1. Duberman, Martin, Black Mountain: An Exploration in Community (New York: Dutton, 1972), 213Google Scholar.

2. A welcome letter to new BMC students in 1943 read: “We hope that you will develop skill in whatever you do, whether it be digging a ditch or constructing a couch. We hope that you will learn something about the limitations of stone, of wood, of mortar. We hope that you will learn the discipline imposed by a buzz saw and the like without too much suffering. We hope that you will gain health and keep healthy because of your work…. Out of work can come an understanding of and appreciation of orderliness, carefulness, thoroughness, the ability to do something well, a real understanding of and respect for the working man.” “Greetings: Opportunities and Responsibilities,” 1943–44, series 2, box 4, folder: Papers on 1942–43, Black Mountain College Records (hereafter BMCR), 1933–56, North Carolina State Archives.

3. Kenneth Kurtz in Duberman, Black Mountain, 183.

4. I use “integration program” here instead of “desegregation” for two reasons. First, “integration program” was the way in which faculty and students at Black Mountain College (BMC) and Highlander Folk School (HFS) referred to it at the time. Second, neither school was formally segregated and they had likely not denied any applications from black students. Therefore, when these schools decided to admit black students, they had to solicit such applications and participation. This is quite different from formalized desegregation processes at other institutes of higher education. For details on these processes, see Wallenstein, Peter, “Black Southerners and Nonblack Universities: The Process of Desegregating Southern Higher Education, 1935–1965,” in Higher Education and the Civil Rights Movement: White Supremacy, Black Southerners, and College Campuses, ed. Wallenstein, Peter (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008), 17–59 Google Scholar.

5. “Guest” status was often just a formality to appease incoming students and/or locals with prejudices. Lois Carol Wheatley Redmond, Women Writers of Black Mountain College (Undergraduate thesis, East Carolina University, 1998), 1.

6. Duberman, Black Mountain, 217.

7. Various correspondence, 1935, 1943, 1954, 1967, box 37, folder 7: Black Mountain College (reel 7, frame 204), MSS 265, Part 1: Original Collection, 1917–73, Highlander Research and Education Center Records (hereafter HRECR), Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, WI.

8. Willimetz, Emil Joseph, Gringo: The Making of a Rebel (Portsmouth, NH: Peter E. Randall, 2003), 144Google Scholar.

9. Duberman, Black Mountain, 188, 491; Benjamin Fine, “800 Youths Join in Manual Tasks at Work Camps,” New York Times, July 20, 1941. The other experimental work camp schools mentioned were located in New England (Grafton Center, NH), the North (Wyoming Valley Work Camp in Wilkes-Barre, PA), and the Midwest (Middle Western Work Camp in Hudson, OH).

10. “22 States and 4 foreign countries are represented. New York and Massachusetts have the greatest representation with 13 each; California is next with 6; New Jersey, 5; and Connecticut, 4.” Only eleven students represented the entire region of the South. “Black Mountain College, Enrollment for 1941–1942,” a demographics sheet, series 2, box 37, folder: Stats., BMCR, 1933–56.

11. Willimetz, Gringo, 177.

12. Whisnant, David, All That Is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 174–75Google Scholar, 177, cited in Glen, John M., Highlander: No Ordinary School, 1932–1962 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1988), 4–5 Google Scholar, 226 n. 6. When Duberman published his book on BMC, educator and civil rights activist Sue Thrasher reviewed it by comparing and contrasting BMC to HFS and Commonwealth College and argued that “All three institutions shared two major concerns: innovative education and a desire to establish communities of shared purpose.” Thrasher, Sue, “Radical Education in the 30's,” in No More Moanin’: Voices of Southern Struggle, ed. Thrasher, Sue and Wise, Leah (Chapel Hill: Institute for Southern Studies, 1974), 204Google Scholar.

13. Harris, Mary Emma, The Arts at Black Mountain College (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002), 53Google Scholar.

14. Holland Cotter's review of Leap before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957 at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston called the exhibition “one of the season's most atmospheric historical shows.” “The Short Life and Long Legacy of Black Mountain College,” New York Times, December 17, 2015. Also, “the unique legacy of educational and artistic innovation of Black Mountain College” is preserved by its own museum and arts center. “Mission,” Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, http://www.blackmountaincollege.org (accessed December 30, 2015).

