Formed in the early 1930s, this Tennessee institution is still fighting for social and racial justice.
Image via Highlander
By Damon Orion
The legacy of slavery, segregation, white supremacy, and environmental racism haunts Tennessee. “A long history of anti-worker policies in the South—rooted in a racist agenda—has had devastating consequences for its residents. Business interests and the wealthy have stoked racial divisions to maintain power and ensure access to cheap labor—at the expense of working people,” states the Economy Policy Institute.
The Highlander Research and Education Center has fought these injustices since the early 1930s. Located in New Market, Tennessee, it provides training, support, and education for activists striving for social justice and equality in the American South and Appalachia. Highlander’s website states that the group helps solidarity economies “dismantle capitalism and extractive industries” and promotes social, economic, and environmental betterment through “fiscal sponsorships and hands-on network support to groups like the Movement for Black Lives and the Southern Movement Assembly.”
Elizabeth Wright, Highlander’s communications strategist, notes, “We’re not the ones necessarily leading organizing campaigns; we’re a resource, capacity builder, connector, and school for the people who are leading those campaigns and communities. Highlander’s work has always focused on supporting and bringing people together to learn from each other, share their experiences, and build power across issues, identity, and geography.”
Highlander does this through popular education, which “aims to empower people who feel marginalized socially and politically to take control of their own learning and to effect social change,” according to the Popular Education News.
Denzel Caldwell is an electoral justice researcher and educator for Highlander and a member of the center’s economics and governance team. He notes that as an organization that was established in response to chattel slavery and worker exploitation, this facility is rooted in the understanding that “the represented democratic structure that currently exists and has historically existed has not served everyone in this country. It has largely served only the white, male, wealthy elite. Part of our work to build a people’s democracy reflects the largely working-class masses who need their basic needs met, [such as] health care, clean water, food, transportation, and the right to a quality education.”
Caldwell is also an organizer for groups like the Black Nashville Assembly, a participatory democracy project working to “transform the lives of Black people in Nashville,” states the organization’s website. At Highlander, he helps students unpack the history and impact of capitalism and build alternatives. Caldwell and his colleagues have created curricula and programs that teach the concepts and language of solidarity economies. He explains that besides presenting examples of solidarity economy models used globally, “but especially in the U.S. South,” these courses invite enrollees “to think more deeply about what a post-capitalist world might look like.”
People Practicing Power
From May 30 to September 26, 2024, Caldwell co-facilitated an online workshop series called People Practicing Power (PPP) with U.S. Department of Arts and Culture co-director Jordan Seaberry and social impact strategist Cici Battle. Centering around the 2024 election, the series examined systems and structures related to democracy, anti-fascism, and capitalist economies and helped clarify issues like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Cop City controversy related to a police training facility being built near Atlanta, and the rising cost of living.
Caldwell, who also co-facilitated a 2022 PPP workshop series that focused on the midterm elections, says that along with imparting a greater understanding of civics, these workshops help participants identify the individuals in power who determine how legislation impacts and shapes issues of concern. Attendees can then apply that information to their organizing and campaign strategies. For example, members of the community organizing group We Do Politics expanded their knowledge of local civics by attending this series. Caldwell says this enabled the group to strengthen its learning spaces for Nashville residents interested in understanding and engaging in local issues.
While PPP’s curriculum is geared toward inhabitants of the South, its online format makes it accessible to everyone in the country. Caldwell says between the first and second series, several hundred people have attended these workshops, including residents of states like California and Illinois.
The information in these online gatherings “is not being shared in a top-down, cookie-cutter way, but in a way that helps [participants] build their understanding from their doorstep to the halls of legislation or the executive or judicial branches,” Caldwell states. For example, in a workshop focusing on city government, the group discussed the impact of local ordinances and city council bills on the cost of living. This knowledge enables attendees to “determine the extent to which developers are able to buy real estate, which would impact property values, which would then impact people’s ability to buy a home.”
