Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee

Myles Falls Horton (July 9, 1905 – January 19, 1990) was an American educatorand political activist. In 1932 he co-founded the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee as a center for adult learning.^[2] Over the decades, the

school was involved in struggles for labor rights, civil rights, and environmental protection. Highlander's students and teachers included prominent Civil Rights Movementleaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks (who studied with Horton shortly before her 1955 decision to keep her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama), Fannie Lou Hamer, Andrew Young, Stokely Carmichael, Septima Clark, John Lewis, James Bevel, Bernard Lafayette, and others who would create the Nashville Student Movement.^[3]

^{Monteagle, Tennessee, the Highlander Folk School}

Highlander Folk School

The Highlander Folk School was unlike any school that you have seen today. If you could visit today, you would not find classrooms full of children, no large gyms holding P.E., and no playgrounds. That is because the Highlander Folk School did not teach children, it was a school for adults. The school was founded in the middle of the Great Depression and became a center of learning during the Civil Rights Movement.

Founded in 1932 by Myles Horton in Monteagle, Tennessee, the Highlander Folk School was a pivotal training center for labor organizing and the Civil Rights Movement. It fostered racial integration and social justice, training activists like Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.. The state revoked its charter in 1961/1962.

nnessee State Museum +5

Full article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myles_Horton

Key Aspects of the Highlander Folk School (1932–1961):

Founders: Established by Myles Horton, Don West, and Jim Dombrowski to educate rural and industrial workers in Appalachia.
Mission Shift: Initially focused on labor unions and workers' education in the 1930s-40s, the school shifted to desegregation and civil rights in the 1950s.
Civil Rights Hub: Highlander was one of the few places in the South where white and Black activists could meet, strategize, and train together.
Notable Participants: Key figures included Rosa Parks (who attended a workshop shortly before her 1955 bus boycott), Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, Septima Clark, and Ralph Abernathy.
"We Shall Overcome": The iconic anthem was adapted and taught at the school by Zilphia Horton to Pete Seeger.
Closure: Due to its integrationist activities, it was investigated for "communism" and the state of Tennessee revoked its charter, closing the Monteagle site in 1961.
Tennessee State Museum +7

Legacy: Following its closure, the school reorganized as the Highlander Research and Education Center and moved to Knoxville, eventually settling in New Market, Tennessee. The original site's library, where many workshops were held, was a significant, though often targeted, location in the fight for racial equality

Comment by Bilal Mahmud المكافح المخلص on April 16, 2026 at 12:36pm: https://www.alibris.com/booksearch?mtype=B&title=at+the+dark+en...

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