Highlander Folk School

Karen A. Johnson

The Highlander Folk School (now the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee) has a long legacy of providing a space for grassroots activists who were involved in numerous key struggles for social and political transformation in the United States. In its first 30 years, Highlander functioned as an adult education and community folk school for poor, “unlettered,” unemployed mill and miner Appalachians during the Depression as a leadership training center for workers in the southern labor union movement, as an educational and organizational mechanism for members in the Farmer's Union in the South, and as a meeting place for African American and White civil rights activists. This entry discusses its history and accomplishments, with special reference to its contributions to African Americans and to the civil rights movement. Highlander was founded in 1932 by Myles Horton and Don West, in Monteagle, Tennessee. During its infancy, Highlander was ...

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