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Dr. Lilian Wyckoff Johnson:
Highlander’s Benefactor and Elder Stateswoman
M. Sharon Herbers, Ed.D.
Monteagle Sunday School Assembly
July 20, 2007
It is an honor to present
at the Assembly. As you will see, it is fitting that I can
share with you the story of Dr. Johnson during the 125th
season of MSSA.
Dr. Lilian Johnson (1864 –
1956) was a courageous pioneer in education. She was born in
Memphis, Tennessee, to parents who valued education and
community service. Her mother was involved in reform
movements and her father, a successful businessman, started
a night school for young men orphaned by the yellow fever
epidemic. Lilian followed her father as teacher and
principal of Hope Night School. However, he urged her to
continue with her education. This led her to the University
of Michigan for her A.B., to the Sorbonne and the University
of Leipzig, and ultimately to Cornell University where she
earned a doctorate in History in 1902.
Her first career was in
higher education. She taught at Vassar and at the University
of Tennessee. In 1904 Johnson was appointed President of
Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio. In 1907 she
returned to Memphis and joined forces with local women’s
organizations to establish a teacher’s college. The campaign
was a success; West Tennessee Normal School opened in 1912
(Johnson, 1935).
A fortuitous meeting led
Johnson in a new direction. She met David Lubin, founder of
the International Institute of Agriculture in Rome, while
she was attending an educational conference in Nashville.
Her interactions with Lubin convinced her of the value of
agricultural cooperatives. This woman of conviction spoke so
persuasively to governors at a conference at the White House
that she was invited by President Wilson to assist in the
creation of a commission to study the agricultural
cooperatives in Europe. She visited ten countries with this
commission and helped to compile a report to Congress.
During 1913 she spoke to over thirty thousand people about
cooperatives. As a woman of action, she was not satisfied
with just talking about principles. She longed to put these
ideas into practice. In 1915 Johnson moved to Grundy County.
Why Grundy
County? She selected this county because of her association
with Monteagle Sunday School Assembly. Her father was a
member of the Board of Trustees in 1883 and 1884. Oliver
Jervis and I found this in the Minutes of the Board (Volume
I, p. 35). J.C. Johnson also was instrumental in founding
Memphis Home for Memphis teachers. In addition, he leased
lots for each of his children. In fact, in one letter Lilian
Johnson mentioned that she designed the first tennis court
at the Assembly. She had many fond memories of visits to the
Assembly as a young girl.
Dr. Johnson built a home
and established Kin-Co, a cooperative of “kin-folks.” The
rules for joining the association required that members care
for their own property. The project neverr took hold. Some
felt that she was the only one who benefited from the sale
of the land so she returned all investments. She opened her
Dutch Colonial home to the community as a center for adult
education. She brought in speakers, sponsored games and
concerts. In addition, she was instrumental in organizing a
county fair and even won eleven prizes (Memphis Press
Scimitar editorial, September 24, 1956). She served on the
Board of Education with an objective to establish “an ideal
country school” with programs in agriculture and home
economics and she sponsored scholarships for local students
to attend Berea College. She also succeeded in convincing
May Justus and Vera McCampbell to teach in Grundy County
(Wallace, 1980).
Dr. Johnson sought to be a
neighbor and friend to people in the county. She raised a
pet chicken, Beauty. She implemented the methods she had
studied in planting her orchard, tending her gardens.
Johnson eloquently described the joy of planting the seeds,
harvesting the produce, and eating the fruits of her labor.
This gave her great satisfaction. It was, however, a
difficult lifestyle.
At the age of sixty-eight,
Dr. Johnson was ready to relinquish her work of community
development. When Myles Horton and Don West approached her
with the idea of creating a folk school for the people of
Appalachia, she was intrigued. Initially, however, she did
not share their beliefs about how to bring about social
change (Adams, 1975). She believed that the emphasis must
be on collaboration with agencies and people with resources.
For example, she went annually to Memphis to solicit money
to fund salaries for additional teachers and extend the
months of operation at the Summerfield School. She worked
with the Red Cross to bring a nurse to the county as well as
with the Tennessee Highway Association to improve roads in
the area. In addition, she wrote an article highlighting the
poor road conditions and describing the hardship on children
walking through muddy terrain to get an elementary
education. The article was accompanied by photographs of
much nicer in foreign lands such as Egypt to show the
discrepancies.
