Cora Wilson Stewart and Kentucky’s Moonlight Schools: Fighting for Literacy in America

Cora Wilson Stewart (1875-1958) was an elementary school teacher and county school superintendent in eastern Kentucky who, in 1911, opened classrooms in her district to adult pupils. Convinced that education could eliminate the poverty that plagued the region, she founded the Moonlight School movement, designed to combat illiteracy. The movement’s motto, Each one teach one, characterized education as the responsibility of every literate citizen. Stewart’s Moonlight Schools caught on quickly, and when the state legislature created the Kentucky Illiteracy Commission in 1914, they were operating throughout Kentucky and elsewhere, Cora Wilson Stewart and Kentucky’s Moonlight Schools analyzes Stewart’s role in shaping education at the state and national level. Yvonne Honeycutt Baldwin offers a discourse on illiteracy, which, despite the efforts of Stewart and many who followed in her footsteps, continues to afflict the nation.