Strange impressions have prevailed in regard to the moonlight schools.
Some have imagined them to be schools where children study and play
and scamper on the green, like fairies by the moonlight; others have
supposed them to be schools where lovers stroll arm-in-arm, quote
poetry and tell the old, old story by the light of a witching moon;
others, perhaps because these schools originated in the mountains of
Kentucky, have speculated upon their being schools where moonshiners,
youthful and aged, are instructed in the best method of extracting the
juice from the corn, and, at the same time, one so secretive as to
prevent government interference.
Moonlight schools were first established in September, 1911. They had
their origin in Rowan County, Kentucky. They were designed, primarily,
to emancipate from illiteracy all those enslaved in its bondage. They
were, also, intended to afford an opportunity to those of limited
education who desired to improve their store of knowledge.
These schools grew out of the only condition that can give to any
institution permanent and substantial growth--an imperative human need.
This need was expressed, not by any theorist or group of theorists but
by the illiterates themselves.
When I was Superintendent of Rowan County schools, I acted as voluntary
secretary to several illiterate folk--a mistaken kindness--I ought
to have been teaching them to read and write. Among these folk there
was a mother whose children had all grown up without learning save
one daughter who had secured a limited education, and when grown, had
drifted away to the city of Chicago, where she profited by that one
advantage which the city possessed over the rural district--the night
school. She so improved her education and increased her efficiency
that she was enabled to engage, profitably, in a small business. Her
letters were the only joys that came into that mother’s life and the
drafts which they contained were the only means of relieving her
needs. Usually she would bring those letters to me, over the hill,
seven miles, to read and answer for her. Sometimes she would take them
to the neighbors to interpret. Once after an absence of six weeks,
an unaccustomed period, she came in one morning fondling a letter. I
noticed an unusual thing--the seal was broken.
Anticipating her mission, I inquired, “Have you a letter from your
daughter? Shall I read and answer it for you?”
She straightened up with more dignity and more pride than I have ever
seen an illiterate assume--with more dignity and more pride than an
illiterate _could_ assume as she replied, “No, I kin answer hit fer
myself. I’ve larned to read and write!”
“Learned to read and write!” I exclaimed in amazement. “Who was your
teacher, and how did you happen to learn?”
“Well, sometimes I jist couldn’t git over here to see you,” she
explained, “an’ the cricks would be up ’twixt me an’ the neighbors,
or the neighbors would be away from home an’ I couldn’t git a letter
answered fer three or four days; an’ anyway hit jist seemed like thar
was a wall ’twixt Jane an’ me all the time, an’ I wanted to read with
my own eyes what she had writ with her own hand. So, I went to the
store an’ bought me a speller, an’ I sot up at night ’til midnight an’
sometimes ’til daylight, an’ I larned to read an’ write.”
To verify her statement, she slowly spelled out the words of that
precious letter. Then she sat down, and under my direction, answered
it--wrote her first letter--an achievement which pleased her
immeasurably, and one that must have pleased the absent Jane still more.
A few days later a middle-aged man came into the office, a man
stalwart, intelligent and prepossessing in appearance. While he waited
for me to dispatch the business in hand, I handed him two books. He
turned the leaves hurriedly, like a child handling its first books,
turned them over and looked at the backs and laid them down with a
sigh. Knowing the scarcity of interesting books in his locality, I
proffered him the loan of them. He shook his head.
“I can’t read or write,” he said. Then the tears came into the eyes
of that stalwart man and he added in a tone of longing, “I would give
twenty years of my life if I could.”
A short time afterward, I was attending an entertainment in a rural
district school. A lad of twenty was the star among the performers. He
sang a beautiful ballad, partly borrowed from his English ancestors but
mostly original, displaying his rare gift as a composer of song.
When he had finished, I went over and sat down beside him. “Dennis,” I
said, “that was a beautiful ballad. It is worthy of publication. Won’t
you write a copy for me?”
His countenance, which had lighted up at my approach, suddenly fell,
and he answered in a crest-fallen tone, “I would if I could write, but
I can’t. Why, I’ve thought up a hundred of ’em that was better’n that,
but I’d fergit ’em before anybody come along to set ’em down.”
These were the three incidents that led directly to the establishment
of the moonlight schools. I interpreted them to be not merely the call
of three individuals, but the call of three different classes; the
appeal of illiterate mothers, separated from their absent children
farther than sea or land or any other condition than death had power
to divide them; the call of middle-aged men, shut out from the world
of books, and unable to read the Bible or the newspapers or to cast
their votes in secrecy and security; the call of illiterate youths
and maidens who possessed rare talents, which if developed might add
treasures to the world of art, science, literature and invention.