Among Virginia Durr’s many contributions to the civil rights movement, arguably the most consequential was persuading Rosa Parks to attend a workshop at the Highlander School in the summer of 1955, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Topeka Board of Education ruling.
“Mrs. Durr told me about a workshop that was going to be held called ‘Racial Desegregation: Implementing the Supreme Court Decision.’ It was going to be at a place called the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee. She said that she thought I should go and that there was a scholarship available and she would get together the money to pay my expenses to go up there for this ten-day workshop. Mr. Nixon was all for my going too and so I went.”
It’s relatively common for middle-class and affluent people to leave their hometown for new educational experiences that broaden their horizons, expose them to new ideas and people, and let them test out their own talents and abilities to act as leaders. Summer camp, family vacations to another state or country, college, graduate school, management training seminars all perform this function.
It’s not so common for working-class and poor folk to have have those experiences. That’s why labor unions, churches, and community organizations all devote a significant portion of their institutional resources to creating experiences like the one Rosa Parks had at Highlander for their members and prospective leaders. It’s why, if you study the history of any social movement, you’ll find stories similar to Mrs. Parks’ story about Highlander.
Want to create social change? Build an institution like the Highlander School the way Myles Horton did. If you can’t build one, do what Virginia Durr did: help persuade (and provide scholarships for) existing and potential leaders in your community to go away for a workshop like the one Mrs. Parks attended at Highlander. Or go to a workshop yourself.
“It was quite enjoyable to be with the people at Highlander. We forgot about what color anybody was. I was forty-two years old, and it was one of the few times in my life up to that point when I did not feel any hostility from white people. I experienced people of different races and backgrounds meeting together in workshops and living together in peace and harmony. I felt that I could express myself honestly without any repercussions or antagonistic attitudes from other people.”
Rosa Parks didn’t say anything at the end of her time at Highlander about what she might do with the knowledge and experience she had gained from the workshop. She ends this chapter in her life (and book) by writing, “So I went back to Montgomery and back to my job as an assistant tailor at Montgomery Fair department store, where you had to be smiling and polite no matter how rudely you were treated. And back to the city buses, with their segregation rules.”