15. Martin Duberman's 1972 Black Mountain: An Exploration in Community, and Mary Emma Harris's 2002 The Arts at Black Mountain College provide an excellent historical timeline of BMC and description of the art produced there respectively, but there is very little written on the influential Jews teaching, studying, and living at BMC. “They Fled Hitler's Germany and Found Refuge in North Carolina,” in Southern Research Report #8, Academic Affairs Library Center for the Study of the American South, IRSS Faculty Working Group in Southern Studies (1996), included one essay on BMC's Jewish faculty but focuses on Josef and Anni Albers, the more “prestigious” European faculty. Wendy Fergusson Soltz, “Beyond the New York Intellectual: Jewish Refugees and Homosexuals at Black Mountain College, N.C., 1933–1956” (Master's thesis, Brandeis University, 2007), explored for the first time just how many Jewish refugees worked and lived at BMC. Whitfield, Stephen J., in his article “Black Mountain and Brandeis: Two Experiments in Higher Education,” Southern Jewish History: Journal of the Southern Jewish Historical Society 16 (2014): 127–68Google Scholar, compared BMC to Brandeis University, another institution, albeit in the North, which accepted Jewish refugees after World War II.

16. Based on the historical framework of John M. Glen's book, Highlander: No Ordinary School, 1932–1962, Jews operated behind the scenes at HFS and were influential in the school's success.

17. Stephan H. Forbes of J. M. Forbes and Company in Boston gave the initial $10,000 for rent for the first year as well as basic expenses. Bank ledger, 339:1, Charles Olson Research Collection (hereafter CORC), Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries, Storrs, CT.

18. The Atlanta Constitution, August 25, 1933; New York Sun, April 23, 1938.

19. Wodehouse, Lawrence, “Kocher at Black Mountain,” The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 41 (1982): 329CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20. “BMC by College Faculty Members,” 5, series 2, box 4, f older: 1943, BMCR, 1933–56.

21. The grants were also typically limited to those under the age of thirty. Lamberti, Marjorie, “The Reception of Refugee Scholars from Nazi Germany in America: Philanthropy and Social Change in Higher Education,” Jewish Social Studies 12 (2006): 165CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22. By 1939 BMC also employed a flexible Jewish quota for students: “Now as to your question about the number of Jewish students that we should admit. As you know, we used to think that 10% was about as high as we ought to go, though in some respects one ought to count one individual as much as three others. I gathered from what you said that there were six old ones coming back and three new ones already entered. That would make 15% even with sixty students. I should say that if we take any more they ought to be either absolutely top-notch material or full-paying, or preferably both. Under the circumstances we cannot be as choosy as we would like to be. [Frances] Kuntz is certainly a borderline case. My own impression is that in spite of her orneriness, she has so much ability that we should probably take her, but I am happy to leave this nice little decision up to the Admissions Committee.” Theodore Dreier to Frederick Mangold, 6 July 1939, BMC faculty files 3, box 2, folder: Dreier, Theodore personal. Kuntz, a Jew, did enroll at BMC. Harris, Arts at BMC, 72.

23. Harris, Arts at BMC, 53.

24. Ted Dreier to Mrs. Moellenhoff, series 2, box 2, folder: Appt. Fact. July 3, 1938, BMCR. Maure Leonard Goldschmidt, born in 1909, attended Oxford University and completed his bachelor's degree at Reed College as a Rhodes Scholar. After receiving a second bachelor's degree from Oxford in 1933, he went to the University of Chicago, where he received his PhD in 1941 and then taught political science at Reed College. See also Whitfield, “Black Mountain and Brandeis,” 139–41, for a discussion of the life of Goldschmidt and his placement, funding, and ultimate rejection at BMC.

25. The American Guild for German Cultural Freedom to BMC, 20 April 1939, series 2, box 5, folder: Misc. correspondence, BMCR.

26. Dreier to Mangold, 23 June 1939, series 3, box 2, folder: Dreier, Theodore personal, BMCR.

27. Harris, Arts at BMC, 266. J. Richard Carpenter, a 1935–38 Rhodes Scholar, received his PhD in zoology from Oklahoma University in 1939, before accepting the joint biology and registrar appointment at BMC. “The Zoolog: Annual News Letter of the O. U. Zoology Department, Prepared Especially for Zoology Alumni,” Sooner Magazine, January 1941, 24, Bizzell Memorial Library, Oklahoma University, Norman, OK.

28. Lamberti, “Reception of Refugee Scholars,” 180–81.

29. Kent, Donald, The Refugee Intellectual: The Americanization of the Immigrants of 1933–1941 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1953), 124Google Scholar, cited in Lamberti, “Reception of Refugee Scholars,” 158.

