Highlander Research and Education Center
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In 1932, Myles Horton and Don West founded the Highlander Folk School outside the town of Monteagle in Grundy County, Tennessee in order "to provide an educational center in the South for the training of rural and industrial leaders, and for the conservation and enrichment of the indigenous cultural values of the mountains." Also closely involved with Myles Horton and Highlander was John Beauchamp Thompson, a minister and educator highly active in the civil rights movement, who became one of the principal fund raisers and speakers for the school, working alongside Ralph Abernathy and Martin Luther King, Jr.. Highlander played an important part in the Southern labor movement and the civil rights movement. After being shut down in 1961 for violating state laws regarding segregation, the center reopened in Knoxville, Tennessee as the Highlander Research and Education Center. The center is currently located in New Market, Tennessee.
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[edit] History
[edit] Labor years
In the 1930s and 1940s, Highlander's main focus was labor education.
[edit] Civil rights
In the 1950s, the center turned its energy to the issue of desegregation. Many in the US civil rights movement were involved with Highlander, including Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. Highlander created the Citizenship Schools, a program later adopted by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The civil rights anthem "We Shall Overcome" was adapted there from an old gospel song.
[edit] Backlash
In response to the work of Center, during the late 1950s the press attacked Highlander for ostensibly creating racial strife. In 1957, the Georgia Commission on Education published a pamphlet entitled "Highlander Folk School: Communist Training School in Monteagle, Tennessee." In 1961, the State of Tennessee revoked Highlander's charter and confiscated its land and property. The same year the Highlander staff reincorporated as the Highlander Research and Education Center and moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, where it stayed until 1971, when it moved to its present (as of 2006) location of New Market, Tennessee.
[edit] Appalachian focus
In the 1960s and 1970s, Highlander began to focus on worker health and safety in the coalfields of Appalachia, and played a role in the emergence of the region's environmental justice movement. It helped start the Southern Appalachian Leadership Training (SALT) program, and coordinated a survey of land ownership in Appalachia. In the 1980s and 1990s, Highlander broadened from that base into broader regional, national, and international environmentalism; struggles against the negative effects of globalization; grassroots leadership development in under-resourced communities; and (beginning in the 1990s) an involvement in LGBT issues, both in the U.S. and internationally.
[edit] Since 2000
Current focuses of Highlander include issues of democratic participation, economic justice, with a particular focus on youth, immigrants to the U.S. from Latin America, African Americans, and poor white people.
[edit] Directors
Over time, the directors of Highlander have been:
- Myles Horton
- Mike Clark
- Hubert E. Sapp
- John Gaventa, 1993-1996
- Jim Sessions, 1996-1999
- Suzanne Pharr, 1999-2003
- Mónica Hernández and Tami Newman, interim co-directors 2004-2005
- Pam McMichael, interim director, 2005; director 2006-
[edit] References
- John M. Glen, Highlander: No Ordinary School. University of Tennessee Press: 1996. ISBN 0-87049-928-9
- Federal Bureau of Investigation Highlander Folk School files obtained under the Freedom of Information Act
- Frank Adams, with Myles Horton, Unearthing Seeds of Fire: The Idea of Highlander. John F. Blair: 1975. ISBN 0-89587-019-3
- Myles Horton, with Herbert and Judith Kohl, The Long Haul. Teachers College Press: 1997. ISBN 0-8077-3700-3
- Myles Horton and Paulo Friere, We Make the Road by Walking. Temple University Press: 1990. ISBN 0-87722-775-6
- History - 1930-1953: Beginnings & The Labor Years, http://www.hrec.org/a-history.asp
- TnEncyc: Highlander Folk School
- TnEncy: Highlander Research and Education Center
- Pam McMichael, "Dear Friend of Highlander", Highlander Reports, April 2005, (PDF)
