Zilphia Horton

Her political interest was awakened by the Presbyterian minister, Claude C. Williams, who attempted to organize her father's workers for the Progressive Miners' Union.

[7] She enhanced the cultural pluralism of the school by developing a curriculum which incorporated and elevated the importance of folk music, dance, and drama.

She is perhaps best known for teaching Pete Seeger an early version of "We Shall Overcome," which would become an important civil rights anthem of the twentieth century.

On April 11, 1956, she died after accidentally drinking a glass of typewriter cleaning fluid containing carbon tetrachloride she mistook for water.

[11] A biography, A Singing Army: Zilphia Horton and the Highlander Folk School by Kim Ruehl, was published by University of Texas Press in April, 2021.