The Moonlight School

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

Cora grinned from ear to ear. “He recorded it in Louisville a few months back. Whenever he disappears for a stretch, it’s because he’s off recording his music.”

  “But . . . he never said anything about recording songs. I mean . . .” Lucy’s mind was spinning like a windmill. “He spoke of meetings. I assumed that it had something to do with his singing school pamphlets.” She never thought to ask the purpose of those meetings.

  “There was probably truth in that. But it’s also true that he’s been recording his music at a studio.”

  “Why didn’t he say something?”

  “He’s far too modest. Though I have been encouraging him to tell you about his recordings, and he finally said that I could tell you.” She smiled like a cat that swallowed a canary. “So, of course, I did.”

  “But Cora . . . why . . . is he here? Why do the singing schools at all? They seem like so much work for him. Why not just stay in the city and concentrate on his career?”

  “Oh Lucy, after all these months, do you still not understand that man? Have you listened to his music? His ambition is not for himself but for others.”

  Lucy listened to the rest of the song, one she realized now that she’d heard Wyatt sing at a gathering, but she’d been so distracted by the clapping and the clogging that she hadn’t paid much attention to the lyrics. She assumed it told a love story between a man and a woman, but now she realized that it was a love story between God and his people. Seeking them, calling them back to him, drawing them to his tender love and unfailing kindness.

  The record finished and Cora reached over to pull the needle up, but Lucy asked her to play it again, so she did. Lucy plopped down in a chair, eyes closed, swept away by the song. When it finished for the third time, she looked at Cora. “Wyatt is your sponsor for Bibles as rewards, isn’t he?” When Cora nodded, she added, “And here I thought you’d talked Father into providing funds.”

  “Your father is amenable to helping individuals, those who’ve already proved themselves. But he’s a hard sell for blanket donations. Too difficult to see results, he says.” She shrugged. “All business, that’s your father.”

  “Wyatt is quite an unusual man, isn’t he?”

  “That, he is.”

  As Cora lifted the record from the Victrola and carefully slipped it back into its jacket, Lucy cupped her hands over her knees. “I’ve been thinking . . . after the Moonlight Schools campaign, I’d like to stay on.”

  Cora’s mouth opened and Lucy raised a hand to cut off her thought before it was expressed. “Not as a teacher. And not as your assistant. I’m sorry, Cora. I’ve enjoyed both roles more than I thought I would, but they’re not where my heart lies.”

  “And where is that?”

  “I’d like to write down the stories of the mountain people. Miss Mollie’s, Finley James, others. To capture them on paper.” She looked down at her hands. “Perhaps, one day, they might be published.” Something like the dream her mother always had.

  Silence. When she chanced a look at Cora, she saw her eyes were glittering.

  “So,” she said softly, “you want to write?”

  Lucy smiled. “I do.”

  “I think that’s a fine idea, Lucy.” She reached for her handkerchief and dabbed at the corners of her eyes.

  “I’m going to live in Sally Ann Duncan’s cabin. It’s all arranged. Roy is working for my father’s lumber company. It seemed like an ideal arrangement. They can use the rent money, and I’d prefer to be up in the mountains.” Did she really just say that aloud . . . and mean it? She did! “There’s something about that cabin, that property. I just love it.”

  Cora smiled. “I don’t doubt the connection. That property belonged to our great-great-grandfather. The first Wilson to immigrate from Ulster, long ago.”

  “Hold on a moment.” Lucy tipped her head. “Are you saying that Sally Ann is kin to us?”

  “Many times removed.” Cora sighed. “Like most everyone up there. All related to each other, to some distant degree or another.”

  And then there are closer degrees than you might ever imagine, Lucy thought.

  “Seems like this is the day for revelations. There’s something you should know, Lucy. It wasn’t my idea to have you come to Morehead. It was presented to me, and, of course, I loved it. But I had no budget for an assistant. You’ve seen for yourself how tight things are here.”

  She was well aware. Cora wrote and sold articles under a pen name just to make ends meet. All spare funds were used for publishing materials.

