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

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The Conservative Backlash

Highlander's civil rights work provoked a vicious backlash among southern segregationists. At its 25th-anniversary workshop, held on Labor Day weekend, 1957, Highlander came under attack from the press. Aubrey Williams and Martin Luther King, Jr., both speakers at the event, were blamed for the racial strife that was growing throughout the South.

Soon afterward, the Georgia Commission on Education published a sensational piece of propaganda called Highlander Folk School; Communist Training School, Monteagle, Tennessee. Featuring pictures from the Labor Day event, including one of a black man dancing with a white woman, the publication proved to be an effective tool for organizing white supremacists against Highlander.

Billboard showing Martin Luther King at Highlander, identified as a "Communist training school."

Transitions

The campaign against Highlander culminated in 1961 in a move by the State of Tennessee to revoke the Folk School's charter and confiscate its land, buildings, and other property. Despite the support of people such as Eleanor Roosevelt and United Nations Under-Secretary Ralph J. Bunche, the Tennessee Supreme Court was able to manipulate the law to shut down Highlander.

Anticipating the inevitability of defeat, leaders of the Folk School took action to preserve the idea and work of Highlander by securing a charter for the Highlander Research and Education Center. The new Highlander relocated to Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1961 and remained there until 1971, when it moved to its current location.

KKK marching on Highlander; Knoxville, TN; 1966.

During this period, Highlander also began to shift its focus away from school desegregation. This shift was the result of the staff's recognition that a new generation of black leaders had emerged in the movement. Highlander's commitment to staying on the cutting edge of change, and to supporting the indigenous leadership of the Civil Rights Movement, led it to begin to look to other struggles for economic and social justice.

...to 1970s-1980s: Appalachian People's Struggles and Supporting Local Communities in a Global Context...

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