The teachers were amazed, if not overwhelmed.
Their superintendent, Cora Wilson Stewart, expected about 100 illiterate adults to traipse through the rugged hills and countryside that late summer night—most on foot, some on horseback—to the 52 one-room schoolhouses in the county to learn how to read and write.
The teachers had underestimated that number. More than 1,200 men and women enrolled on the first evening of classes. They ranged in age from 18 to 86.
Volunteer teachers who had taught the children of these men and women during the day were eager to teach the adults how to write their names and then advance to reading and writing. They didn’t know there would be so many interested in the classes and that their efforts eventually would garner international attention.
On that Tuesday night of Sept. 5, 1911—Labor Day—in Rowan County, adult literacy education was born.
At the end of the two six-week courses, the students could write their names and simple sentences and read on an elementary level. They were rewarded with a diploma, a Bible and a lifelong skill of communicating.
The one-room, wooden schoolhouses were called “Moonlight Schools” because the students attending them would use the light of the moon to see the footpaths and wagon trails to follow paths to the schools.
The program spread to nearby counties. In 1914, the state created a commission to extend Moonlight Schools to all Kentucky counties. In the following two years, 40,000 Kentuckians were taught to read and write. Similar programs were started in 18 states, including literacy classes for Native Americans.
The concept soon spread to other nations in what Appalachian Heritage magazine has described as one of the greatest social movements ever from eastern Kentucky.
“I would agree with that,” said Yvonne Honeycutt Baldwin, a retired history professor at Morehead State University, who in 2006 wrote the definitive book about Stewart and Kentucky’s Moonlight Schools.
“At the time, there were a few literacy programs in this country’s big cities to teach immigrants how to read and write but no community programs to bring people together to fight illiteracy,” Baldwin said. “Cora Wilson Stewart came up with an innovative, effective, well-organized program to get people to read and write—all in a rural county in eastern Kentucky. It was a powerful social movement.”
Recognition for Moonlight Schools
In May 2022, Kentucky Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman unveiled the new Kentucky Adult Education logo during a ceremony in Morehead to honor Stewart and the Moonlight Schools. “The need for lifelong learning is just as important today as it was in the 1900s,” Coleman said.
Kentucky Adult Education provides free adult education services in all 120 Kentucky counties to help people obtain a GED—the equivalent of a high school diploma.
With the GED, Kentuckians can gain reading, math and communication skills that place them on a path to higher education and training and to earn certifications to advance in their careers. The agency is funded by federal and state dollars and overseen by the Kentucky Education and Labor Cabinet.
At the ceremony last year to present the state’s new literacy logo, Kentucky Adult Education also unveiled a photo of a decorative bench that it donated to the Moonlight School site in Morehead.
Cora Wilson Stewart was remembered again.
Cora Wilson’s Triumph Over Illiteracy
Cora Wilson was born on Jan. 17, 1875, in rural Montgomery County. Her father, Jeremiah Wilson, was a physician. Her mother, Annie Eliza (Hally) Wilson, was a schoolteacher. The family lived fairly modestly in Rowan County. Cora’s parents taught their children “to be somebody.”
At age 4, Cora declared her intention to become a teacher. A devout and spiritual person all her life, she believed that God had a mission for her. At 15 and with no formal education, she started teaching in a one-room school in Rowan County. She was one year older than the school’s oldest student.
She later attended Morehead Normal School, an institution for training teachers. The school became Morehead State College in 1948 and Morehead State University in 1966.
Cora returned to teaching at age 20 in 1895, the same year she married Ulysses Grant Carey. Little is known about him. The two divorced after only three years of marriage and no children.
Cora enrolled at the Commercial College of Kentucky University in Lexington to land a more profitable job as a typist or stenographer. She became the school’s first female instructor.
In August 1900, Cora was called home to Morehead to take care of her dying mother. A year later, she became a successful candidate for school superintendent of Rowan County—the first woman to hold the position. She oversaw 52 one-room schools (50 white and two Black) and 58 teachers (33 male and 25 female). She became a frequent speaker at civic, church and professional meetings.
In 1902, Cora married Alexander Thomas Stewart, a schoolteacher several years her junior who drank heavily. The couple divorced in 1904 but remarried three months later. In 1907, they had their only child, William Holley Stewart, who died in 1908. Cora and Alexander divorced again on June 8, 1910, and Cora remained single the rest of her life.
As superintendent, Cora visited each of the one-room schoolhouses in Rowan County. She condemned the poverty and lack of educational opportunity.
Some in Morehead criticized her for being a “working woman outside the home,” and she did not seek reelection as county superintendent in 1905. But she did not give up her work. She accepted frequent speaking engagements and organized teacher training institutes throughout the state. She won reelection as superintendent in 1909 and progressed to become the first female president of the Kentucky Education Association.
As superintendent, Cora asked the teachers of the county to help “those whom the schools of the past had left behind.” She thought of evening instruction for adults who could not read or write
The almanac promised a full moon on Sept. 5, 1911. Cora selected that date for opening night of adult literacy education.
Volunteers tried to visit each home in the district to drum up support for the evening classes. Teachers told day school pupils to encourage their parents to attend. From the pulpits, ministers proclaimed the values of reading and writing and urged adults to take advantage of the free evening classes.
The result: Almost one-third of the county turned up on opening night.
Baldwin described the scene in her book: “They sat on small benches in the little school houses, confronted marks on the tablets in front of them, and examined chalked images on the blackboards. They sang songs and visited with neighbors, and took home that first night a vision of what it would mean to be able to read and write.”
Women’s organizations and churches donated money and supplies to keep the Moonlight Schools going. Volunteer teachers from as far away as Louisville came to help. The Moonlight Schools convinced Cora that hers was an idea whose time had come.
The movement spread to other Kentucky counties and then to other states. Some European countries adopted the program. Cora was named director of the National Illiteracy Crusade and the chairwoman of President Herbert Hoover’s Commission on Education.
As a delegate to the 1920 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco, Cora was recognized for her literacy work by her fellow Kentucky delegates, who nominated her for president of the United States. She appreciated the gesture but knew well that women had not yet been given the right to vote; the 19th Amendment would be ratified later that summer.
As the work of the Moonlight Schools grew, Cora developed a series of adult literacy books and materials, including a reading primer, The Soldier’s First Book, to teach military recruits to read.
In the 1930s, Cora’s adult-literacy teaching methods gradually were bypassed as educators relegated her once-popular Country Life Readers to the back shelves in favor of more modern programs.
Cora turned to photography. Many of her photos are of Rowan County.
In her later years, she did not consider her life a success. She wondered if she should have devoted her life to ministry instead of education. She became blind due to glaucoma and lived for a while near a relative in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. She later moved to North Carolina to live with relatives.
Cora died of a heart attack in a nursing home in Columbus, North Carolina, on Dec. 2, 1958. She was 83 and poor. A brother-in-law paid for her burial in North Carolina.
Fifteen years after Cora’s death, Morehead State University acquired the original Little Brushy School building about 8 miles from Morehead, restored it and placed it on the college’s campus. Situated on Little Brushy Creek, it was one of the original Moonlight Schools.
About 15 years ago, the building was moved to East First Street in downtown Morehead. The university still owns it, but it is managed by the nearby Morehead Railroad & Historical Museum. Tours are available through the museum on Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.
Steve Young, a director of the museum, often gives tours of the school. As he recently sat inside the school with its wooden desks, he said, “This place doesn’t get the recognition it deserves. Just think of the lives it changed. It opened up the world to many people.
“As the historical marker out front says, it was established ‘to emancipate from illiteracy those enslaved in its bondage.’ ”