Highlander Center

The Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee, began as Highlander Folk School in 1932. Its purpose was and remains to be to help people learn to solve their own problems using personal and collective experience as a guide. Students of Highlander have been laborers, organizers, and activists, primarily from the South. Highlander, under the direction of Myles Horton and others, has both shaped and been shaped by social movements. Since Horton's death, the Highlander Research Center continues to provide a place for organizing, leadership training, youth development, and inspiration for activists around the country.

During his time in Tennessee as a college student, Horton found that people had questions that they could not answer independently. Horton was unsure about how to address these questions for others, so he undertook a personal quest to design an educational model. This quest took him through a theological seminary, the University of Chicago, and finally to Denmark to study the folk school movement. The resulting educational program was Highlander Folk School.

Most educational programs are created based on purposes named by outsiders of the community. Highlander's pedagogy is based on a shared vision of people rather than preformulated objectives. A highlander is an Appalachian, and Highlander Folk School was a school for the highlander. Grundy County, the site for the school, was a mining town without work for community members. At the time of Highlander's inception, the classes were social-educational activities. The folk culture of Grundy County was expressed with singing and fiddling of mountain songs, marking the collective character. Music and religious meetings were one part of the educational model, as well as classes that were designed with residents' problems at the center.

Between 1933 and 1939, a countywide education program was developed at Highlander along with a worker' education program. The community program, directed by Horton, garnered funding from private organizations and individuals, and a philanthropist, Lillian Johnson, gave her home and center to the school in 1935. One of the first movements initiated at the school was the Bugwood Strike, in which bugwood splitters participated in group decision making and action for improved wages. People who had elementary literacy skills drafted letters and began to think about possible solutions. The outcome was a sense of solidarity, self-sufficiency, and purpose within the community that drove future movements.

Toward the end of 1935, a union education program was established at Highlander. Grundy County wages were the lowest of Works Progress Administration (WPA) unions in the country. Highlander organizers used this crisis to build educational programs. Highlander had a lack of funds to support these workers and the WPA projects collapsed in 1939. Highlander's role after this was primarily the social and recreational needs of the county while focusing on a Southwide labor movement–related program.

Between 1932 and 1947, Highlander Folk School served the South as a center for labor organizing. First, small groups came to learn from Highlander staff, then along with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), Highlander moved its program into the field. Highlander worked with unions at the local level to develop leadership, who in turn responded to the growing labor movement during the World War II. In 1949, the CIO diverged from Highlander because they believed that Highlander had left-wing influences. Mainly, Horton and his staff at Highlander emphasized the individual's learning and development, as well as the collective action of the group, and the interests of Highlander did not meld with those of the union.

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