Stewart, Cora Wilson (1875–1958)

American educator who was a leader in the movement against adult illiteracy. Name variations: The Moonlight-School Lady. Born in Farmers, Kentucky, in 1875; died in 1958; attended Morehead Normal School (later Morehead State University) and the University of Kentucky.

Born in Kentucky in 1875, Cora Wilson Stewart trained as a teacher at Morehead Normal School (now Morehead State University) and the University of Kentucky. She taught for a time in Rowan County, Kentucky, and at age 26 won election as school superintendent of the county. She was reelected eight years later, in 1909. Two years later, Stewart expanded her educational efforts by starting a campaign against adult illiteracy. On the night of September 5, 1911—which Stewart later called "the brightest moonlit night the world has ever seen"—50 schoolhouses in Rowan County welcomed some 1,200 adults to the first session of the Moonlight Schools. Volunteer teachers taught students from ages 18 to 86 how to read and write, initially only on nights when the moon shone bright enough to permit nighttime travel over dark roads. Soon, the Moonlight Schools became a movement that spread over a large part of the United States. As more and more adults began to learn how to read, Stewart wrote a textbook, The Country Life Reader, aimed specifically at adult students. In 1924, she was the recipient of Pictorial Review's $5,000 Annual Achievement Award, unanimously chosen as the prizewinner by 20 judges who declared the Moonlight Schools to be the greatest contribution to America by any woman for that year. Two years later she became the director of the National Illiteracy Crusade. The first woman president of the Kentucky Education Association, Stewart also served as chair of the Commission on Illiteracy during the Hoover administration in the early years of the Great Depression (she herself had been nominated for president in 1920). The Cora Wilson Stewart Moonlight School, one of the original one-room schoolhouses in which adults learned to read and write, is now a historic landmark on the campus of Morehead State University in Kentucky. It stands as a testament to Stewart and to the struggle against illiteracy, what she called "a war without the loss of human blood, without the click of a gun or the firing of a cannon—a war fought with the book and the pen."

suggested reading:

Nelms, Willie. Cora Wilson Stewart: Crusader against Illiteracy. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1997.

collections:

Cora Wilson Stewart Papers, 1900–1940, University of Kentucky Libraries, Special Collections and Archives, Lexington.