donbosco
Legend of ZZL
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May Day Story Here. Myles Horton was one of the founders of The Highlander Folk School in the mountains of Tennessee...it was called many things from a "communist training school" to a "nest of radicals" to "other things I can't print" and could list among its enemies The KKK, the ruling class, and fascists. In other words it was a truly American place that was constantly in Good Trouble. At the link below is an amazing video interview that Bill Moyers conducted with Horton in 1991. Horton has since passed away but left a deep and wide legacy of resistance to power wrongly exercised.
In this interview Myles Horton tells about hitchhiking to New York City from his home in Appalachia to attend Union Theological Seminary. Reinhold Neibuhr was his teacher there. Horton had attended a small mountain school previously called Cumberland College where he had earned a letter playing football. Cumberland's color was red. He did not bring many clothes with him to New York and his letter sweater was one of the best things he owned. During his first May Day in the Big Apple Horton spied a parade and closed in to see what was going on. His experience with celebrations held on the First of May were utterly apolitical...up to that moment. He relates that a NY mounted policeman looked down from his horse and seeing Horton on the sidewalk wearing a bright red sweater with a big 'C' on it took a big swing with his billy club, cracking the newly arrived mountaineer across the head while cursing, "Damn commie!" Listen on here for more of that type of history mixed in with some incredibly inspirational history. .
In this interview Myles Horton tells about hitchhiking to New York City from his home in Appalachia to attend Union Theological Seminary. Reinhold Neibuhr was his teacher there. Horton had attended a small mountain school previously called Cumberland College where he had earned a letter playing football. Cumberland's color was red. He did not bring many clothes with him to New York and his letter sweater was one of the best things he owned. During his first May Day in the Big Apple Horton spied a parade and closed in to see what was going on. His experience with celebrations held on the First of May were utterly apolitical...up to that moment. He relates that a NY mounted policeman looked down from his horse and seeing Horton on the sidewalk wearing a bright red sweater with a big 'C' on it took a big swing with his billy club, cracking the newly arrived mountaineer across the head while cursing, "Damn commie!" Listen on here for more of that type of history mixed in with some incredibly inspirational history. .
