s, and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. This paper looks at Myles Horton of the Highlander Folk School, his background, education and preparation for establishing his lifelong dream of using alternative education among the “common uncommon people” for learning how to solve social and economic justice problems, and this paper then focuses on the extent to which the philosophy and teaching actions of Horton correspond to the Six Assumption Framework of andragogy as delineated by Malcolm Knowles.