◆ SpookStack

( REPRINTED FROM THE NEW RerUBLIC December 9, 1940 A Good School Under Fire (\NE oF our favorite educational institutions in the \J whole United States is the Highlander Folk School at Monteagle, Tennessee. Highlander is a labor school; its chief purpose is to take promising trade- union members and equip them better to help their organizations fight for improved conditions for the working man. No student is taken unless he is endorsed hy a local union, No distinction is made between AFL and CIO, both of which codperate with the school. In addition to this primary purpose, the school has two others. It attempts to aid the people of the little cam~monity where it is located; it conducts a nursery schoo] for people nearby and has sponsored several co- operative undertakings for them. It also has an exten- sion division which does field work of several kinds in cities near and far. The direct support of labor is indicated by repre- sentation on its executive council. This body includes a vice-president and another representative of the Ar.ser can Federation of Hosiery Workers; the Southern director of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers; the president of the Chattanooga Printing Pressmen, and a local secretary from the United Mine Workers. ‘mong many labor groups supporting the school is the Nashville Trades and Labor Council, AFL. The schools has friends in other quarters than the organized labor movement. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt is keenly interested and maintains a scholarship there. The benefit this month in the national capital is spon- sored by a Justice of the Supreme Court, members of the Cabinet and of Congress, a former governor, administrators of leading federal agencies, two mem- ers of the National Defense Advisory Commission and other prominent persons. Mr, J. W. Studebaker, Linited States Commissioner of Education, wrote the committee on arrangements: “Although I am asked every week to lend my name for the sponsorship of many undertakings and naturally find it necessary to decline, | am willing to be one of the sponsors of your benefit,” Why do we go into such detail about the support the Highlander Folk School receives? Because there has been a long continued, vicious campaign in Tennessee to destroy this institution. Most of the newspapers of the entire surrounding territory have repeatedly lied about the school, on such a scale that the falsification cannot be attributed to an innocent misunderstanding. The charges have been that the schoo! was “commu- nistic,” that it was s misleading the young People, and so on. Dr. James Dombrowski, director of the school, has denied all these charges and has indicated his will- ingness, if it could be proved that the school is un- American or is detrimental to the community and to the people it serves, to put an end to its work. Nobody has ever brought forward even a fragment of evidence that the charges are true. Who is behind the attempt to destroy the High- lander Folk School? First of all, it is reactionary em- ployers throughout the entire South, men who object to the school because it trains people to become suc- cessful leaders of strong trade unions. Locally, there is reason to believe that the Tennessee Consolidated Coal Company has had a good deal to do with the attack, This company has for years dominated Grundy County. In 1938, for the first time, a group of county - officials were elected who were not subservient to the coal company, and the school faculty was active during the campaign in support of these candidates. A few weeks ago, feeling was stirred up to such a pitch that a vigilante group calling themselves the Grundy County Crusaders planned to march against the school. If this had been done, blood would cer- tainly have been shed, At the last minute, the vigilante leaders were persuaded instead to confer with the school officials. As a result of this five-hour conference, the tension was relieved somewhat. But there is danger that it will rise again; there are plenty of people in Tennessee who don’t want a school that prepares eff- cient spokesmen for labor, and will stoop to almost anything to destroy it.