1959 Highlander Way · New Market, TN 37820 · phone: (865) 933-3443 · fax: (865) 933-3424
e-mail: hrec@highlandercenter.org

Visite esta página en español

Beginnings

Highlander was created in 1932 by Myles Horton and Don West in Grundy County, Tennessee. Theologian Reinhold Neibuhr wrote the first fundraising appeal for Highlander, and Lillian Johnson, a Tennessee educator and suffragist, donated her farm outside of the town of Monteagle where the founders established what was then known as the Highlander Folk School. Highlander's original mission, which has since been adapted and expanded, was to educate "rural and industrial leaders for a new social order."

Workshop participants in front of Highlander's original main building in Monteagle, TN.

The Labor Years

From 1932 until the mid-1940s, Highlander strove to build a progressive labor movement in the South among woodcutters, coal miners, government relief workers, textile workers, and farmers in the region. Highlander staff supported strikes and organizing drives and trained workers to take leadership in labor unions.

Zilphia Horton on the picket line.

In 1937, Highlander joined the southern organizing drive of the Committee for Industrial Organization (renamed the Congress of Industrial Workers in 1938). Highlander became an integral part of the labor movement in the region and conducted labor education programs with workers from 11 southern states. During this period, Highlander developed a residential educational program designed to help build a broad-based, racially integrated, and politically active labor movement in the South.

While the first black speaker at a workshop at Highlander arrived in 1934, the decision to fully integrate the workshops did not come until 1942, mainly because of fears of reprisal from the local community, and the resistance of labor unions. Until 1942, only field extension projects held outside of Highlander were integrated.

In 1944, leaders of United Auto Workers locals attended the first integrated workshop at Highlander. The integrated workshops defied the conventions of Southern society and labor unions of the time. Highlander's racial policy reflected the staff's belief that the success of the labor movement required confronting racism and the evils of segregation.

An integrated workshop at Highlander, mid-1940s.

These integrated workshops caused great controversy among segregationists and union leaders. Opposition leaders equated Highlander's racial policies with communism and began a campaign to shut Highlander down that culminated in 1961.

...to 1953-1961: The Civil Rights Movement & The Citizenship Schools...

top of page