The Long Haul (book)
Encyclopedia
The Long Haul is an autobiography of Myles Horton
, labor organizer, founder of the Highlander School and perhaps the first practitioner of what would later be called popular education
. Highlander used the principles of democratic education
- where students were the authorities in the classroom, the teacher is a facilitator, and the focus of education is teaching collective action for social change - to play a key role in the labor movement of the 1930s and the Civil Rights movement
of the 1960s to 1970s. Horton pioneered many of the educational principles Paulo Freire
would make famous worldwide in the 1980s.
, Tennessee
on July 9, 1905. His parents had been school teachers and manual laborers. While they were poor, they were still slightly more financially secure and better-educated than their neighbors. Horton learned that “the rich were people who lived off of somebody else”; that “education is meant to help you do something for others”; the power of unions; and the importance of loving your neighbor . He cut logs at a sawmill and packed tomatoes; at the latter job he organized a strike action
among the other young laborers, winning a small raise. He went on to become a top student and football player in his small, local high school.
in Lebanon, Tennessee
, a small college with few good teachers – a benefit for Horton, who then learned how to educate himself. This also allowed Horton to develop his own ideas rather than simply adopt the ideas of his professors. Here he began studying worker cooperative
s, local labor unions and militant working-class organizing. He also became a socialist. He believed that oppressed people had to struggle together to build a new society based on equality. Upon graduating, he worked for the YMCA
, where, in 1928, he successfully organized an integrated conference that violated the Jim Crow laws
of the time. He also began a discussion group for poor folks in Ozone, Tennessee
, a poor, rural community. There Horton pioneered his technique facilitating meetings where poor people talked out their problems and strategized solutions to them.
in New York City
, a radical school at the time. He studied under Reinhold Niebuhr
, a Christian philosopher whose teachings on moral behavior in an immoral society helped inspire Horton's thinking on civil disobedience
. He read Alexander Hamilton
and John Dewey
, as well as Marx
and Lenin
. Horton's New York experience broadened him. Most of his colleagues were from wealthy intellectual families, and some of them helped him logistically or financially in founding Highlander. Horton also attended socialist demonstrations in Manhattan
where brutal police crackdowns, together with the dogmatic pacifism
of his contemporaries, influenced his nuanced perspective on pragmatic non-violence direct action
over uncompromising pacifism.
After finishing at Union Theological Seminary Horton studied at the University of Chicago
. He studied firsthand what people were doing about contemporary social problems, such as Hull House
, which helped indigent recent immigrants. It was in Chicago
that Horton learned how collective action was not just more effective in getting results; it also provided for a superior educational experience. He also learned how important it was to bring diverging views into the open when facilitating conversation within a group. Finally, he learned how important it was for people to have democratic control over their lives, including their schooling – that, in fact, oppressed people's education should be a model for the democratic societies they wanted to create.
, a movement from the 1800s that put Horton's principles of democratic education into practice. He traveled to Denmark
to study them firsthand. What he saw there – an informal (and beautiful) setting where students and teachers taught each other and learned together; students learning for themselves, and not because they'll be tested; and an education that explicitly sought to create an equal and just society.
They started by leading informal discussion groups among adults in the community on geography
, economics
, and local union struggles. They also began to learn to see their students' problems from their perspective, and to encourage people who were never taught to value their own opinions to talk and learn together to solve their own problems.
studied there for six weeks to two months. The school maintained its principles of democratic education of poor people while focusing on a specific social issue – in this case, organizing workers when the government was cracking down on unions – an experience that would prove crucial in Highlander's later work in the Civil Rights movement.
