Highlander Research and Education Center (Knoxville, Tenn.)

<objectXMLWrap>
<container xmlns="">
<filename>/data/source/findingAids/duke/classic-EADs/matthews.xml</filename>
<ead_entity en_type="corpname">Highlander Research and Education Center</ead_entity>
</container>
</objectXMLWrap>

<p><b>1932-1940s—The Founding of Highlander and the Labor Years</b></p>

<p>In 1932, activist, Myles Horton, educator, Don West, and Methodist minister, Jim Dombrowski, and others founded the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tenn. Myles Horton and other Highlander members focused first on organizing unemployed and working people, and by the late 1930s Highlander was serving as the de-facto CIO education center for the region, training union organizers and leaders in 11 southern states. During this period, Highlander also fought segregation in the labor movement, holding its first integrated workshop in 1944.</p>

<p><b>1950s-1960s—The Civil Rights Movement and the Citizenship Schools</b></p>

<p>Highlander's commitment to ending segregation made it an important incubator of the Civil Rights movement. Workshops and training sessions held at Highlander helped lay the groundwork for many of the movement's most important initiatives, including the Montgomery bus boycott, the Citizenship Schools, and the founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Highlander worked with Martin Luther King, Jr., the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Guy and Candie Carawan, Septima Clark, and Rosa Parks, among others. Rosa Parks attended a workshop at the Highlander Folk School shortly before refusing to give up her seat on the bus in Montgomery, Ala. Zilphia Horton, the music and drama director at Highlander and Myles Horton's wife, heard the song "We Shall Overcome" at a workshop at Highlander. She later taught the song to Pete Seeger who popularized it around the country. "We Shall Overcome" became one of the anthems of the civil rights movement. Zilphia Horton died in 1955 in an accident. In 1961, after years of red-baiting and several government investigations, the state of Tennessee revoked Highlander's charter and seized its land and buildings. The Highlander Folk School reopened the next day as the Highlander Research and Education Center. From 1961-1971, it was based in Knoxville, and in 1972 it moved to its current location near New Market, Tenn.</p>

<p><b>1970s-1990s—Appalachian People's Struggles and Supporting Local Communities in a Global Context</b></p>

<p>In the late 1960s and 1970s, Highlander played a role fostering organizing in Appalachia, supporting anti-strip mining and worker health and safety struggles, among other efforts. In the 1980s and 1990s, Highlander expanded its work to support grassroots groups fighting pollution and toxic dumping, and supported the emerging anti-globalization movement by sponsoring workshops on economic human rights and trade and globalization issues and by forging connections with international activists and organizers. In January 1990, Highlander co-founder, Myles Horton died of brain cancer.</p>

<p><b>2000-Present—Twenty-First Century Highlander</b></p>

<p>Today, Highlander is continuing to fight for justice and equality, supporting organizing and leadership development among Latinx immigrants and young people, encouraging the use of culture to enhance social justice efforts, and helping organizations in diverse constituencies develop new strategies and alliances. Highlander has prioritized programming for organizing and leadership development; strategic efforts and programs to develop tools and mechanisms needed to advance multi-racial, inter-generational movement for social and economic justice in the southern United States; and supported and connected organizations from the Deep South, Appalachia, and immigrant communities.</p>

<p><i>Historical note edited from timeline found on Highlander Research and Education Center's website in January 2020.</i></p>

<objectXMLWrap>
<container xmlns="">
<filename>/data/source/findingAids/harvard/sch00059.xml</filename>
<ead_entity en_type="corpname">Highlander Research and Education Center,</ead_entity>
</container>
</objectXMLWrap>