Between 1938-1946, the Highlander Folk School's socialist faculty fostered a collective identity formation process among union workers and officials by teaching these students to write autobiographical statements of purpose, dramatics, music, and journalism. This historical essay considers the role of media education at Highlander in the labor movement that emerged in the American South just prior to World War II. Based on archival materials, it asks why the interpersonal media of labor theater and music were more popular and effective as organizing tactics among the labor students at Highlander than the mass medium of journalism. Within a discussion of social movement theories that considers how and why social movement participants act as they do, the argument presented here suggests that American labor movement activists acted on the basis of their prior experiences and affective connections to those contexts.
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