  Confused, Lucy rubbed her forehead. If Cora was unable to pay her, that meant . . . someone else was providing her salary. Someone else was paying the fee to hire Jenny from Arthur Cooper’s livery, to let the room at Miss Maude’s boarding house. She dropped her head with a sigh. “Hazel.”

  “No,” Cora said with a smile. “Not Hazel. It was your father. When I saw him at his wedding to Hazel, he told me that he worried you seemed to be lost. Growing invisible, were his exact words. He asked me if I’d take you on as an assistant for six months, and he’d provide the salary.”

  Lucy stared at her, shocked. “But Father acted as if he was against it. He told me he only acquiesced because you wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

  “Self-contradiction.” She wiggled her eyebrows. “A clever tactic to make it all the more enticing.”

  “But . . . he’s never had anything positive to say about Rowan County.”

  “All bark, no bite.” Cora grinned. “A teddy bear at heart, that’s your paw.” Her face turned facetiously stern. “But don’t ever tell him I told you that.”

  A memory of Charlotte as a baby flashed through Lucy’s mind—curled up in Father’s lap, holding Mr. Buttons. This time, the sharp and lingering sting that usually accompanied those memories was missing.

  Cora stood at the window, looking up the road toward the mountain. She rubbed her elbows tightly, as if holding herself together. “Less than a week away.”

  The Moonlight Schools campaign, she meant.

  Twenty-Five

  IT WAS A GLORIOUS NIGHT with a great harvest moon—so close that a man might think to reach out and touch it. There was a breeze, just enough to rustle the leaves on the trees.

  The first night of the Moonlight Schools had arrived. The skies were clear. Cora had hoped for one hundred people to show up, a few per schoolhouse. Recently she lowered it to fifty. “And if it catches on, then perhaps more will come as the week goes on.” She tried to sound optimistic, but she was anxious and couldn’t sit still all day long.

  Late in the day, Wyatt stopped by Cora’s office. “Are you excited?”

  “I’m . . .” Cora paused. “I supposed I’m . . . uneasy.

  “I’m going to head on up to Little Brushy School. Will you come?”

  Lucy grabbed her sweater. “I’ll go with you. Cora, come with us.”

  She hesitated, rubbed her forehead. “I fear a headache is coming.”

  “Cora, we have prayed mightily about this extravagant idea of yours,” Wyatt said. “Let us have faith in the All Mighty’s extravagant answer.”

  Slowly, Cora rose and followed them to the livery. Lucy had grown so accustomed to riding Jenny that she climbed on with ease, stroking the pony’s mane with fondness. Wyatt on Lyric led the procession of Cora and Lucy, on their mounts, and as they passed the train station, Andrew Spencer waved, flagging Lucy down. She told Cora to go on ahead and tugged slightly on the reins to stop Jenny.

  Andrew tipped his hat. “I wanted you to know I’m leaving Morehead.”

  “Off to bigger and better things?”

  He grinned. “That’s my plan.” He took off his bowler hat and held it against his middle, a gesture of sincerity. “Lucy, I hope—sincerely—that you won’t be too disappointed tonight.”

  “Nor do I,” Lucy said and gave him a nod. She tapped her heels against Jenny’s girth to catch up with Cora and Wyatt, who were waiting for her at the trailhead. She didn’t mind leaving Andrew
Spencer behind.

  As they crossed the creek, she thought again of how much she had changed in these last few months. She was barely conscious of how thoroughly she had adjusted to Jenny: leaning forward as the pony extended her neck to climb the hillside or lowered her nose to pick her way through the rocky trails. The inside of her knees gripped the saddle and her hands allowed give and take with the reins. When had those responses become instinctive? She hadn’t even noticed.

  They walked the next couple of miles in silence. There was no talking tonight, not like they usually did. Each one, deep in their own thoughts. Cora held the reins tightly in her hands, evidence of her churning mind. Wyatt, Lucy had no doubt, was praying for a successful turnout. But what would be a success? A few people per schoolhouse, as Cora hoped for? Wyatt expected hundreds. Lucy hoped for something in between.

