You Can’t Padlock an Idea

“You can padlock a building,” Myles Horton said of the closing of the Highlander Folk School in 1959. “But you can’t padlock an idea. Highlander is an idea. You can’t kill it and you can’t close it. … It will grow wherever people take it.” (Frank Adams and Myles Horton, Unearthing Seeds of Fire [1975] p. 133, as cited here).

https://wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Image/IM52898

Myles Horton watching as the local sheriff puts a padlock on Highlander Folk School, following a trial in which Highlander was accused of propagating Communism.

And below, remarkably, is a copy of the receipt for the padlocks from Flury’s Store in Tracy City, sent to me by a friend today (Dec 1, 2024).

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About Uncomely and Broken

I am a classicist in Sewanee, Tennessee.
This entry was posted in Books, Education, Race, Tennessee, The South, Time. Bookmark the permalink.

1 Response to You Can’t Padlock an Idea

  1. Wow, Chris, that is really something.

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