More Than Mrs Robinson: Citizenship Schools in Lowcountry South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia, 1957-1970 (A Dissertation submitted in requirement for the Degree of Doctor in Philosophy, The University of Nottingham, October 2009) Clare Russell 1 Abstract The first ―citizenship school‖ (a literacy class that taught adults to read and write in order that they could register to vote) was established by Highlander Folk School of Monteagle, Tennessee on Johns Island, South Carolina in 1957. Within three years, the schools were extended across the neighboring Sea Islands, to mainland Charleston and to Savannah, Georgia. In 1961, after Highlander faced legal challenges to its future, it transferred the schools to the fledgling Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), who extended the program across the South. Historians have made far-reaching claims for the successes and benefits of the schools.
For example, they claim that they recruited inexperienced but committed people and raised them to the status of community leaders; that they encouraged civic cooperation and political activism and formed the ―foundation on which the civil rights movement‖ was built and they argue that the schools were an unprecedented opportunity for women to develop as activists and as leaders. Yet, they base these claims on certain myths about the schools: that the first teacher Bernice Robinson was an inexperienced and uneducated teacher, that her class was a blueprint for similar ones and that Highlander bequeathed its educational philosophy to the SCLC program. They make claims about female participation without analyzing the gender composition of classes. This dissertation challenges these assumptions by comparing and contrasting programs established in Lowcountry South Carolina and in Savannah.
It argues that not only was Robinson more skilled and better educated than historians have assumed, but that she was not typical of early teachers. On the Sea Islands, teachers tended to be established community leaders, such as ministers. In Savannah, they were young college students involved in direct action spaces. It analyzes the gender composition of classes, the gendered nature of the spaces in 2 which classes were taught, and the different models of black masculinity (based on class, location and generational identity) that the schools emulated.
It argues that while Robinson may have been influenced by Highlander philosophy, the educational materials used in classes indicate that the schools drew more on Septima Clark‘s experience of African American educational history than on Highlander‘s ethos of education for social change. Local variations, including gender, class, location and age, also shaped teaching curricula. Finally, it examines the reasons for the schools‘ failure in the mid to late 1960s. Far from fading away because they became superfluous after the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the schools failed both because of factors at the administrative level (disorganization, mismanagement and gender conflict) and at the local (conflict between generations and local groups.) 3 Contents Clare Russell.
2 Table of Illustrations. 21 Roots of the Citizenship Schools: The “Early Civil Rights Movement” in Charleston and Savannah. 67 From Johns Island to Savannah: Building the Citizenship Schools, 1954-1960. 124 “A Vital Movement for Mass Action”: SCLC, Highlander Folk School and the Politics of transferring citizenship schools in Savannah and Lowcountry South Carolina, 1960-4.
124 “We’re all going to learn together:” Highlander Folk School, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the curricula of the Citizenship Education Program. 166 Conflict and Community: The Disintegration of Citizenship Schools, 1964-1970. 297 4 5 Table of Illustrations Figure 1 Bernice Robinson teaching a class on Johns Island. 72 Figure 2 “Success,” West Broad Street.
107 Figure 3 “Big Lester” captivates. 107 Figure 4 “Big Lester” and “Trash” Recruiting Longshoremen, Longshoremen’s Hall. 109 Figure 5 Hosea Williams preaching voter registration, Longshoremen's Hall. 110 Figure 6 Big Lester persuades the patrons, West Broad Street.
111 Figure 7 No one Escapes Big Lester. 112 Figure 8 Bernice Robinson teaching teenage girls to sew. 177 Figure 9 Excerpt from a sample handwriting template. 178 Figure 10 Writing Exercise from "My Citizenship Booklet".
186 Figure 11 Sound Chart from "My Citizenship Booklet". 188 Figure 12 Etiquette Sections from "My Citizenship Workbook". 190 Figure 13 Bernice Robinson teaching adults in the Progressive Club. 191 Figure 14 Excerpt from "My Citizenship Booklet".
193 Figure 15 Mugshot of Lester Hankerson, following his arrest in Grenada, Mississippi, 1966. 286 6 Acknowledgments Like many students in the credit crunch generation, I have accumulated debts- financial, scholarly and personal during the preparations for and the researching and writing of this dissertation. First and foremost, financial support from The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) made this project, and the far-flung research required for it, possible. This is a project about teachers who devoted their time to make a difference to their students‘ lives.
I have benefited from the guidance, support, challenging questions and inspiration of teachers throughout my life. I have been extremely fortunate to have a Peter Ling as a supervisor who believed in the value of this project from the outset; who has guided me through the daunting job of researching and writing it; and who has challenged me with questions, discussion and feedback, which I have come to enjoy rather than dread. As ―second,‖ but by no means lesser, supervisors, Vivien Miller and Richard King helped me to write better and to both think and read more widely and I am extremely grateful to both of them. Throughout my university career, I have been inspired and guided by excellent teachers and I am particularly indebted to Dr.
Alan Day, Dr. Frank Cogliano and Professor Thomas Sugrue. Veronica Hickox taught me to love history over a decade ago now and I will always be grateful to her for it. I have received much needed feedback, intellectual stimulation and inspiration from fellow scholars at conferences, seminars and discussion groups.