Highlander was also the only integrated
school in the South. They knew it was important to teach union officers not to let bosses play off white workers against black ones. It was also an opportunity to let people learn racial equality by having white and black students study together, almost always for the first time in their lives; their experience at the school prefigured the just society Highlander wanted to create. However, with time the labor movement became less interested in restructuring society and more invested in cooperation with the ruling class. With the post-war Red Scare
Highlander was cut off from the mainstream union movement and began focusing on racial equality.
to promote “Citizenship Schools,” where black folks could learn to read and pass voter registration tests. These schools would be a compromise of Highlanders vision of informal education for social justice and African American organizers' understanding of how to best meet the needs of people in their community. Highlander continued training people who wanted to start a Citizenship School, but many more were started by people who'd never been to Highlander. More and more African Americans were organizing for justice in the South. The Civil Rights movement had begun in earnest.
While the Citizenship School program was eventually passed off to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference under Martin Luther King, Jr.
, Highlander remained a nerve center of the Civil Rights movement. Such luminaries as Fannie Lou Hamer
, Ella Baker
and Rosa Parks
all participated in Highlander workshops. They talked strategy and studied tactics together, learning from the labor movement and forging their own way forward. Ideas cross-pollinated at Highlander; it's where the song “We Shall Overcome
” moved from the labor movement to the Civil Rights movement. The state of Tennessee ultimately shut down the school on sham charges in 1959. They moved to nearby Knoxville for ten years before creating another permanent school. Highlander continued to organize for racial equality, and later went on to focus on environmental justice and immigrant rights.
Myles Horton
Myles Horton was an American educator, socialist and cofounder of the Highlander Folk School, famous for its role in the Civil Rights Movement . Horton taught and heavily influenced most of the era's leaders. They included Dr...
, labor organizer, founder of the Highlander School and perhaps the first practitioner of what would later be called popular education
Popular education
Popular education is a concept grounded in notions of class, political struggle, and social transformation. The term is a translation from the Spanish educación popular or the Portuguese educação popular and rather than the English usage as when describing a 'popular television program,' popular...
. Highlander used the principles of democratic education
Democratic education
Democratic education is a theory of learning and school governance in which students and staff participate freely and equally in a school democracy...
- where students were the authorities in the classroom, the teacher is a facilitator, and the focus of education is teaching collective action for social change - to play a key role in the labor movement of the 1930s and the Civil Rights movement
Civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...
of the 1960s to 1970s. Horton pioneered many of the educational principles Paulo Freire
Paulo Freire
Paulo Reglus Neves Freire was a Brazilian educator and influential theorist of critical pedagogy.-Biography:...
would make famous worldwide in the 1980s.
Childhood
Myles Horton was born to working-class parents in SavannahSavannah, Tennessee
Savannah is a city in Hardin County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 6,917 at the 2000 census and the 2007 population estimate was 7,262. It is the county seat of Hardin County. Savannah hosted the NAIA college football national championship game from 1996-2007. Savannah is home to...
, Tennessee
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
on July 9, 1905. His parents had been school teachers and manual laborers. While they were poor, they were still slightly more financially secure and better-educated than their neighbors. Horton learned that “the rich were people who lived off of somebody else”; that “education is meant to help you do something for others”; the power of unions; and the importance of loving your neighbor . He cut logs at a sawmill and packed tomatoes; at the latter job he organized a strike action
Strike action
Strike action, also called labour strike, on strike, greve , or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became important during the industrial revolution, when mass labour became...
among the other young laborers, winning a small raise. He went on to become a top student and football player in his small, local high school.
College
Horton attended Cumberland UniversityCumberland University
Cumberland University is a private university in Lebanon, Tennessee, United States. It was founded in 1842, though the current campus buildings were constructed between 1892 and 1896.-History:...
in Lebanon, Tennessee
Lebanon, Tennessee
Lebanon is a city in Wilson County, Tennessee, in the United States. The population was 20,235 at the 2000 census. It serves as the county seat of Wilson County. Lebanon is located in middle Tennessee, approximately 25 miles east of downtown Nashville. Local residents have also called it...
