Second. It has increased community spirit, and a willingness to co-operate in any progressive movement.
Third. It has increased day school attendance by a large percent. School reports show an increase of twenty percent.
Fourth. Last, but not least, to those taught it means better sanitation and living conditions, better citizens to Pulaski County and the State of Kentucky.
The state had been districted and seven district agents were put in charge. These went from county to county aiding and spurring the county agents and organizing every class and group of citizens to co-operate. Among these seven were four war veterans just returned from France—three war heroes and a Red Cross nurse. The other three were veterans no less, for they had served for years in that great defense line—the public schools of the state. One page from their “Day by Day” Books with its record of conferences and meetings held, the calls on school people, editors, ministers, bankers, club women, public officials, fraternal organizations and commercial bodies would show something of their activities, but no mere record of daily duties could set forth the spirit of patriotism that animated them or the zeal with which they labored day and night.
This was a time for the rehabilitation of lives, as Governor Black had said in his message, and those misguided men and women who had chosen error’s way and were paying the penalty within prison walls could not be overlooked. Teaching prisoners began in the early days of the illiteracy crusade, but in this time of reconstruction, this part of the work was strengthened and extended. Often the teaching was done by the jailer and his wife, sometimes it was done by the jailer’s school-teacher daughter, sometimes it was by some other member of the official family, frequently the county school superintendent.
At one time classes and individuals were learning in about a hundred jails, and the letters that came out of these schools were filled with mingled gratitude and regret—gratitude for the belated chance and regret that it had not come sooner, when it might possibly have diverted them from the mistaken course which led them into prison walls.
The moonlight schools in the state reformatory and penitentiary found a rare opportunity. Here illiteracy was grouped. Hundreds of men had made their mark on the prison record and many had signed their names in scrawling, illegible letters but could do no more in the way of writing. Some of these had but a year or two to serve. They would soon go forth into their communities and whatever education they might acquire would doubtless serve as a deterrent from future crime and as an inspiration toward some worth-while achievement. These illiterates were easy to reach, for most of them preferred an evening in class to one spent in the cell. However, for those who might be indifferent, a spur was provided in this resolution passed by the State Prison Board:
Whereas, Kentucky is now engaged in an effort to stamp illiteracy out of the state, and INASMUCH, as instructors and facilities for teaching are now furnished the inmates of penal institutions under the control of this Board, and all are given the opportunity to read and write, it is therefore ordered by the State Board of Control, that one of the essential prerequisites to a parole should be that a prisoner shall be able to read and write, and the Board therefore adopts the rule that hereafter all inmates shall be able to read and write, before their application for parole will be considered.
This act making the prisoner’s ability to read and write a condition of parole, proved a great incentive to the illiterates to learn.
Some of the prisoners when their terms expired went back home and became educational evangelists in their communities. It was said of one man who had returned from the State reformatory and joined in the illiteracy crusade, “He talks like one who had returned from a university rather than from the ‘pen.’”