Caldwell says the most exciting aspect of PPP sessions is “seeing that light bulb go off for [students] and hearing people say, ‘Oh! So that’s why rent is so high,’ or ‘This is where my taxes might be going.’”
Highlander’s History
Activist Myles Horton, educator Don West, minister James Dombrowski, and others founded Highlander in Monteagle, Tennessee, in 1932 under the name of the Highlander Folk School. Putting a Southern and Appalachian spin on the Danish folk school model, the establishment began as a labor training facility that helped organize “unemployed and working people.” In collaboration with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), it brought activists together to plan strikes, build worker rights, and fight the exploitation of companies and corporations. The school’s website states that by the late 1930s, Highlander was “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.”
Highlander played a pivotal role in the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr. participated in the school’s programs as a trainee and teacher, and Rosa Parks trained at the center before the Montgomery bus boycott that led the Supreme Court to end segregation on public buses. The school was also integral to the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Highlander’s work in the 1960s and 1970s largely focused on organizing in Appalachia and working in rural communities. Its website notes that it supported “anti-strip mining and worker health and safety struggles, among other efforts.”
In the 1980s, the group began supporting organizations fighting pollution and toxic dumping. It continued this work in the 1990s, also upholding LGBT causes and the rights of Mexican and South American immigrants who were pushed out of their communities by the North American Free Trade Agreement. From the 1990s into the 2000s, Highlander aided employees of plants that had been shut down and moved across the borders. Wright says the owners of these factories manipulated workers at the old and new sites to blame each other for job crises and economic hardships.
“Highlander’s work at that time was bridging a lot of Black, Brown, and white working-class solidarity,” she notes, mentioning a group of women who worked at a factory in Morristown, Tennessee, that had closed down. Highlander took these workers to the new factory in Mexico to meet its employees. “They were able to compare working conditions and look at the root cause of the problem, which was the corporation that owned the factories and was making these decisions for its own financial gain. Those workers were able to come back to their communities and shift the stories that were being told about why this was happening.”
Highlander continues to provide leadership training and uphold economic justice and democratic participation, particularly among members of marginalized demographics. The facility “has always recognized that we have to get to the root of the problems: the systems and structures,” Wright says. “Looking at economics and governance has been a common thread throughout—recognizing that people in power have used division tactics and things like structural racism, interpersonal racism, and other ways to keep people divided.”
Perseverance and Joy
Wright says that as a progressive institution in the rural South, Highlander has been “targeted throughout its history as a ‘communist training school,’ which we aren’t.” She adds that in the late 1950s, the school was singled out for holding desegregated workshops. This led to a 1961 raid on the original site of Highlander in Monteagle. “People were arrested, and the State of Tennessee came in and seized all the buildings and everything in them, auctioned it all off, and took away our charter.”
Changing its name from Highlander Folk School to Highlander Research and Education Center, the school relocated to Knoxville, Tennessee, where it stayed for 10 years before moving to its present location in 1971.
“Myles Horton famously said, ‘You can padlock a building, but you can’t padlock an idea,’” Wright states. “Highlander fought on, refused to step down, and kept trudging forward and doing the work.”
In 2019, Highlander endured a fire that the Nation and the Center for Constitutional Rights identified as an arson attack. “There was a white supremacist symbol spray-painted on our parking lot,” Wright says. “Our office building, backup server, and all of our work were destroyed in that fire, and we’ve been without an office building ever since. Again, we just kept working and adapting.”
Besides perseverance, Wright feels Highlander’s remarkable longevity is the result of “finding ways to keep the work joyful and engaging.” This “helps people avoid burnout and keep going through struggles and difficult organizing environments. [We] dance together, sing together, bring joy and spirit to the work, and help people feel physically and spiritually connected to what’s happening instead of just getting in their heads and [pushing them to think] about what needs to happen.”
Damon Orion is a writer, journalist, musician, artist, and teacher in Santa Cruz, California. His work has appeared in Revolver, Guitar World, Spirituality + Health, Classic Rock, High Times, and other publications. Read more of his work at DamonOrion.com.
This article was produced by Local Peace Economy.
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