, a small college with few good teachers – a benefit for Horton, who then learned how to educate himself. This also allowed Horton to develop his own ideas rather than simply adopt the ideas of his professors. Here he began studying worker cooperative
Worker cooperative
A worker cooperative is a cooperative owned and democratically managed by its worker-owners. This control may be exercised in a number of ways. A cooperative enterprise may mean a firm where every worker-owner participates in decision making in a democratic fashion, or it may refer to one in which...
s, local labor unions and militant working-class organizing. He also became a socialist. He believed that oppressed people had to struggle together to build a new society based on equality. Upon graduating, he worked for the YMCA
YMCA
The Young Men's Christian Association is a worldwide organization of more than 45 million members from 125 national federations affiliated through the World Alliance of YMCAs...
, where, in 1928, he successfully organized an integrated conference that violated the Jim Crow laws
Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans...
of the time. He also began a discussion group for poor folks in Ozone, Tennessee
Ozone, Tennessee
Ozone is an unincorporated community in Cumberland County, Tennessee, in the Southeastern United States. Ozone is the location of Ozone Falls State Natural Area, which was established in 1973 to protect Ozone Falls, a 110-foot plunge waterfall, and its surrounding gorge.-Geography:Ozone is located...
, a poor, rural community. There Horton pioneered his technique facilitating meetings where poor people talked out their problems and strategized solutions to them.
Graduate School
In 1929 Horton went to Union Theological SeminaryUnion Theological Seminary in the City of New York
Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York is a preeminent independent graduate school of theology, located in Manhattan between Claremont Avenue and Broadway, 120th to 122nd Streets. The seminary was founded in 1836 under the Presbyterian Church, and is affiliated with nearby Columbia...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, a radical school at the time. He studied under Reinhold Niebuhr
Reinhold Niebuhr
Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr was an American theologian and commentator on public affairs. Starting as a leftist minister in the 1920s indebted to theological liberalism, he shifted to the new Neo-Orthodox theology in the 1930s, explaining how the sin of pride created evil in the world...
, a Christian philosopher whose teachings on moral behavior in an immoral society helped inspire Horton's thinking on civil disobedience
Civil disobedience
Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Civil disobedience is commonly, though not always, defined as being nonviolent resistance. It is one form of civil resistance...
. He read Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton was a Founding Father, soldier, economist, political philosopher, one of America's first constitutional lawyers and the first United States Secretary of the Treasury...
and John Dewey
John Dewey
John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey was an important early developer of the philosophy of pragmatism and one of the founders of functional psychology...
, as well as Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
and Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
. Horton's New York experience broadened him. Most of his colleagues were from wealthy intellectual families, and some of them helped him logistically or financially in founding Highlander. Horton also attended socialist demonstrations in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
where brutal police crackdowns, together with the dogmatic pacifism
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
of his contemporaries, influenced his nuanced perspective on pragmatic non-violence direct action
Direct action
Direct action is activity undertaken by individuals, groups, or governments to achieve political, economic, or social goals outside of normal social/political channels. This can include nonviolent and violent activities which target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the direct action...
over uncompromising pacifism.
After finishing at Union Theological Seminary Horton studied at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
. He studied firsthand what people were doing about contemporary social problems, such as Hull House
Hull House
Hull House is a settlement house in the United States that was co-founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr. Located in the Near West Side of , Hull House opened its doors to the recently arrived European immigrants. By 1911, Hull House had grown to 13 buildings. In 1912 the Hull...
, which helped indigent recent immigrants. It was in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
that Horton learned how collective action was not just more effective in getting results; it also provided for a superior educational experience. He also learned how important it was to bring diverging views into the open when facilitating conversation within a group. Finally, he learned how important it was for people to have democratic control over their lives, including their schooling – that, in fact, oppressed people's education should be a model for the democratic societies they wanted to create.
Danish Folk Schools
It was in Chicago that Horton learned about Danish folk schoolsFolk high school
Folk high schools are institutions for adult education that generally do not grant academic degrees, though certain courses might exist leading to that goal...
