According to that overused cliché, “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” While there is some wisdom to that concept, it ignores the reality that we don’t know everything that happened in the past. Not everyone’s stories get told. As another tired quote goes, “History is written by the victors,” in that it’s the powerful who decide what history gets recorded and passed down to future generations.
Which makes me want to create an all-new platitude: “You can’t learn from the past if you can’t learn about the past.”
So many stories have been lost throughout the years, especially those of women, people of color, and people from the LGBTQIA+ community. We need to hear those voices because they have so much to share, especially when it comes to standing up to the status quo. If all we ever learn are the voices of those in power, then we’ll never learn what it takes to stand up to that power and make a difference in the world.
To be honest, I didn’t know what I was getting into when I initially sat down to read A Singing Army: Zilphia Horton and the Highlander Folk School. The dust jacket made it sound like the book would discuss the forgotten story of the woman who wrote some of the more important songs in the 20th century labor and civil rights movements. I thought I would be reading about an introverted songwriter who occasionally hung out with more highly regarded songwriters and more well-known leaders of social movements. I was not prepared to read about a trailblazing woman who would have enjoyed a more out-sized place in our societal memory if not for a tragic accident at the age of 46.
Written by Kim Ruehl, a highly regarded folk music critic, and published by the University of Texas Press, this impactful book delivers Horton’s story with care and compassion.
The project revolves around two central themes:
- Who was Zilphia Horton?
- If she really was so influential in two social movements, why is this the first biography of her life?
Ruehl artfully handcrafts her answer to the first question across 250+ pages of sparkling prose, complete with detailed sourcing and diligent research. Horton led a passionate and purposeful life, one dedicated to helping the downtrodden, resisting the powerful, and training up the leaders of various organization to change their world. The book reveals someone who possessed the warm hospitality of a classic Southern woman, while also showcasing a visionary leader who knew the arts could be instrumental in teaching people how to organize.
Told chronologically, A Singing Army examines every imaginable stone of Horton’s life to unearth every possible clue.
The story begins with her birth on April 14, 1910 as the eldest daughter in a comparably well-off home in Paris, AR. Ruehl gives a detailed account of a spirited matriarchal clan who attempted and achieved more than many white women of the age. But we also learn about Horton’s mostly pleasant relationship with her father, Guy Johnson, a mine worker who eventually entered the managerial class. His relationship with labor and ideas about unions stood in opposition to those of his free-thinking daughter.
By the time Horton arrives at the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, TN in 1935, she has graduated from college, taught high school, and started interacting with people outside her social class and status. But the real reason she made the move from home was because of Presbyterian minister Claude C. Williams. Through participation in his Bible study classes, she gained exposure to new thinking and theology that was gaining traction in more learned Christian circles. But it was her passion for the arts and people that convinced Williams to encourage Horton to visit Tennessee and meet with his friend, Myles Horton.
The story of the Highlander Folk School has been chronicled in many other books, including Myles Horton’s own autobiography and the history of the school’s mission written by his second wife. With A Singing Army, Ruehl spends considerable time and energy teaching her reader about Highlander exclusively through Zilphia Horton’s eyes. For its first few decades of existence, Highlander existed first to train labor leaders in how to effectively organize workers, confront bosses, and resist oppression. It ultimately morphed its mission and applied those lessons to training people to fight for civil rights and against racism.
And it was Zilphia Horton who played an immense and heretofore under-appreciated role.
Serving as Highlander’s first cultural director, she created whole systems of education used across the entire school. She developed from scratch a full-scale arts curriculum that emphasized how singing, dramatic training, and the theater could be successfully employed during strikes, organizing, protests, and more. Specifically, she is the direct reason that timeless tunes such as “We Shall Overcome,” “This Little Light of Mine,” and “We Shall Not Be Moved” entered the canon of protest songs.
Ruehl pays special attention to Horton’s personal growth over the years, including intimate involvement in labor and civil rights issues. Her childhood in Arkansas exposed her to the activities of both labor bosses and the Ku Klux Klan, but she was also quite aware of her privilege as a white woman in the American South.
To that end, A Singing Army also recounts Horton’s travels across North America, both with her husband, Myles, and on her own. From New York and Chicago to Montreal, the Deep South, and Central America, she met people far outside the life experiences of the organizers and leaders she worked with at Highlander.
Zilphia Horton valued people as people, and that love of others shone forth for all to see.
However, the answer to theme number two is a bit more nebulous, though you can piece together some ideas if you pay close attention to the flow of the book. It starts with the fact that, outside of the curriculum she created and songs she wrote, Horton didn’t leave behind much written material of her own. While she kept relatively close correspondence with her husband for the first decade or so of her life, the letters diminished in quantity after the birth of their two children, Thorsten and Charis. And we only have those letter because Myles Horton kept them – along with the volumes that he wrote.
Ultimately, the lack of writing about Zilphia Horton is a double-edged sword: she was an iconoclastic woman working at a leftist educational facility in Appalachia who died in 1956. Yes, Horton impacted the lives and work of many icons from the labor and civil rights movement, but she never was on the front lines of those efforts. Her accidental passing right before the latter efforts began to gain sweeping national attention relegated her to “bit player” status, especially when compared to her husband who lived until 1990. Thus, while she was mourned by all who knew her – which was more people that you might expect, including Eleanor Roosevelt – her story has slipped through the cracks. Until now.
We have A Singing Army because of Kim Ruehl’s dedication.
She chased down the necessary historical documents and conducted interviews with all the remaining survivors from Horton’s tenure at Highlander. She knew that Zilphia Horton was worthy of a magisterial tale, one that befit her long-denied status as an icon of the left. The Highlander Folk School would not have been the success that it was without her talent with the arts and passion for people.
We need people to tell such stories. People need to read such stories. Our world is better we have access to such history. We can create an even better world when give more attention than ever to the people who bring these stories to us. My hope is that people take the time to read this fantastic book about Zilphia Horton and follow her example. Change can happen when you make the conscious choice to love others and make a difference in the world.