WPA in Grundy County and Highlander Folk School - Part 1

WPA in Grundy County and Highlander Folk School - Part 1. . The Great Depression of the 1930s was particularly hard on Grundy County. According to John M. Glen in Highlander No Ordinary School 60 percent of the county's population in June 1935 were on some form of government relief., The Works Progress Administration (WPA) had been created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration and Congress to provide jobs for the unemployed. Under the agency's administrative orders jobs were divided into skilled, intermediate and unskilled categories. As administered in Grundy County all jobs were classified as unskilled with workers paid at the lowest rate of $19.20 per month., Highlander Folk School initiated its largest and most successful extension program in the mid-1930s of union organizing and education among WPA workers in Grundy County. Realizing that workers needed more information on the WPA program, Highlander, in 1935, began offering classes on WPA administrative orders. The workers learned, among other things, that there were no rules against unions. Tracy City relief workers established Local 848 of the International Hod Carriers, Building and Common Laborers Union (CLU), AFL, in January 1936. During the following several months Highlander helped start several more locals in the county including Grundy County Women's Auxiliary for female WPA workers, The primary task of Highlander was to raise the wage scale of WPA projects. WPA administrators had placed Grundy County in the lowest wage category by classifying it as an agricultural area southern state. Highlander amassed data showing that it should have been classified as industrial. In addition, WPA project supervisors reportedly gave non-union workers preferential treatment. In March 1937 CLU relief workers halted 9 of 15 WPA projects in Grundy County. The WPA state administrator held Highlander responsible for the strike and charged that a "communistic organization has for months been feeding muscovite hops to relief clients in Grundy County. James A. Dombrowski, Highlander's administrator, called the allegations that Highlander Folk School was a communist school "absurd" and declared that it was the school's policy to remain "non factional in fact and spirit". The charge that Highlander was communist persisted. One citizen of the county who was the corporate secretary of Tennessee Consolidated Coal Company and president of the bank in Tracy City implored the FBI Director on repeated occasions to investigate the school. In a letter the FBI advised there was no evidence that the school was communist dominated or that it was engaged in subversive activities., In fact, Highlander was grounded in the teaching of Jesus and principles of Christian morality. In November 1939, its administrator described Highlander as "a school for democratic living". He explained. Highlander's leaders were motivated by a desire "to relate religious idealism to the social problems of today, particularly to relate the social aspirations of religion and the labor movement"., Highlander's leaders were deeply embedded in Christian tradition. Myles Horton's grandfather on his mother's side had been a pastor in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. As a child Horton had spent time reading his grandfather's religious collections that were stored in the attic of his boyhood home. He attended Cumberland College, a Cumberland Presbyterian school where he became active as a YMCA organizer. He studied under Reinhold Niebuhr at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Don West, co-founder of the school received a divinity degree from Vanderbilt University. James A. Dombrowski, Highlanders's administrator during the 1930s and early 1940s, graduated from Emory University in Atlanta with a divinity degree. He entered graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley. He became assistant pastor and secretary at Epworth Methodist Church. While at Berkeley, Dombrowski met Dr. Harry F. Ward, professor of Christian ethics at Union Theological Seminary, who had organized what came to be called the Methodist Federation for Social Action. He helped organize the American Civil Liberties Union and served as its chairman until 1940. Dombrowski fell under Ward's influence. After having transferred from University of California at Berkeley to Harvard University, he transferred in 1927 to Union Theological Seminary to study with Ward. While at Highlander, Dombrowski regularly delivered Sunday evening sermons. Other staff at Highlander included Rupert Hampton, a graduate of Union Theological Seminary, Ralph Tefferteller a graduate of Maryville College, a Presbyterian school in cast Tennessee, and Union Theological Seminary, John B. Thompson, a classmate of Myles Horton at Union Theological Seminary whose bachelor of divinity thesis was The Social Consequences of Religious Orthodoxy in the South., Most importantly was the influence and support of Reinhold Niebuhr on Highlander. He served on an Advisory Board established by Myles Horton and supported Highlander with fundraising and other activities until his death in 1971. Niebuhr was one of the world's leading theologians. He taught at Union Theological Seminary and in 1931 published a classic theological work, Moral Man and Immortal Society., left: Early staff members, 1933 or 1934. From left, Myles Horton, Rupert Hampton, James Dombrowski, Zilla Hawes, Dorothy Thompson. Photograph courtesy of Highlander Research and Education Center., Sources: , Glen, John M. Highlander No ordinary School. The University of Tennessee /Knoxville Press, Second Edition, 1996 , Adams, Frank T., James A. Dombrowski An American Heretic, 1897-1983, The University of Tennessee/Knoxville Press, 1992 , Horton, Myles, with Kohl, Judith and Kohl, Herbert, The Long Haul, An Autobiography, Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Del Publishing Group, Inc., 1990