, a movement from the 1800s that put Horton's principles of democratic education into practice. He traveled to Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
to study them firsthand. What he saw there – an informal (and beautiful) setting where students and teachers taught each other and learned together; students learning for themselves, and not because they'll be tested; and an education that explicitly sought to create an equal and just society.
Founding Highlander
Upon returning to the US he reunited with his friends from Union Theological Seminary to found the Highlander School in the hills of Tennessee, which brought together what Horton learned from his childhood, formal education, political activity and the Danish folk schools.They started by leading informal discussion groups among adults in the community on geography
Geography
Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...
, economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
, and local union struggles. They also began to learn to see their students' problems from their perspective, and to encourage people who were never taught to value their own opinions to talk and learn together to solve their own problems.
Highlander and the Labor Movement
Highlander soon started organizing unions in the area and hosting community gatherings, strengthening the political community in the area. Highlander began a more formal labor organizing program for rank-and-file union members to learn to take leadership positions in the union movement. Newly-elected labor organizers and shop stewardsUnion steward
A union representative, union steward, or shop steward is an employee of an organization or company, who represents and defends the interests of her/his fellow employees but who is also a labor union official...
studied there for six weeks to two months. The school maintained its principles of democratic education of poor people while focusing on a specific social issue – in this case, organizing workers when the government was cracking down on unions – an experience that would prove crucial in Highlander's later work in the Civil Rights movement.
Highlander was also the only integrated
Racial integration
Racial integration, or simply integration includes desegregation . In addition to desegregation, integration includes goals such as leveling barriers to association, creating equal opportunity regardless of race, and the development of a culture that draws on diverse traditions, rather than merely...
school in the South. They knew it was important to teach union officers not to let bosses play off white workers against black ones. It was also an opportunity to let people learn racial equality by having white and black students study together, almost always for the first time in their lives; their experience at the school prefigured the just society Highlander wanted to create. However, with time the labor movement became less interested in restructuring society and more invested in cooperation with the ruling class. With the post-war Red Scare
Red Scare
Durrell Blackwell Durrell Blackwell The term Red Scare denotes two distinct periods of strong Anti-Communism in the United States: the First Red Scare, from 1919 to 1920, and the Second Red Scare, from 1947 to 1957. The First Red Scare was about worker revolution and...
Highlander was cut off from the mainstream union movement and began focusing on racial equality.
Highlander and the Civil Rights Movement
They started by working with African American organizers in the SouthSouthern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
to promote “Citizenship Schools,” where black folks could learn to read and pass voter registration tests. These schools would be a compromise of Highlanders vision of informal education for social justice and African American organizers' understanding of how to best meet the needs of people in their community. Highlander continued training people who wanted to start a Citizenship School, but many more were started by people who'd never been to Highlander. More and more African Americans were organizing for justice in the South. The Civil Rights movement had begun in earnest.
While the Citizenship School program was eventually passed off to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference under Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...
, Highlander remained a nerve center of the Civil Rights movement. Such luminaries as Fannie Lou Hamer
Fannie Lou Hamer
Fannie Lou Hamer was an American voting rights activist and civil rights leader....
, Ella Baker
Ella Baker
Ella Josephine Baker was an African American civil rights and human rights activist beginning in the 1930s....
and Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was an African-American civil rights activist, whom the U.S. Congress called "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement"....
all participated in Highlander workshops. They talked strategy and studied tactics together, learning from the labor movement and forging their own way forward. Ideas cross-pollinated at Highlander; it's where the song “We Shall Overcome
We Shall Overcome
"We Shall Overcome" is a protest song that became a key anthem of the African-American Civil Rights Movement . The title and structure of the song are derived from an early gospel song by African-American composer Charles Albert Tindley...
” moved from the labor movement to the Civil Rights movement. The state of Tennessee ultimately shut down the school on sham charges in 1959. They moved to nearby Knoxville for ten years before creating another permanent school. Highlander continued to organize for racial equality, and later went on to focus on environmental justice and immigrant rights.