30. In addition to the Jalowetzes and the Lowinskys, during the 1930s and 1940s the refugee faculty at BMC included Josef and Albers, Anni, Dehn, Max, Gropius, Walter, Cohen, Frederic, Krenek, Ernst, Kolisch, Rudolf, Bodky, Erwin, and Steuermann, Edward. Shreffler, Anne C., “Wolpe and Black Mountain College,” in Driven into Paradise: The Musical Migration from Nazi Germany to the United States, ed. Brinkmann, Reinhold and Wolff, Christopher (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 281Google Scholar.

31. Harris, Arts at BMC, 101. Before arriving in the United States, émigrés like Bodky, for example, tended to correspond with Lowinsky solely in German. Series 3, box 4, folder 16, BMCR.

32. There is an abundance of literature on quotas and antisemitism against Jewish students in the North, including: Synnott, Marcia Graham, The Half-Opened Door: Discrimination and Admissions at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, 1900–1970 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Oren, Dan, Joining the Club: A History of Jews and Yale (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Karabel, Jerome, The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005)Google Scholar. In the South, the 1962 study by the Anti-Defamation League includes a chapter on discrimination in higher education and even a section on the discrimination against Jewish students at the Dental School of Emory University. Epstein, Benjamin R. and Forster, Arnold, Some of My Best Friends (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1962)Google Scholar. This literature does not address quotas for hiring Jewish professors.

33. “They Fled Hitler's Germany,” 25.

34. Webb, Clive, Fight against Fear: Southern Jews and Black Civil Rights (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001), 236Google Scholar.

35. Tennessee had 48 institutions of higher education: 7 public and 41 private, Virginia had 43 institutions of higher education: 10 public and 33 private, Louisiana had 18 institutions of higher education: 7 public and 11 private, and North Carolina had 52 institutions of higher education: 13 public and 39 private. New York had 109 institutions of higher education: 21 public and 88 private. “Table 2. – Number of Schools of specified types, by State, 1944–46. Public/Private,” in Biennial Survey of Education in the United States (1944–1946) (Washington, DC: United States Office of Education, 1950), 3Google Scholar.

36. “They Fled Hitler's Germany,” 18. The Emergency Committee helped place refugee scholars in positions throughout the United States. Monies were granted to institutions rather than directly to individuals. From its founding in 1933 until 1945, the Emergency Committee “gave grants to 145 colleges and universities, which subsidized in part the faculty salaries of 277 exiled scholars, of whom 207 came from Germany and 31 from Austria … and reported that 55 had permanent positions by 1938, and 83 by 1940.” Lamberti, “Reception of Refugee Scholars,” 177. For information about other aid organizations that placed scholars at BMC, see Soltz, “Beyond the New York Intellectual,” 16 n. 61.

37. Not all these refugee scholars were Jewish. In addition, Alvin Johnson of the New School established an agricultural settlement in Pender County, NC, designed as a refugee haven, but these Jewish refugees were not scholars. The short-lived settlement collapsed in 1943. Melissa Bentley, “The Van Eeden Settlement: Alvin Johnson's Attempt to Rescue Jewish Refugees and Turn the Tide of American Public Opinion in Favor of Jewish Resettlement in the 1930s and 1940s” (Undergraduate thesis, University of North Carolina, 2003).

38. In 1942, the BMC Board of Fellows sent a telegraph to the governor of North Carolina protesting the death sentence of William Wellman, a black man convicted on “flimsy evidence” of attacking a white woman. Duberman, Black Mountain, 175. This fact is important to keep in mind with the selection of Sylvestra Martin, a woman, as the first black student on campus (see below).

39. Joseph Fiore, a painting instructor at BMC, recalled incidents of local prejudice, such as when black students were unable to get a cold drink with fellow white students at a drugstore. Thompson, James, Black Mountain College Dossiers #01: Joseph Fiore (Black Mountain, NC: Black Mountain College Press, 2003), 8Google Scholar.

40. Duberman, Black Mountain, 173.

41. Gretel Lowinsky in Duberman, Black Mountain, 206; ibid., 202; Later in the 1940s and well into the 1960s, accusations concerning Communist leadership of the Civil Rights Movement were widespread, as were Cold War denunciations of alleged Communist infiltration of American institutions. Ibid., 173–74, 202.

42. Kenneth Kurtz in Black Mountain, 183.

43. Peter Wallenstein, “Introduction: Higher Education, Black Access, and the Civil Rights Movement,” in Higher Education and the Civil Rights Movement, 2.

44. Duberman, Black Mountain, 179; see also Wallenstein, “Black Southerners and Nonblack Universities,” 17–59; Beginning in 1951, black students enrolled in graduate programs at the University of North Carolina, but undergraduate programs remained closed to them. The University of North Carolina opened its doors to black undergraduate students in 1955, one year after the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Wallenstein, “Black Southerners and Nonblack Universities,” 34, 45.

