One of the nation’s most significant experiments in education and community took shape right outside of Asheville, North Carolina, and it started during the Great Depression. When a small group of students and teachers renounced their old university to begin building an educational community in Black Mountain, NC, they couldn’t have realized that it would attract and produce some of the world's best minds in avant-garde visual art, poetry, architecture, and music (including people like Buckminster Fuller, Charles Olson, William and Elaine de Kooning, Ruth Asawa, Ray Johnson, Jacob Lawrence and Gwendelyn Knight Larence, Arthur Miller, Josef and Anni Albers). What they did know is that the traditional American education system was failing, and that they could counter the nation’s problems with a new type of learning.
Today, podcast intern Amelia Gantt explains to host John Horan, Correspondence Assistant Annabeth Poe, and Microfilm and Imaging Specialist Erin Templeton that this experiment developed from the Great Depression to post-war anti-communism. Listen along to understand why many, including Eleanor Roosevelt, suggested ‘progressive education’ as the only path towards a better version of America, and how that promise for a better future lived on even after the College closed.
Primary Sources:
Roosevelt, Eleanor, “My Day.” March 21, 1936. North Carolina Museum of Art, Black Mountain College Research Project print collection, Western Regional Archives. Record ID 61.12.2, Box 10.
“Education in Wartime.” Black Mountain College Bulletin Newsletter, vol. 3, no. 7, July 1945. North Carolina Museum of Art, Black Mountain College Research Project print collection, Western Regional Archives. Record ID 61.12.6. https://digital.ncdcr.gov/Documents/Detail/black-mountain-college-bulletin-newsletter-iii-no-7-1945/3657369?item=3657505 .
Adamic, Louis. “Education on a Mountain: The Story of Black Mountain College.” Theodore and Barbara Loines Dreier print collection, Western Regional Archives. Record ID PC.1956.74.
Adamic, Louis, Correspondence 1934-1937. Black Mountain College Records print collection, Western Regional Archives. Record ID 506.2.1.6.
[“Artistic approach to life…” letter from Adamic to Rice]
Black Mountain College Digital Collection, https://digital.ncdcr.gov/spotlights/bmc .
Western Regional Archives Flickr Photo Collections https://www.flickr.com/photos/133487183@N07/albums/ .
Straus, Erwin, “Education in a Time of Crisis.” Black Mountain College Bulletin, vol. 7, April 1941. North Carolina Museum of Art, Black Mountain College Research Project print collection, Western Regional Archives. Record ID 61.12.6. https://digital.ncdcr.gov/Documents/Detail/black-mountain-college-education-time-crisis/3657509?item=3657766 .
Black Mountain College Bulletin Newsletter print collection, Western Regional Archives, Record ID 506.2.26 and 506.2.27.
Albers, Josef, “Address for the BMC Meeting at New York.” Black Mountain College Bulletin Newsletter, June 12, 1940. North Carolina Museum of Art, Black Mountain College Research Project print collection, Western Regional Archives. Record ID 61.12.2, Box 12.
“Education for democratic citizenship...” Black Mountain College Bulletin Newsletter, vol. 1, no. 3, pg. 1, April 1943. North Carolina Museum of Art, Black Mountain College Research Project print collection, Western Regional Archives. Record ID 61.12.6. https://digital.ncdcr.gov/Documents/Detail/black-mountain-college-bulletin-newsletter-i-no-3-1943/3657360 .
Gisela Kronenberg (Herwitz) Letters print collection, Western Regional Archives. Record ID PC 7073.
Charles P. Boyce interview by Mary Emma Harris, North Carolina Museum of Art, Black Mountain College Research Project print collection, Western Regional Archives. Record ID 61.12.3, Box 27.
Released Interviews [Paul Francis Williams, Stuart Atkinson, Leonard D. “Knute”, Betsy Anne Weinrib (Williams), Thomas Scott Cutshaw], North Carolina Museum of Art, Black Mountain College Research Project print collection, Western Regional Archives. Record ID 61.12.4, Box 37.
“100 Things You Should Know About Communism,” 1951. State Bureau of Investigation: Organized Crime Control Division, North Carolina State Archives. Record ID 136.2, Box 3.
Kraft, Kathy, “On Education.” Radish, February 1969. State Bureau of Investigation: Organized Crime Control Division, North Carolina State Archives. Record ID 136.2, Box 8.
Clayre, Alasdair, “The Rise and Fall of BMC,” The Listener, March 27, 1969. North Carolina Museum of Art, Black Mountain College Research Project print collection, Western Regional Archives. Record ID 61.12.2, Box 12.
“A North Carolinian Writes From New York City.” Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel, January 11, 1942. North Carolina Museum of Art, Black Mountain College Research Project print collection, Western Regional Archives. Record ID 61.12.2, Box 12.
“Louis Adamic Says Civilization is Botched, Fumbling and Blind”, The Cincinnati Times, March 24, 1936. North Carolina Museum of Art, Black Mountain College Research Project print collection, Western Regional Archives. Record ID 61.12.2, Box 10.
External Primary Sources:
The Mary Emma Harris and Black Mountain College Project: Oral History collection, Appalachian State University. https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/1629 .
Secondary Sources:
Progressive Education in the 1940s, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opXKmwg8VQM .
Church, Robert. Education in the United States. New York Free Press, 1976.
Silver, David. The Farm at Black Mountain College. Atelier Éditions, 2024.
Eliston, John, “FBI investigation of Black Mountain College revealed in newly released file,” Carolina Public Press. August 5, 2015. https://carolinapublicpress.org/23088/fbi-investigation-of-black-mountain-college-revealed-in-newly-released-file/ .
Enyeart, John P. “Revolutionizing Cultural Pluralism: The Political Odyssey of Louis Adamic, 1932-1951.” Journal of American Ethnic History, vol. 34, no. 3, 2015. https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerethnhist.34.3.0058 .
Doberman, Martin. Black Mountain: An Experiment in Community. Northwestern University, 1973. https://archive.org/details/blackmountain00anch .