Johnson was not sold on
the grassroots approach to social change. Like Horton and
West, she did believe that education was the key to economic
and social change. But she had not had much involvement with
miners. She certainly did not believe that unions were the
answer to the problems of the working class. Johnson
willingly gave a hand to people in need but she was not
familiar with emerging approaches of empowering people to
solve their own problems. She did write that she supported
efforts to socialize services but she was vehemently opposed
to communism.
Although she
returned to Memphis, she followed the work of Highlander
Folk School closely for those first few years. She and
Highlander staff exchanged letters frequently. She was quite
upset by the negative publicity. She confronted Horton and
blamed Don West. After West left the school, she reluctantly
consented to extend the agreement. The philosophical
differences took a back burner to day to day details. She
felt there was a lack of care for her property. Horton’s
parents moved to Grundy County and Perry Horton tended her
beloved roses. She witnessed a growing interest in
cooperatives. In 1935 she came for a month to see first
hand the programs and to meet with assorted members of the
community to learn more about the operations.She deeded the
property to HFS because she was convinced the staff and the
programs had made a difference in the lives of people in the
community.
For the next 21 years until
the time of her death, Dr. Johnson maintained her interest
in Highlander. She attended events, served on the Board of
Directors, and participated in workshops (Horton, 1989). She
returned to visit frequently. She sometimes stayed at the
Assembly and sometimes at the school. It was reported in the
Highlander Fling, a weekly publication of the school, that
she brought friends from the Assembly to Highlander to see
performances of children in summer camps and to buy the
crafts from Highlander entries to the Grundy County fair.
Another key role was as a
liaison. When Highlander was threatened by an attempt of the
Grundy County Crusaders, a group of local business and
community leaders, to close the school in 1940, the staff
asked her to join them in a stand off with the Crusaders.
She came as a staunch supporter.
This was not the first time
she came to their defense. Within their first year, she had
to decide if she would be an advocate for them. She never
criticized Horton or HFS in public. That does not mean that
she did not fill their ears with her concerns and her
counsel.
Lilian Johnson was the
consummate life-long learner. She told Horton that at
Highlander she came to know a class of people that she had
known only in the role of servers. Experiences at Highlander
increased her awareness of issues of race and class. In 1946
she moved to Bradenton, Florida. She learned of a “Negro”
youth center founded by support from Eleanor Roosevelt and
Mary McLeod Bethune which had fallen into disrepair. Using
the skills learned at Highlander she used her time and
talent to establish an inter-racial committee. In 1954 in
this small southern town of Bradentown, Black and White
organizations joined hands to improve the facilities. Dr.
Lilian did what she did so well. She used her contacts to
say if we do this, will you do that? Civic organizations
responded. They raised $25,000 and that centers continues to
serve minority youth in Bradenton. Dr. Lilian was active in
civic, social, and church work until her death in 1956.
Her death was like her
life. She became ill with gall bladder problems. Horton came
to visit her in the hospital and he attended the funeral. In
her will she did leave a bequest to Highlander and to
Horton. Her primary desire was that memorials would fund a
Congregational church in Summerfield. The project lacked
adequate support so a cabin was built in her memory at
Highlander. This cabin was lost when the state took control
of the property. As many of you know, her home and many of
the other buildings burned before the state could auction
off the property.
As Horton said, Highlander
is an idea, so too Dr. Lilian Johnson’s legacy is in the
organizations she established and in the lives she touched.
The buildings are gone but her spirit lives.
References
Adams, F. with Horton, M. (1975).
Unearthing seeds of fire: The idea of Highlander.
Winston-Salem: Joan F.
Blair.
Horton, A. I. (1989). The Highlander
Folk School: A history of its major programs,
1932-1961.
Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing Inc.
Johnson, L. W. (1935). Lilian W.
Johnson entry in Annals of Wellesley 1885. From the
Liian W. Johnson Collection
of Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland.
Memphis Press Scimitar
editorial, September 24, 1956, from the Lilian W. Johnson
file
of Memphis and Shelby
County Public Library and Information Center.
Wallace, S. (1980). Miss J—Teacher and
author. Foxfire, 14(2), 88-123.
Web sites
The archives of Western College for
Women are housed at Miami of Ohio
http://westernarchives.lib.muohio.edu/presidents.php
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