45. Meeting notes, series 2, box 24, folder: Negro Students 1944–1945, BMCR.

46. Duberman, Black Mountain, 180.

47. Albers to Clarence E. Pickett at the American Friends Service Committee, 24 April 1944. Pickett replied on May 8, 1944 that they did not have any funds for such a project and suggested contacting the Julius Rosenwald Foundation. See note below for more information on this philanthropic organization. Albers also wrote to the Interior Office of Indian Affairs (24 April 1944), the Pan American Union in Washington, DC (25 April 1944), and the China Institute of America in New York (14 June 1944) attempting to solicit Indian, Latino, and Chinese students and faculty. All the citations in this note are in series 2, box 24, folder: Institute Art Summer Refugees etc., 1944, BMCR.

48. “From Faculty meeting April 17, 1944: re taking negro students at BMC,” series 2, box 24, folder: Negro Students 1944–1945, BMCR.

49. Miller to Anita Calloway, 30 November 1944, series 2, box 24, folder: Negro Students 1944–1945, BMCR.

50. Duberman, Black Mountain, 181.

51. Duberman, Black Mountain, 175, 181. Black Mountain College intended to rent out some of its grounds to a “Problems of the South” interracial conference in March 1943, but R. R. Williams, Black Mountain College's lawyer, persuaded them not to, saying “a good deal of local resentment and anger” would be the result. Ibid., 175.

52. James E. Shepard at the University of North Carolina to Wunsch, 20 March 1944, series 2, box 24, folder: Negro Students 1944–1945, BMCR.

53. Duberman, Black Mountain, 179.

54. Duberman, Black Mountain, 183–85. As early as the seventeenth century, Jewish bankers who conducted financial business with the regal nobility of Europe bore the title of “court Jew.” Hofjude (German for “court Jew”) was also a reference to the antisemitic Third Reich book by Julius Streicher (actually written by Peter Deeg) entitled Hofjuden (Court Jews) (1938). Streicher traced the “Jewish Problem” in Germany back to the monarchies of Europe, through the Middle Ages, and then to World War I when Germany suffered extreme losses.

55. Duberman, Black Mountain, 208.

56. Duberman, Black Mountain, 214, 213.

57. The 1931 Scottsboro Boys case, which brought to court nine black teenagers who were falsely accused of raping two white women on a train in Alabama, was perhaps the most well-known case. See chapter 1, “Exploding the Myth of the Black Rapist: Collective Memory and the Scottsboro Nine,” in Markovitz, Jonathan, Racial Spectacles: Explorations in Media, Race, and Justice (New York: Routledge, 2011)Google Scholar. The BMC community had previously advocated for an African American man wrongly accused in a case similar to this (see note above).

58. Rosenwald, part owner of Sears, Roebuck and Company, developed the Julius Rosenwald Fund in 1917. Through his foundation, Rosenwald, the son of German Jewish immigrants, provided the single largest source of funding for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's (NAACP) legal work and for black primary education in the South, spending over 22 million dollars on black causes before closing in June of 1948. Perkins, Alfred, Edwin Rogers Embree: The Julius Rosenwald Fund, Foundation Philanthropy, and American Race Relations (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011), 274Google Scholar, 254, 250. See also Deutsch, Stephanie, You Need a Schoolhouse: Booker T. Washington, Julius Rosenwald, and the Building of Schools for the Segregated South (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2011)Google Scholar.

59. Duberman, Black Mountain, 215.

60. Harris, Arts at BMC, 108.

61. Duberman, Black Mountain, 215.

62. Duberman, Black Mountain, 216.

63. Percy Greene of Deep South News Service to Lowinsky, 10 January 1947, and from Rosco Dunjee of the Black Dispatch, 3 December 1946, series 2, box 20, folder: Interracial Program, Correspondence 1944–1947, BMCR.

64. Correspondence from Lowinsky, both dated 8 November 1946, series 2, box 20, folder: Interracial Program: Correspondence 1944–1947, BMCR. In addition, Lowinsky wrote to the Atlanta Urban League; Palmer Memorial Institute; National Urban League; New Orleans Urban League; Southern Negro Youth Congress (Miami Council); and the Julius Rosenwald Fund.

65. Series 2, box 20, folder: Interracial Program: Correspondence 1944–1947, BMCR.

66. Duberman, Black Mountain, 216, 498 n. 11.

67. Duberman, Black Mountain, 217, 218.

68. Miller at BMC to Miss Estelle Mendoza in New York, 30 November 1944, series 2, box 24, folder: Negro Students 1944–1945, BMCR.

