Road Scholars Speakers Bureau

William H. Cobb, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus, History Department, East Carolina University, writer

Greenville

H: (252) 752-5085

moorecobb@suddenlink.net

Travel regions: 7-9; 10-13

About William H. Cobb:

Bill Cobb is Professor Emeritus of History at East Carolina University, where he taught for 35 years.  Originally from Little Rock, Arkansas, he went to Davidson College, the University of Arkansas, and Tulane University. He is active in the Presbyterian Church, Literacy Volunteers, and Campus Ministries.  Bill is married to a college history instructor, and they share two sons, two daughters, and two dogs.  He is an avid fan of mystery novels.

Radical Education and the Rural South

It is simply amazing that during the first half of the twentieth century, America’s most conservative social and political region played host to the nation’s most radical educational ventures. Commonwealth College in Arkansas, along with North Carolina’s Highlander Folk School and Black Mountain College were all considered leftist, possibly subversive, even openly Communist by the general public. J. Edgar Hoover scrutinized them, state legislatures investigated them, and the press excoriated them during their brief lifetimes. All three attempted to further the cause of the industrial worker through education, propaganda, and direct action. All three left rich artistic legacies. Finally, all three had a considerable impact through well known alumni and friends. Though they survived “Red scares,” they finally fell victim to internal decay and mismanagement. Alternate methods of teaching and living characterized these experiments. For example, Commonwealth College called itself an “educational commune” and based its survival on requiring all teachers and students to work 20 hours a week on the school’s farm or college plant. Most classes were discussion and no grades were given. Students could, and did, dismiss instructors, and course length was open-ended. All three schools had flourishing artistic communities, and all of them were major sources of labor drama, painting, and literature. Much of the curricula was designed to educate the industrial worker and to promote the labor perspective. None of the schools made any secret of their consuming interest in the Soviet experiment and the inevitable development of a Cooperative Commonwealth in America. In essence, the beauty and isolation of the Southern mountains lured the nation’s most radical educational experiments during the first half of the twentieth century. These three schools cast a long shadow, influencing ideology and art today.

Requirements: Screen

The Second Slavery: Southern Tenant Farmers

In 1865 the Thirteenth Amendment freed all slaves in the southern United States. One generation later, slavery was back in a new, more insidious form: farm tenancy. This new system did not discriminate; both blacks and whites were locked in its destructive clutches. By the end of World War I, tenant farming was the fiscal engine of the new southern way of life. Tenants were rarely able to pay their “furnishen”; thus they were doomed to year after year of indebtedness on the same farm. Though many tried to run away, local sheriffs, in the pay of the plantation owners, tracked them down. Children received little, if any, schooling, and in turn, became tenants themselves. Health care was nonexistent; living conditions were appalling; and clothing was at best hand-me-downs. Slaves’ living conditions had been better. After all, slaves represented a major capital investment for the planters who owned them. Tenants, however, were disposable. The misery of the Great Depression of the 1930s triggered several attempts by tenant farmers to organize and destroy this grotesque system. By far the most impressive was the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union (STFU), which focused national attention on the plight of this oppressed group. The STFU was integrated, cooperative, and aggressive—all anathema to the entrenched interests of the landowners’ status quo. Though the STFU ultimately disintegrated, its combination of religious fervor and reform became a model for the Civil Rights Movement.