May Justus, the author of 65 books for children and others telling the stories of Appalachia and offering lessons on living, was both author and activist. She had a long association with UT, having attended summer courses in 1923, 1929, 1930, 1934, and 1938. She completed UT correspondence courses in 1929, 1930, 1934, 1935, and 1936. She was also enrolled in courses during the spring term for teachers in 1935.
She and her companion, Vera McCampbell, first taught at a mission school in Lee County, Kentucky. They then moved to Grundy County, where they and the organizer of the Summerfield School taught the entire curriculum, from first through eighth grades. The school taught what was termed “popular education,” focusing on crafts. In 1932 the Summerfield School was purchased by Dan West and Miles Horton and became the Highlander Folk School, gradually changing the emphasis of the school from children, handicrafts, and cooperative community living to labor organizing and civil rights. May Justus volunteered at Highlander as the secretary-treasurer.
In 1939 Justus developed a heart ailment, and gave up full-time teaching, running instead a private tutoring service to help students having difficulty in school, which provided time to begin her long series of didactic children’s books. She published her first book, Peter Pocket, in 1939. Five of her books published in the 1940s and 1950s were selections of the Literary Guild.
Shortly after her death in 1989, the Monteagle Public Library was renamed the May Justus Memorial Library. Justus’s papers and manuscripts are in Special Collections at the UT Libraries.