69. BMC Bulletin/Newsletter 8, nos. 1–3, 1950–51, 12, series 3, box 27, folder: Publications College, BMCR.

70. Duberman, Black Mountain, 111 n. 16.

71. Lowinsky to Mr. Floyd B. McKissick, 30 November 1967, series 1, box 8, folder 7: Lowinsky Papers, University of Chicago Library (hereafter UCLP). Before donating funds to the organization, Lowinsky requested more information about CORE's attitude regarding Israel. He was “not willing to support an organization that openly supports the cry of Arab nationalists and feudal landowners to ‘drive Israel into the sea,’ etc.” Lowinsky to Mr. Floyd B. McKissick, 29 September 1967, series 1, box 8, folder 7, UCLP.

72. “Diversity Timeline,” Office of Diversity and Campus Engagement at Sarah Lawrence, http://www.slc.edu/studentlife/office-of-diversity/timeline.html (accessed February 13, 2014); “The New School Timeline,” The New School, http://www.newschool.edu/about/timeline (accessed February 13, 2014). While both are located in New York, Sarah Lawrence and the New School for Social Research have contrasting Jewish histories. Sarah Lawrence employed a Jewish quota while the New School for Social Research housed the University in Exile, which freely opened its doors to refugee Jewish faculty and students beginning in 1933. See Rose, Louise Blecher, “The Secret Life of Sarah Lawrence,” Commentary 75 (1983): 52–57 Google Scholar, and Rutkoff, Peter M. and Scott, William B., New School: A History of the New School for Social Research (New York: Free Press, 1986), 86Google Scholar. Wallenstein argued that while there were schools that accepted black students before Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 Supreme Court decision to uphold “separate but equal” doctrine, “it is often necessary to qualify statements about [desegregation] by adding the phrase ‘in the twentieth century.’‘in the twentieth century.’” Wallenstein, “Introduction,” 2.

73. Glen, Highlander, 65.

74. Glen, Highlander, 10–15.

75. Horton to Paul Hansen at the Esbjerg Arbejderhøjskole (a folk school in Esbjerg, Denmark), 2 April 1932, box 41, folders 15–16 (reel 10, frames 802–3): Denmark Trip, HRECR.

76. Horton, personal notes, Denmark (ca. Nov. 1931), box 54, HC Papers, cited in Glen, Highlander, 14 n. 34.

77. Glen, Highlander, 12–13.

78. Glen, Highlander, 21.

79. Glen, Highlander, 19, 21.

80. Glen, Highlander, 20–22.

81. Glen, Highlander, 58.

82. Glen, Highlander, 30 n. 34: Staff members, “To Our Friends of Summerfield and Neighboring Communities,” 1934, box 1, HC Papers, in Glen, Highlander, 30 n. 35: Staff meeting minutes, 18, 25 March 1934, box 2, HC Papers.

83. “Community Reaction to Negroes at Highlander,” box 39, folder 1 (reel 8 frames 643–46), Civil Rights, Highlander's Early Involvement, 1938–1955, HRECR.

84. Glen, Highlander, 30 n. 36: “Summer School Report and Summary of Reports; Dombrowski to Bryant, August 6, 1934, Box 8, HC; Dombrowski to Francis Henson, July 23, 1934, Box 13, HC; Dombrowski to Al Keedy, August 6, 1934, Box 31, HC; Fighting Eaglet, nos. 3, 4 (July 1934), Box 61, HC; R. F. Martin, ‘A Prophet's Pilgrimage,’ 521–22.”

85. Glen, Highlander, 95.

86. Founded in Atlanta in 1919, the Commission on Interracial Cooperation (CIC) publicly opposed all aspects of racial abuse. Ann Ellis Pullen, “Commission on Interracial Cooperation,” Kennesaw State University, http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/commission-interracial-cooperation (accessed January 13, 2016); Myles Horton to Mr. J. B. S. Hardman, ed., Advance in New York, 8 July 1939, box 39, folder 1 (reel 8, frame 604), Civil Rights, Highlander's Early Involvement, 1938–1955, HRECR.

87. Myles Horton to Dr. Arthur Raper in Atlanta, 21 May 1940, box 39, folder 1 (reel 8, frames 605–6), Civil Rights, Highlander's Early Involvement, 1938–1955, HRECR.

