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

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Click here for Highlander's tribute to Rosa Parks.
Click here for pictures of Rosa Parks at Highlander.

The Civil Rights Movement

In 1953, Highlander changed its focus from labor to the Civil Rights Movement. The impetus for the change was two-fold. First, the staff believed that "conquering meanness, prejudice and tradition" in the form of racism and segregation was key to conquering poverty and winning progressive change throughout the region. Second, the staff predicted that the impending Brown versus the Board of Education Supreme Court decision would set off a major upheaval in the South whichever way it went. Highlander's long tradition of working with African Americans in the labor movement put the school in a strong position to support the movement to end segregation, which is right where it wanted to be.

Martin Luther King, Pete Seeger, Charis Horton, Rosa Parks, & Ralph Abernathy in front of the Highlander Library, Monteagle, TN.

Highlander's work in the Civil Rights Movement throughout this period focused mainly on school desegregation and voter education/voting rights. Because of its pioneering efforts to conduct cross-race educational sessions, Highlander also served a role as a key gathering place for civil rights activists. Groups such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee used Highlander as a place to meet and make plans.

Highlander also played a vital role helping to spread freedom songs throughout the Civil Rights Movement, including "We Shall Overcome," "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize," and others. Cultural workshops at Highlander brought together activists and song leaders to share songs and create new ones, often by adapting existing hymns or popular songs. These freedom songs -- sung at marches, rallies, and in jails across the South -- became one of the hallmarks of the movement, providing inspiration, hope, and solidarity for all those fighting racism and segregation.

The Citizenship Schools

Bernice Robinson teaching in an early Citizenship School; Sea Islands, SC.

The Citizenship Schools represented Highlander's most successful voter education strategy. The program started in the South Carolina Sea Islands as the brainchild of Johns Island resident Esau Jenkins, who brought the idea to Highlander in 1954. The schools, which operated under the leadership of Esau Jenkins, Bernice Robinson, and Highlander's Education Director Septima Clark, soon spread throughout the Sea Islands. The purpose of the Citizenship School program was to help African Americans learn to read so that they could pass the literacy tests required to become eligible voters in the South at the time.

Eventually, the Citizenship Schools led to a region-wide citizenship education program under the management of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The Citizenship Schools played a critical role in building the base for the Civil Rights Movement by helping those African Americans who were among the 2.5 million functional illiterates in 8 Southern states in that period participate in politics.

...to 1961-1971: The Conservative Backlash & Transitions...

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