|
|
Article: Chautauqua Movement
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
CHAUTAUQUA MOVEMENT
CHAUTAUQUA MOVEMENT.
The institution that Theodore Roosevelt once called "the most American thing in America" occupies an honored place in American cultural mythology. From its inception in 1874, Chautauqua tailored its appeal to the patriotic, churchgoing, white, native-born, mostly Protestant, northern and Midwestern middle classes
—
a group whose claim to represent Americans as a whole has been alternatively championed and criticized. "He who does not know Chautauqua," wrote the journalist Frank Bohn in 1926, with knowing irony, "does not know America."
As millions across the nation flocked to Chautauqua's hundreds of summer assemblies and reading circles, ...