88. Myles Horton to Dr. Arthur Raper in Atlanta, 21 May 1940.

89. Visitors, “Guest Book,” 1933–43 (205 pp.), box 75, folder 12 (reel 41, frames 1–218), HRECR.

90. New York provided 76 donations followed by Missouri (22 donations), Pennsylvania (21 donations), Illinois (21 donations), Massachusetts (19 donations), Wisconsin (19 donations), and New Jersey (14 donations). Additional Jewish donations in the South included: South Carolina (four donations), Louisiana and North Carolina (three donations each), Florida and Texas (two donations each) and Georgia and Virginia (one donation each). I analyze two categories of Jewish individuals here. Members of the first group can clearly be identified as Jewish. This means they are affiliated with a synagogue, have the title of “rabbi,” or are affiliated with a Jewish institution. Examples include Julius Weisberg of the Jewish Daily Forward; an unnamed representative from the Arbeiter Ring of Memphis, Tennessee; Dr. S. H. Goldenson of Temple Emanu-El in New York; and Rabbi Phillip D. Bookstaber of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Members of the second group have typical Jewish-sounding names of the era, such as Felix S. Cohen of Washington, DC; Dr. Edward Berman of Urbana, Illinois; Mrs. Goldye Berkowitz of Chesterton, Indiana; and J. Bernstein of the Levy-Bernstein Fur Company in New Orleans. The sum of groups one and two represents the 267 donations (some donors contributed more than once). Contributor list, contributors lists, 1932–60, box 48, folder 9 (reel 17, frame 1), HRECR.

91. Between the years 1927 and 1937, Tennessee's Jewish population grew from 22,532 to 25,811 and remained at 0.91 percent of the overall population. Comparatively, New York's Jewish population grew from 1,903,890 (16.67 percent of the state's total population) to 2,206,328 (16.7 percent of the state's total population), American Jewish Year Book 32 (1930–31): 220, and 43 (1941–42): 656.

92. Willimetz cut and planted trees, split logs, and did some painting at HFS during the 1938 work camp. Willimetz, Gringo, 197, 227.

93. Eva Zhitowsky, a Jewish woman who had previously attended BMC, directed Highlander's nursery school in 1942. Myles Horton to Mrs. Lucy Sprague Mitchell of the Bank Street Schools in New York, 25 June 1942, Sponsors, tenth anniversary celebration, 1942, box 71, folder 5 (reel 37, frame 691), HRECR. Joan Payne of Sarah Lawrence College first directed the nursery school, which opened in 1938. Glen, Highlander, 52.

94. Glen, Highlander, 83.

95. Glen, Highlander, 83–84, 97.

96. Glen, Highlander, 57.

97. “Letter from the South,” by Bill Elkuss (reprint from the AVC-Scope, October 8, 1946), Bill Elkuss, “Letters from the South,” box 82, folder 7 (reel 47, frame 844), HRECR.

98. Glen, Highlander, 89, 91, 102, 117.

99. A letter sent to the “Tennessee mailing list,” 28 January 1941, claims that “HITLER WOULD LIKE THIS” in reference to a recent bill in the Tennessee legislature against unions. Publicity and news releases, box 66, folders 1–5 (reel 32, frame 414), HRECR. A fundraising letter from Myles Horton dated September 1943 relates Hitler's threat of germ warfare to HFS work in the “contagion of democratic action” in the South. Fundraising, appeals, form letters, 1933–69, box 44, folder 17 (reel 13, frame 353), HRECR.

100. “Dear Friend” fundraising song sheet music, by Myles Horton, 3 December 1943, publicity and news releases, box 66, folders 1–5 (reel 32, frame 426), HRECR.

101. Number of Jewish visitors to HFS by year: 1934, 10 visitors; 1935, 27 visitors; 1936, 34 visitors; 1937, 18 visitors; 1938, 31 visitors; 1939, 28 visitors; 1940, 84 visitors; 1941, 52 visitors; 1942, 28 visitors; 1943, 9 visitors; 1944, 6 visitors; 1945, 0 visitors; 1946, 8 visitors. Visitors, “Guest Book,” 1933–43 (205 pp.), box 75, folder 12 (reel 41, frames 1–218), HRECR.

102. Sixteen Jews signed the guestbook from the West, international locations, and unknown locations. Visitors, “Guest Book,” 1933–43.

103. Glen, Highlander, 91–92.

104. Press release/invitation, May 1943, Civil Rights, Highlander's Early Involvement, 1938–55, box 39, folder 1 (reel 8, frame 608), HRECR.

105. Highlander Folk School, “Outline of 1944 Program,” Civil Rights, Highlander's Early Involvement, 1938–55, box 39, folder 1 (reel 8, frame 621), HRECR.

