NEW MARKET - The mission of the
is to bring people together for justice, equality, and sustainability.
Here's how it started.
Tennessee native Myles Horton and others co-founded the Highlander Folk School in 1932 because they were concerned about poverty in the South.
"They were inspired by the Danish Folk Schools, which were schools in rural communities that helped people get an education and learn about democracy, and that inspired them, so they decided they wanted to have a place," Susan Williams said. She is a longtime educator there.
That first place was in Monteagle, about 50 miles northwest of Chattanooga, where it existed from the early 1930s to the early 1960s.
"They did a nursery school for kids. They had quilting workshops. They were trying to help start cooperatives, and then people started doing labor organizing so they actually became a labor school for the Southeast," she said. "One of the things that Myles and other people who worked there decided was labor would never succeed unless black and white people could work together, so they made a decision to work around civil rights."
Williams said the commitment to ending segregation made the Highlander and its workshop model a critical part of the Civil Rights Movement.
"That's when Rosa Parks came. She came to a workshop on school desegregation and she said nothing would ever change in Montgomery and then she went back. She had been active for decades," she said. "She said that one thing she felt she really learned at Highlander was that she actually saw white and black people in the same space working together and that she had never seen that before as someone who grew up in Montgomery."
At the time, integration was illegal in Tennessee. Law enforcement confronted Myles at the center.
"Finally, the state of Tennessee confiscated the property. So they took the property in Monteagle. That's why Highlander moved," she explained.
It moved to Knoxville in 1961 and changed its name to the Highlander Research and Education Center. In 1972 it relocated to New Market in Jefferson County.
"They wanted to be in a rural area because it's more of a retreat setting and they just happened to find this piece of property," she said.
"They wanted to be out in the country."
It's a relaxing setting for workshops.
"At our best we find where people are working on issues where coming together helps them, and we bring them together and I think that is the path through time that is always true and will continue into the future," she said.
The Highlander Center expanded its mission to include environmental issues and developing leadership skills for young people and immigrants. It plans to keep growing its outreach.
"Helping people learn the history of social change and struggle helps people feel part of a river of struggle and change and makes them feel part of something that is important for our region," she said.
