Description
Book SynopsisHow Myles Horton and the Highlander Folk School catalyzed social justice and democratic education For too long, the story of life-changing teacher and activist Myles Horton has escaped the public spotlight. An inspiring and humble leader whose work influenced the civil rights movement, Horton helped thousands of marginalized people gain greater control over their lives. Born and raised in early twentieth-century Tennessee, Horton was appalled by the disrespect and discrimination that was heaped on poor peopleboth black and whitethroughout Appalachia. He resolved to create a place that would be available to all, where regular people could talk, learn from one another, and get to the heart of issues of class and race, and right and wrong. And so in 1932, Horton cofounded the Highlander Folk School, smack in the middle of Tennessee. The first biography of Myles Horton in twenty-five years, Education in Black and White focuses on the educational theories and strategies he first developed at Highlander to serve the interests of the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed. His personal vision keenly influenced everyone from Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., to Eleanor Roosevelt and Congressman John Lewis. Stephen Preskill chronicles how Horton gained influence as an advocate for organized labor, an activist for civil rights, a supporter of Appalachian self-empowerment, an architect of an international popular-education network, and a champion for direct democracy, showing how the example Horton set remains education's best hope for today.
Trade Review"With
Education in Black and White, Stephen Preskill revisits and revives the story of Myles Horton and Tennessee’s Highlander Center. . . . a lucidly written book." * Chapter 16 *
"The most thorough study of Highlander and its founder to date." * Black Perspectives *
"Stephen Preskill's
Education in Black and White is a vital new addition to scholarship in the history of social movements in the United States." * Peace & Change *
Table of ContentsPrologue: The Highlander Fire of 2019
Introduction
1. Beginnings
2. The Lessons of Ozone
3. Graduate Education and Denmark's Folk Schools
4. Highlander's Beginnings
5. Building a More Stable Highlander
6. Zilphia Horton and Highlander's "Singing Army"
7. Racial Equality within the Union Movement
8. The White Supremacist versus the Social Egalitarian
9. Mrs. Parks Goes to Highlander
10. The Citizenship School on Johns Island
11. Highlander and SNCC
12. From Civil Rights to Appalachia
13. Leadership and Research in Ivanhoe
14. Myles Horton, Internationalist
15. We Make the Road by Walking
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Works Cited
Index