Every participant at the 2009 7 Heidelberg Spring Academy inspired me at a time when my commitment and interest to this project was flagging. Staff and fellow PhD students at weekly Work in Progress sessions at Nottingham gave helpful comments and feedback. Other particularly memorable and helpful events were the 1968 conference at Oxford, Backing Dr King at Nottingham and the Graduate Association for African American History meeting in Memphis, Tennessee. I would like to thank Stephen Tuck and Joe Street for feedback, research recommendations and pertinent questions.
I am grateful to archivists at the Wisconsin Historical Society, University of Chapel Hill, The Library of Congress, Cambridge University Library, South Carolina Historical Society, Moorland-Springarn Library, Clark Atlanta University and Georgia State University for giving me the advice and tools to make my archival research efficient and pleasurable. Harlan Greene and Georgette Mayo at the Avery Institute at The College of Charleston were not only helpful, supportive and professional, but became friends during my weeks there. Research trips can be lonely and daunting, and I would like to thank Florian Theus for his company, for lunch in the World Bank and (as always) rigorous intellectual discussion both with and without glasses of wine. I will be forever grateful for Amy McCandless‘s generosity and friendship.
Amy gave me not only a place to stay but a home away from home in Charleston and I will treasure the time I spent there. My friends – old and new - have provided me with intellectual debate and discussion; emotional support when I have needed it; and occasional much-needed reprieves from work. There is no 8 way I can list everyone who has given me some or all of these things, but I am particularly grateful to Kirree Jenkings, Rachel Walls, Francisca Fuentes, Jennifer Mitchell, Alice Casarini, Siobhan Wooler, Aine Kelly, Ross Campbell, Fidel Meraz and Johanna Duffy. Natalie Edwards has not only been my best and most supportive friend during the PhD (including coming to see me in the middle of the night on one occasion), but also was a kind and dedicated proof reader.
Last, but certainly not least, I would not be the scholar or the person that I am without my family, who I love dearly. I would particularly like to thank my sister and best friend, Sinead; my brother-in law, Tim; my niece, Anna and my grandparents. My mum, Gwen, is inspirational. She is one of the gifted teachers who this thesis is about – and has even branched out into adult education – and a mentor to me.
My dad has given me untold emotional and financial support, including somewhere to stay as I wrote up my PhD. If he was alive today, my brother Dominic would no doubt be embarking on a PhD of his own by now. This dissertation is dedicated to his memory. 9 Introduction Myles Horton, Highlander Folk School, Septima Clark and the citizenship schools are familiar topics for historians interested in the movements for social change, working-class rights and the African American freedom struggle.
Founded by Myles Horton in 1932, Highlander Folk School used a range of participatory learning techniques, such as workshops, discussion groups and field trips to local pickets and strikes in order to train grassroots leaders to challenge injustice and introduce social change from the ―bottom up.‖ The school has been received scholarly attention both because of its innovative teaching methods and the contributions it made to training grassroots social movements. Although the school had originally focused on training labour leaders, in 1954, Horton refused to stop working with unions expelled from the amalgamated American Federation of Labor/ Confederation of Industrial Organizations (AFL- CIO) for supposed Communist activity. Ostracized from the labor movement, Horto applied Highlander‘s educational principles to support other causes and issues, including the nascent African American freedom struggle. One of Highlander‘s most famous ―graduates‖ was Rosa Parks, an NAACP secretary from Montgomery, Alabama, whose refusal to give up her seat on a city bus initiated the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the emergence of Martin Luther King as a civil rights leader.1 1 John Glen, Highlander: No Ordinary School (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1996); Frank Adams, Unearthing Seeds of Fire: The Idea of Highlander (Winson-Salem, NC, 1975); Aimee Isgrig Horton, The Highlander Folk School: A History of its Major Programs, 1931-1962 (Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Publications, 1989); Carl Tjandersen, Education for Citizenship: A Foundation‘s Experience (Santa Cruz, CA, 1980) pp 166-181.
10 The citizenship schools are possibly Highlander‘s most celebrated project and historians reiterate the same, appealing, account of these schools, their proliferation, and their contribution to the African American freedoms struggle. In 1954, Esau Jenkins attended a Highlander workshop and outlined his plans for an adult literacy school that would teach local people to read and write in order that they could pass South Carolina‘s literacy test and register to vote. Highlander had recently acquired a grant from the Emil Schwartzhaupt Foundation in order to develop local leadership and staff were looking for a suitable project to support. Over the next three years, Highlander staff trained local Johns Islanders in its democratic leadership techniques and helped to secure a space in which classes could be held.
They also recruited the first teacher, Bernice Robinson, a beautician without formal teacher training but with a natural gift for engaging her students and an inherent understanding of Highlander‘s participatory teaching methods. When she stood in front of her first class in January 1957, Robinson told her students that she was not really going to be their teacher, but that they would learn together and teach one another. She designed a curriculum based around the skills that students wanted to learn, such as filling in mail order catalogues, reading the bible and writing letters to their children who were living and working away from home.2 Highlander apparently unleashed a powerful force in this rural community. Over the next three years, men and women in nearby communities saw how effective the Johns Island project was and resolved to establish similar schools in their own communities.