106. “THINGS CIO UNIONS CAN DO ON RACIAL DISCRIMINATION,” Community Relations Class at Highlander Folk School, May 1944, Civil Rights, Highlander's Early Involvement, 1938–55, box 39, folder 1 (reel 8, frame 617), HRECR.

107. “Community Reaction to Negroes at Highlander,” Civil Rights, Highlander's Early Involvement, 1938–55, box 39, folder 1 (reel 8, frames 643–46), HRECR.

108. “Community Reaction to Negroes at Highlander.”

109. Highlander Folk School “Outline of 1944 Program.”

110. It is unclear how many African Americans enrolled. Highlander Folk School “Outline of 1944 Program.” Horton attributed the success of the session partly to Highlander's mountain location, for it had allowed the union members to work, play, and discuss their common problems relatively isolated from outside pressures. Glen, Highlander, 96.

111. “Community Reaction to Negroes at Highlander.”

112. “Community Reaction to Negroes at Highlander.”

113. Glen, Highlander, 99–100; 103.

114. “Inter-Racial Sessions at the Highlander Folk School” (ca. 1948), Civil Rights, Highlander's Early Involvement, 1938–55, box 39, folder 1 (reel 8, frames 653–54), HRECR.

115. 1945 publicity flyer, Civil Rights, Highlander's Early Involvement, 1938–55, box 39, folder 1 (reel 8, frames 628–29), HRECR.

116. Forman, Seth, Blacks in the Jewish Mind: A Crisis of Liberalism (New York: New York University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Greenberg, Cheryl Lynn, Troubling the Waters: Black-Jewish Relations in the American Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Svonkin, Stuart, Jews against Prejudice: American Jews and the Fight for Civil Liberties (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

117. Various correspondence from Myles Horton, 5 September 1946, Fundraising, appeals, form letters, 1933–69, box 44, folder 17 (reel 13, frame 357), HRECR.

118. “Highlander Folk School” editorial in the Jewish Weekly Times (Brookline, MA), November 7, 1946, publicity and news releases, box 66, folders 1–5 (reel 32, frame 457), HRECR.

119. “Highlander Committees,” by Myles Horton, November 1946, General information and reports, box 45, folder 6 (reel 13, frames 872–73), HRECR.

120. The other groups to which he spoke were the Urban League, the Episcopal Cathedral weekly businessmen's lunch club, and high school classes on human relationships. “Reports and suggestions: to committees and areas where new committees are being established,” by Mrs. Emil Willimetz, Executive Secretary, April 1952, Benefits, 1938–61, box 45, folder 4 (reel 13, frame 874), HRECR.

121. These appeals were sent to Jewish foundations in New York, including the Jacob R. Schiff Charitable Trust; the Clara Buttenwieser Unger Memorial Foundation; the Felix M. and Frieda Schiff Warburg Foundation; Ensign Lionel Judah Tachna Memorial Fund; D. B. Steinman Foundation; and the Roger and Gladys Straus Foundation, Inc. Jewish foundations in other northern cities included the Estate of Jacob Ziskind (Boston) and the Aaron Straus and Lillie Straus Foundation Incorporated (Baltimore). Also approached were Jewish foundations in the Midwest such as the Wehrle Foundation (Newark, Ohio); the Sigmund Silberman Foundation (Chicago); the Wieboldt Foundation (Evanston, Illinois); the Wahlhert Foundation (Dubuque, Iowa); and a small number of Jewish foundations in the South, such as the Edgar Stern Family Fund (New Orleans). Various correspondence, Foundations, box 51, folders 3–8 (reel 19, frames 6–316), HRECR.

122. Persistent fiscal problems had always hindered expansion of HFS programs. Therefore, the school remained dependent on supporters outside the South. Glen, Highlander, 36.

123. Roger Baldwin of New York to Myles Horton, 15 June 1942, Sponsors, tenth anniversary celebration, 1942, box 71, folder 5 (reel 37, frame 694), HRECR.

124. Myles Horton to Roger Baldwin of New York, 25 June 1942, Sponsors, tenth anniversary celebration, 1942, box 71, folder 5 (reel 37, frame 693), HRECR.

125. Various correspondence from Myles Horton, 5 September 1946, Fundraising, appeals, form letters, 1933–69, box 44, folder 17 (reel 13, frame 356), HRECR.

126. For a vivid description of the rise of Atlanta's benevolent Jewish culture beginning in the 1800s, see Bauman, Mark K. “The Emergence of Jewish Social Service Agencies in Atlanta,” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 69 (Winter 1985): 488–508 Google Scholar.

