"Possessed with Dignity" featured in Appalachian Places

A coal miner, his wife and two of their children pose for a photograph in 1938 at their home in Bertha Hill, West Virginia. (Library of Congress photo by Marion Post Wolcott.)

This short story began developing in my mind while I was reading about US civil rights leader John Lewis and the Highlander Folk School in Southern Appalachia, which equipped Lewis and other leaders to practically and imaginatively confront racist segregation laws and to winsomely transform the hearts and minds of their neighbors through dignifying community.

I was honored when Appalachian Places, an online magazine published by East Tennessee State University, recently shared my story "Possessed with Dignity" with their readers. The website features an array of essays, research articles, stories and poetry focused on a region rich in culture, tradition, natural wonders and inspiring history.

Amos, the young boy in the story, is growing up in a Pre-War Tennessee mining town overlooked by those in power. Alongside singing brooks and colorful hills are food shortages, lack of education and poor healthcare. His hardworking and compassionate parents model a commitment to collaborative, practical service to both Amos and his younger brother. Even as a rag-tag network of support develops among their neighbors facing domestic violence and workplace exploitation, Amos becomes aware of the complicated forces raging in his own heart.

Read "Possessed with Dignity" in Appalachian Places

Highlander participants and workshop leaders at the school during its 25^th Anniversary on Aug. 31, 1957. Pictured from left to right: Ralph Helstein, Myles Horton, Rosa Parks, an unidentified man, Septima Clark, an unidentified man, an unidentified man, Charles Gomillion and Bernice Robinson. (photo from Carnegie Mellon University)

The Highlander Folk School, a citizen training and cultural center in the hills of East Tennessee, was founded by Myles Horton, Don West and James Dombrowski in 1932. I was introduced to Highlander while reading His Truth is Marching On, a biography by historian Jon Meacham about John Lewis. Before the lunch counter sit-ins and bus boycotts, the March on Washington or the passage of the Voting Rights Act, many Southerners who became influential in the Civil Rights Movement, such as Lewis, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks and Septima Clark, defied Jim Crow laws to gather in the racially integrated environment at Highlander School, dreaming of a more inclusive society and devising methods of non-violent resistance. 

There is a thread of good through all of us, even when it becomes obscured by greed or violence. Storytelling is an avenue of rediscovering this thread, making a way for it to be tied with others into a tapestry of mutual flourishing.  

Myles Horton and his partners in community organizing, including his musician wife Zilphia Mae, were driven by their Christian theological training, travels to Denmark’s folk schools, research among poor mountain communities, and coordination with Appalachian labor organizers to enact social justice in their region. Their educational work began in the Great Depression and was focused on improving working conditions in rural Tennessee. However, voting registration for disenfranchised citizens became a larger focus in the 1950’s under the leadership of Septima Clark, as well as the wider goal of racial desegregation and the equal treatment of Black Americans. Up to today, the Highlander Folk School’s progressive social efforts are still the source of both inspiration and controversy. 

Reading about Highlander made me think about how even the lives of inspirational people, such as Myles Horton, can have a shadow side, an undercurrent of internal struggle. In his arc toward non-violent approaches to shaping and improving society, how did he deal with his own human tendency toward violence? How did the unique land of Appalachia, his parents, community, and his own prejudices drive him toward challenging harmful social customs?  

There is a thread of good through all of us, even when it becomes obscured by greed or violence. Storytelling is an avenue of rediscovering this thread, making a way for it to be tied with others into a tapestry of mutual flourishing.