Radical Education in the Rural South: Commonwealth College, 1922-1940. (Book Reviews).

Radical Education in the Rural South: Commonwealth College, 1922-1940. By William H. Cobb. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, c. 2000. Pp. 263. $34.95, ISBN 0-8143-2773-7.)

For most of its history, the socialist left in the United States maintained a keen interest in educating workers through lectures and programs, adult education courses, Sunday schools, and even a few colleges. Arguing that the public school system indoctrinated Americans with capitalist teachings, democratic socialists sought to provide workers with a broad education and to promote a workers' culture. William H. Cobb explores the history of one of those efforts, Commonwealth College in rural Arkansas. The author ties together and fleshes out his four previously published articles on the college. A professor of French history with a family connection to Commonwealth, he has written a monograph that, while providing the full picture of the college that had been missing from the literature, suggests a less-than-refined understanding of the history of the American left.

Commonwealth College was established in 1923 by pre-World War I socialist activists, notably party leaders Frank and Kate Richards O'Hare and their associate, William E. Zeuch, each of whom had been involved in labor education. The college was grafted onto a cooperative colony, New Llano, that had been founded before the war by California socialist Job Harriman, but this hybrid arrangement quickly disintegrated. From then until its demise in 1940, Commonwealth operated independently as an unaccredited small residential college with a mission of training students for leadership in the labor movement. The college suffered from a chronic lack of funding--even resulting in malnutrition and illness among the residents--as well as from its poorly chosen location, which was isolated from labor centers but in proximity to unsympathetic southerners who came to view the school as a center of atheism, free love, and communism. The self-maintenance practiced by the students and faculty (all of whom labored several hours a day on school upkeep following morning classes), the sporadic contributions from progressive organizations and sympathizers (especially Roger Baldwin of the American Fund for Public Service), and the original vow of nonalignment to political parties barely kept Commonwealth afloat during the 1920s. But gradually a widening generation gap between staff and students led to a destabilizing change of direction. When longtime authoritarian director Zeuch was replaced in 1931, his commitment to a philosophical and theoretical education as the best preparation for participation in the labor movement was succeeded by an emphasis on technical training and activist field work such as supporting strikes and helping to organize unions. Additionally, a new indifference to the possibility of offending neighboring communities became pronounced. Commonwealth established a state branch of the Socialist Party, it aligned with the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, and finally, especially under director Claude Williams, a fellow traveler image led to charges of subversion and anarchy by the state of Arkansas.

While Commonwealth ultimately could not surmount all its obstacles, it became a lively cultural center that attracted an eclectic range of students (such as future folksinger Lee Hays and future Arkansas segregationist governor Orval Faubus), and it also served as a clearing house for labor magazines and newsletters and as a center for traveling theater programs. But its death knell sounded when organized labor and progressives abandoned Commonwealth and its overly subversive reputation.

This useful monograph sometimes offers too little context to clarify complex political infighting, and it occasionally builds on slim or dated secondary readings. Cobb's mining of the primary sources is thorough, but unfortunately the bulk of Commonwealth's papers disappeared after seizure by government agents. Finally, the author is prone to providing lists that suggest padding when he might instead have summarized material, and he also peppers his narrative with cliches and wisecracks in an apparent effort at a lively writing style.