  The shadows deepened as they went up the mountain, darkness descending as they rode, though the moon was round and bright, the sky cloudless. Lucy breathed in the familiar musty scent of the woods. She gazed up at the tall canopy of trees, at the twinkling stars above. How she loved these hills, so far, so remote from town life. The hills and hollows were becoming part of her. As if they’d always been a part of her.

  Strange, so strange. These mountains and valleys were where her grandparents and had lived and were buried. Her father ran away from this place, and returned only to reap its harvest. He didn’t realize what he had missed seeing in these mountains. Cora saw.

  As they came around the last bend, a faint sound floated through the treetops. Wyatt lifted a hand to stop them. He glanced back at Cora and Lucy, curious, then turned around again and cocked his ear.

  “An owl?” Lucy said, pleased with herself for being able to identify a night bird. Six months ago, she probably wouldn’t have noticed.

  “No, I don’t think it’s a bird.” Wyatt tipped his head. “There. There it is again.” It was the sound of a baby crying, wafting through the night air, followed by a murmur of voices. “Let’s keep going.”

  As they came through the trees, Cora let out a loud gasp of shock, as if the wind had been knocked out of her. The door to the Little Brushy schoolhouse was wide open, revealing a schoolhouse packed with people. Cora made a clicking sound and her horse moved into a fast trot, then cantered over the field to the schoolhouse. She leapt off her horse, dropping the reins to run up the porch steps. She peered inside, then turned to Lucy and Wyatt as their horses approached the schoolhouse. “Every seat is full,” she said, her face covered in relief and joy. “Men and women of every age.” Her hands flew to her cheeks. “And then there’s Angie . . . she’s at the chalkboard acting like a seasoned general.” Her gaze shifted past them and she pointed to the trees, as more people arrived. “Look! There’s Martin Sloan, coming down the trail.” She lowered her voice to a happy whisper. “Why, that old coot. He told me just yesterday that he’s eighty-five years old and didn’t I know that old dogs can’t learn new tricks.” Beaming, she clasped her hands together over her heart. “Oh Wyatt, you were so right. We serve an extravagant God. Why did I ever doubt?”

  “Why, indeed?” Wyatt replied, but Cora had already disappeared into the schoolhouse. He swung a leg over Lyric’s back and slid to the ground, saying hello to Martin Sloan and a few other people as they walked past them.

  Lucy watched them as they paused at the schoolhouse door, looking for a place to sit. “Wyatt, do you think all of the schoolhouses will have this kind of turnout? Or most?”

  “I do,” he said, looking up at her. “I believe that all will be like this one.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “There are just some things,” he said as he reached out his hands to help Lucy down, “that a man knows without knowing how he knows.” In one smooth move, he lifted her off the pony and into his arms. And then he paused for a moment, hands around her waist. “Cora tells me you’re not leaving Rowan County.”

  “That’s right. I’m staying put.” Something welled up inside her and burst out. “There’s no place else I want to be.”

  They were inches from each other, his eyes locked on hers. In those intense gray eyes of his were several emotions: confidence, contentment, serenity, hope. And there was something else in his look: love. Her breath quickened, her heart skipped a beat or two. He loved her. She could see it, sense it, feel it. And she loved Wyatt. She loved this fine and humble man. She knew, without knowing how she knew.

  A jumble of sounds floated out of the schoolhouse, a song, voices high and low . . . and the spell was broken.

  Wyatt lifted his chin to look over the horse’s neck at the school. “Sounds like a party’s going on. Shall we go in?”

  But Lucy wasn’t quite ready to go inside. She wanted to soak this moment up, to fix it firmly in her mind. The soft, buttery glow casting light out the schoolhouse door, followed by a hum of chatter. Being here, with Wyatt’s arms around her, with Cora. With Angie. She knew she would never, ever forget this night. Cora was so right. The Moonlight Schools would always be the highlight of her life.

  So . . . What Happened Next?

  CORA WILSON STEWART declared September 5, 1911, as “the brightest moonlit night the world has ever seen.” On that first night of the campaign, over 1,200 illiterate and semi-literate adults, almost one-third of the county, trooped through the hills and hollows to fill the rural schoolhouses of Rowan County, Kentucky.

