On this day in WNC History: Black Mountain College opened to students for the first time in 1933. Based on the principle of progressive education, BMC offered a new model of learning, particularly in the liberal arts. The college initially rented buildings from the YMCA’s Blue Ridge Assembly, but eventually moved to a new campus at Lake Eden from 1941—1957. BMC was governed/owned by its faculty and all college members participated in its operations, maintenance, and even farm work. The president explained that the instructors would be advisors, facilitators, and friends to students. After entering the junior college, students would move on to the senior program after comprehensive exams in a broad array of liberal arts subjects and graduate when they chose. Students did not receive accredited degrees, but left with expected personal growth. BMC’s founding occurred alongside the rise of Nazism in Germany and the closing of the Bauhaus School there, encouraging many intellectuals and students to immigrate to this small campus. It also operated during the period of Jim Crow segregation, when some faculty were reluctant to strain their relationship with the surrounding community by integrating. After much deliberation, BMC admitted the first African American woman to attend a white higher-ed school in the Jim Crow South when Alma Stone Williams entered in 1944. Gradually, several African Americans began teaching in summer and then regular programs as more students arrived under Rosenwald-funded salaries and scholarships. BMC shifted in the 1950s to a literary focus, and began publishing a journal in 1954. Three years later, under mounting debts and declining enrollment, the school closed. Today both the Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center as well as the Journal of Black Mountain College Studies work to explore the legacy of this experimental and influential school. (Images: Black Mountain College, 1934 and 1949 architecture class, courtesy Western Regional Archives; Boston Globe, Aug 28, 1933; Asheville Citizen, Sep 23, 1933) #OnThisDay #WNCHistory #BlackMountainCollege (at Black Mountain, North Carolina) https://www.instagram.com/p/CUPkZsirqTD/?utm_medium=tumblr













