On April 22, 1958 — exactly 50 years ago — the newly appointed editor of the Chattanooga News-Free Press, Lee Anderson, in his very first editorial, titled “No Place for a UT Professor,” chastised my father, Francis Manis, for his involvement in “integration propaganda” and his association with what Anderson termed the “notorious” and “despicable” Highlander Folk School of “communist-front taint.”

Subsequently, on the 35th anniversary of that editorial, I returned the favor by writing what I felt to be a conciliatory letter to the editor which the Chattanooga News-Free Press published on April 22, 1993. My letter concluded in the following fashion:

“As times change, so sometimes do people’s opinions and newspaper’s editorial positions. April 22, 1993, the 35th anniversary of your newspaper’s original editorial about my father, would be a good day for the News-Free Press to re-address its editorial of three and a half decades ago and state its present position.”

The newspaper’s response was unambiguous and — to me — troubling.

“Editor’s Note: We do not believe the Highlander Folk School of 1958 was a good place for a UT professor to be.”

Could such fixation with the past and intransigence of thought be occurring so recently as 1993? Was segregation an on-going secret — or not so secret — wish of Anderson and others within the editorial offices of the Chattanooga News-Free Press?

That was a concern not just of mine, but of The Daily Beacon, which editorialized on the subject on the following anniversary, April 22, 1994, stating among other things: “Whenever people have no legal or moral justification for their ideals, it is typical to resort to name calling to defend one’s own cause.” Furthermore, unlike in 1958, UT as recently as last fall has aligned itself with Highlander through an on-campus celebration of its 75th anniversary.

Now, on the 50th anniversary of the 1958 editorial, allow me, in turn, to present the case within The Daily Beacon in favor of both Highlander and my father.

Anderson and his ilk may still be living in the past, but the vast majority of Tennesseans are not and more than likely many of those who originally differed with Highlander’s promotion of integration and civil rights do not take great discomfort from the progress which has been made on these fronts.

However, the most pernicious accusation regarding Highlander relates to the aspersion that it was overrun by “Communists.” Such thinking — then in 1958, in 1993 and possibly even now — was and is both misconstrued and simplistic.

By way of historical reference, 10 years ago, in the Journal of East Tennessee History, within an article by Milton Klein, it is suggested that “it was not difficult for anti-Communists to find targets when ‘subversion,’ ‘disloyalty’ and ‘Communism’ were defined in very vague ways.”

Call Highlander what you will — progressive or subversive — what it was was remarkably effective and influential.

Martin Luther King Jr. was among those who visited Highlander and Rosa Parks participated in a workshop there just a few months before becoming a nationwide catalyst for change via the civil disobedience of “sitting down” for her rights on an Alabama bus, which resulted in the Montgomery Boycott. Furthermore, Zilphia, the wife of Highlander founder Myles Horton, through her work with tobacco workers’ wives, along with Pete Seeger and two others, adapted one of their songs into the ballad of the Civil Rights Movement “We Shall Overcome.”

In short, contrary to the editorial staff of the Chattanooga News-Free Press in 1993, I believe the Highlander Folk School was not only a good place for my father to be, but a great place for him to be associated with in 1958 and I am proud that he actively spoke out for integration and civil rights when so many around him were, frankly, too sheepish to do so.

— Steven Manis currently lives in California and endeavors to set up the Francis Manis Scholarship to benefit students within the College of Social Work. His father founded in 1952 what was then known as the School of Social Work.

This article has been updated to reflect correct information.