  Stewart described her observations in an interview with American journalist Ida Clyde Clarke called “Moonlight-School Lady”:

  There were overgrown boys who had dropped out of school and been ashamed to re-enter. There were girls who had been deprived of education through isolation. There were women who had married in childhood—as so many mountain girls do—and with them came their husbands, men who had been humiliated by having to make their mark or to ask election officers to cast their vote for them. There were middle-aged men who had seen golden opportunities pass them because of the handicap of illiteracy—men whose mineral, timber, and other material resources were in control of educated men who had made beggars of them.1

  Yvonne Honeycutt Baldwin, in her informative book Cora Wilson Stewart and Kentucky’s Moonlight School: Fighting for Literacy in America, wrote,

  Ranging in age from eighteen to eighty-five, they sat on small benches in the little schoolhouses, confronted marks on the tablets in front of them, and examined chalked images on the blackboards. They sang songs and visited with neighbors, and took home that first night a vision of what it would mean to be able to read and write.2

  According to Stewart’s accounts, one young man’s joy upon learning to write his name was so complete that he etched it in several trees on his way home from school, then carved it on numerous fence posts the following day, and continued to place his name on public property throughout the county until requested by the sheriff to desist.3

  Sounds a little like our Finley James, doesn’t it?

  This was the schedule: Moonlight Schools met Monday through Thursday evenings from seven to nine o’clock for six weeks. Sessions began promptly at seven, with a fifteen-minute devotional that generally included singing. Reading lessons took twenty-five minutes, writing exercises another twenty-five, followed by twenty-five minutes of arithmetic. Teachers then led two fifteen-minute drills in basic history, civics, health and sanitation, geography, home economics, agriculture, and horticulture. Students left promptly at nine to head home.

  In two six-week sessions, Moonlight pupils generally gained the ability to sign a document, make basic mathematical calculations, write simple letters, and read a few verses of the Bible. Stewart did not set grade-level equivalencies, perhaps thinking that to do so might insult or demoralize adult pupils; instead, completion of the second six-week session marked the point at which they moved from illiteracy to literacy. With no set standards defining literacy, such “functional literacy” (a term that was not introduced until World War I) came to mean a fifth-grade reading level.
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  Throughout the sessions, Stewart visited as many of the Moonlight Schools as possible, riding horseback or traveling in a small buggy throughout the county, to check on their progress and offer encouragement to pupils and teachers. One teacher even wrote a “fight song” for the moment, entitled “Onward Rowan County,” to be sung to the tune of “Onward Christian Soldiers.”4

  Two years later, Stewart calculated that only twenty-three illiterates remained in the county. Six of these were blind or had defective sight, five were “imbeciles or epileptics,” two had moved into the county as the session closed, and four “could not be inducted to learn.” She loved to quote the old mountaineer who once remarked that the Moonlight Schools had taken his community from moonshine and bullets to lemonade and Bibles.5

  Stewart’s faith in humankind was almost as strong as her faith in God. She saw great potential for change in the movement to which she devoted her life. Better-educated adults produced better-educated children and demanded better schooling for them. She envisioned a world transformed by full literacy.

  Stewart’s Moonlight Schools caught on quickly, and when the state legislature created the Kentucky Illiteracy Commission in 1914, the Moonlight Schools were operating throughout all of Kentucky as well as in other states. From 1910 to 1920, Kentucky’s illiteracy rate dropped by nearly 4 percent. The national illiteracy rate declined by only 1.7 percent during that same period.6

  Just in case you’re wondering, in 1911 in Rowan County, there was a schoolhouse set aside for African American children, yet it remained empty, for various reasons. Not for long, though. Eventually, there were Moonlight Schools for African Americans and Native Americans, as the concept spread to other states.

  Stewart received national and international recognition for her work with adult literacy. In 1923 she was elected to the executive committee of the National Education Association. Six years later, President Herbert Hoover named her to chair the executive committee of the National Advisory Committee on Illiteracy. She also presided over the illiteracy section of the World Conference on Education. On December 2, 1958, she died of a fatal heart attack. She was eighty-three years old.