Eliot Wigginton

Eliot Wigginton (born 1942) is an American oral historian, folklorist, writer and former educator. He was most widely known for the series of "Foxfire" books, twelve volumes in all, consisting of field reports by high school students from Rabun County, Georgia. He was a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship in 1989.

Background

Wigginton was born in West Virginia and received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in English from Cornell University and a second Master's from Johns Hopkins University. In 1966, he began teaching English in the Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School in northeastern Georgia.

"Foxfire" Work

To motivate his students, Wigginton began an oral history project, asking his students to collect oral histories from local residents. These histories and articles were published in a small magazine format beginning in 1967. Topics included all manner of folklife practices and customs associated with farming and the rural life of southern Appalachia, as well as the folklore and oral history of local residents. The first anthology of "Foxfire" magazines was published in 1972, and over the years eleven other volumes followed. In addition there were special collections, including "The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Cookery", "Foxfire: 25 Years", "A Foxfire Christmas", and "The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Toys and Games". There were also several anthologies of recorded music from the local area. A play, entitled "Foxfire" was also developed for the stage by Hume Cronyn and Susan Cooper; Jessica Tandy won a Tony Award for her performance and an Emmy Award for the subsequent television version. In 1986, Wigginton was named "Georgia Teacher of the Year."

Wigginton also had an interest in activists working for social change in association with the Highlander Folk School. After a decade of collecting oral histories of people struggling for social justice in the South, Wigginton published an edited volume, "Refuse to Stand Silently By: An Oral History of Grass Roots Social Activism in America, 1921-1964" (Doubleday, 1991).

Controversy and after

In 1992, Wigginton pleaded guilty to one count of non-aggravated child molestation of a 10-year-old victim, receiving a one-year jail sentence, 19 years of probation, and was required to leave the Foxfire project. Before the case came to trial, prosecutors charged Wigginton had a history of fondling boys, going back as far as 1969.

Since then, the Foxfire project has continued under the auspices of the Foxfire Fund, but without his teaching. After the development of a museum in Mountain City, Georgia, the materials were turned over to the University of Georgia anthropology department. To this day, the Foxfire educational philosophy is based on the values of "a learner-centered, community-based expression."

Sources

* [http://www.foxfire.org Foxfire Fund website]
* [http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2424 New Georgia Encyclopedia article]
* [http://www.scienceblog.com/community/older/1998/D/199803180.html University of Georgia archive]
*Gabriel, Gloria J., "An Examination of Laws Governing Criminal Background Checks of School Personnel in States Belonging to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools", Ed.D. Dissertation, University of Georgia, 2003.