Commonwealth College (Arkansas) (original) (raw)

Commonwealth College (1923–1940) was a college started to recruit and train people to take the lead in socio-economic reform and prepare them for unconventional roles in a new and different society. An outgrowth of Job Harriman's New Lano Cooperative Colony in Louisiana, in 1923, William Zeuch, James McDonald, Kate Richards O'Hare, and Frank P. O'Hare joined with New Lano to found the institute in 1923. In the 1930s Commonwealth was essentially oriented towards training organizers for the rapidly growing labor movement. Tensions within the cooperative community led to a split, and Zeuch and Kate Richards and Frank P. O'Hare moved to Mena, Arkansas in December 1924, where the institution re-opened the next year.