127. The Gershons were one of thirty-one names on the list that included such notables as Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt; Roger Baldwin of the American Civil Liberties Union; Frank P. Graham, president of the University of North Carolina; and Charles Johnson, soon to be the president of Fisk University. Contributors List, Sponsors, tenth anniversary celebration, 1942, box 71, folder 5 (reel 37, frame 796), HRECR.

128. Highlander “Fact Sheet,” “Highlander Center Sponsors” as of June 18, 1962, publicity and news releases, box 66, folders 1–5 (reel 32, frames 525–26), HRECR.

129. “Additions to Highlander Defense Fund,” 3 November 1959, Legal Defense Fund, 1959–61, box 45, folder 2 (reel 13, frames 729–31), HRECR.  Highlander had been charged with more than eighteen crimes including “operation of the school on an integrated basis, selling beer without a license, and operating the school for personal gain.” Highlander “Fact Sheet,” “Highlander Center Sponsors” as of June 18, 1962, publicity and news releases, box 66, folders 1–5 (reel 32, frame 525), HRECR.

130. The Film Center produced informational films on workers' rights and organizing for union locals. Willimetz, Gringo, 411–22.

131. Willimetz, Gringo, 453.

132. Willimetz, Gringo, 463.

133. The two counselors were Esther Fried and Everett Gendler, and the nine campers were John C. Wolff, Gerald G. Laderman, Linda G. Trichter, Jerry A. Berliant, Michael Clark (from Connecticut), Hillel D. Halkin, Diana M. Shapiro, Joanne N. Field, and Erna Beiser. “Betty: Here is a list of campers of American Jewish Society for Service Work Camp,” American Jewish Society for Service Work Camp, 1955, box 77, folder 7 (reel 42, frame 865), HRECR. Gendler went on to become active in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. He led a group of rabbis in a march for voting rights in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, and then convinced Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel to join the five-day march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965, for the same cause. Kaplan, Edward K., Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940–1973 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 222CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

134. Henry F. Shipherd to Mr. Henry Kohn, President, American Jewish Society for Service, 24 March 1955, American Jewish Society for Service Work Camp, 1955, box 77, folder 7 (reel 42, frames 844–45), HRECR.

135. Henry F. Shipherd to Mr. Henry Kohn.

136. “UT Desegregation Timeline.” University of Tennessee Knoxville, http://achieve.utk.edu/timeline.shtml (accessed December 21, 2015).

137. “Job Program for Work Campers” from Henry F. Shipherd to Mr. Henry Kohn, President, American Jewish Society for Service, 12 September 1955, American Jewish Society for Service Work Camp, 1955, box 77, folder 7 (reel 42, frame 864), HRECR.

138. Henry F. Shipherd to Mr. Henry Kohn, President, American Jewish Society for Service, 6 April 1955, American Jewish Society for Service Work Camp, 1955, box 77, folder 7 (reel 42, frame 847), HRECR.

139. Henry F. Shipherd to Mr. Henry Kohn, President, American Jewish Society for Service, 9 August 1955, American Jewish Society for Service Work Camp, 1955, box 77, folder 7 (reel 42, frames 860–61), HRECR.

140. “I talked some with Everett [Gendler, one of the two counselors] about the advantages to both A.J.S.S. and Highlander of a continued work camp relationship. I'm sure you and Rabbi [Isidor B.] Hoffman [counselor to Jewish students at Columbia University from 1934 to 1967 and on the AJSS board of directors] and others will be getting your heads together for your own evaluation. If it is possible I thin[k] you should ask for ideas and suggestions from this summer's group about next summer's recruiting and program.” Henry F. Shipherd to Mr. Henry Kohn, President, American Jewish Society for Service, 12 September 1955, American Jewish Society for Service Work Camp, 1955, box 77, folder 7 (reel 42, frame 862), HRECR; “Rabbi Isidor Hoffman Dies at 82,” New York Times, January 29, 1981.

141. Willimetz, Gringo, 463, 479.

142. Willimetz, Gringo, 461.

143. You Got to Move: Stories of Change in the South, directed by Phenix, Lucy Massie and Selver, Veronica (1985; Harrington Park, NJ: Milliarium Zero and New York: Oscilloscope, 2011)Google Scholar, DVD.

144. Whitfield, “Black Mountain and Brandeis,” 145.

145. Duberman, Black Mountain, 254, 277, 525.

146. Duberman, Black Mountain, 217.

147. “At Highlander you can feel the pulse of the South,” George Mitchell, Southern Regional Council, undated, Clinton, TN, school integration, 1956, 1960, box 39, folder 7 (reel 8, frame 850), HRECR.