
          Fifty Years With Highlander
          By Thrasher, SueSue Thrasher
          Vol. 4, No. 6, 1982, pp. 4-9
          
          At Christmas time in 1931 in Copenhagen, Denmark, a young man off
an East Tennessee farm made a note to himself:
          
            I can't sleep but there are dreams: a school where young men and
women can come and he inspired . . . expressing themselves through
teaching history, literature, song and music, arts, weaving, and a
life lived together. .. A school where young men and women living in
close personal contact with teachers will learn how to take their
place intelligently in a changing world, which at present presents so
many baffling problems. It its hoped that the students will he able to
make decisions for themselves on the basis of an enlightened
judgment.
          
          Myles Horton returned from Denmark and in November of 19832, he
started his Southern mountain school soon named the Highlander Folk
School. This year, the celebration of the Highlander Research and
Education Center's fiftieth anniversary prompts an overview of its
three major periods of work: the Southern labor movement of the 1930's
and 40's, the civil_rights movement, and the struggle for Appalachian
self-determination. The fiftieth anniversary also offers an
opportunity to reflect upon Highlander's impact as a regional institution and to ponder its role over the
coming few years.
          Myles Horton's dream did not start in Copenhagen in 1931, but much
earlier in the town of Ozone on the Cumberland Plateau in
Tennessee. While a student at Cumberland College, Myles had been
teaching Vacation Bible School for the Presbyterian Church. The third
summer of teaching he arrived in Ozone and decided to 

try an
experiment--getting adults together as well as the children.
          In evening discussions at the church the adults would talk about
their community. He was amazed at the response he got. Some of the
people walked miles to the meetings. They wanted to know how to test
wells for typhoid or hor to test their farmland. They also wanted to
know about the possibility of getting jobs in textile mills.
          One of the things Myles learned from these meetings was to trust
his own ability as a group leader who didn't have all of the
answers. As he said later,
          
            To my amazement my inability to answer questions didn't bother
them. That was probably the biggest discovery I ever made. You don't
have to know the answers! You raise the questions, sharpen the
questions, get people to discussing them. We found that in that group
of mountain people a lot of the answers were available if they pooled
their knowledge.
          
          That discovery triggered in Myles Horton the notion of a Southern
mountain school. First, however, he returned to graduate from
Cumberland University. After spending a year working with the YMCA in
Tennessee, in 1929 he followed his dream to Union Seminary where he
studied under Reinhold Niebuhr and Harry F. Ward. He then went on to
the University of Chicago to study with sociologist Robert Park. More
importantly, Myles met a Danish minister named Aage Moller who told
him about the Danish folk high_school movement. At the end of his year
in Chicago, and still not ready to "begin" his new school, Horton
decided to travel to Denmark to see firsthand the Danish folks
schools.
          During all of this time Myles wrote innumerable notes to
himself. He was never quite sure exactly when it was time to
begin. From Union he had gone to Chicago, thinking that he still
needed to know more, but his uncertainty after a year there had
prompted him to search for more answers in Denmark. But, he still
didn't have all the answers. Finally one night in Denmark, he decided
it was time to come home and find himself a situation and a place. As
he wrote later,
          
            All at once I told myself, "All you do is get a place and move
in. You are there. The situation its there. You start with this and
let it grow. You have your idea; you know your goal. It will build its
own structure and take its own form. Find the place, the people, the
situation. Use your ideas as your lodestone and move into the thing
and start."
          
          With the help of Reinhold Niebuhr, Myles began making plans to
start his school for adults. Niebuhr signed the school's first
fundraising letter which was perhaps more specific than Horton himself
would have stated it: "Our project is the organization of a southern
mountain school for the training of labor leaders in southern
industrial areas."
          Will Alexander, Director of the Commission on Interracial
Cooperation in Atlanta, encouraged Myles to contact a young man named
Don West, who also had the notion of starting a folk school. He met
Don at the Blue Ridge Assembly in North_Carolina and the two of them
agreed to start this venture together.
          From a friend Myles fondly remembers as Preacher Nightingale of
Crossville, Tennessee, they learned about Dr. Lillian Johnson, an
educator, who owned a home and property in the small community of
Summerfield, Tennessee, on the Cumberland Plateau. Disappointed by her
own efforts at cooperative-building, she agreed to turn her property
and her house over to them for one year, to try this experimental
school. A graduate of Wellesley, and former President of Western
College for Women, Dr. Johnson had moved to Summerfield to establish a
community school, but her plans of using the school as the focal point
of cooperative efforts had not succeeded and she was anxious to see
what the two young men could do with their notion of a folk school.
          The place that Myles and Don found themselves
in the fall of 1932 was Grundy County, one of the ten poorest counties
in the United_States at the time. the situation they found themselves
in was one of desperate poverty. Grundy County had once been rich in
coal and timber but as Aimee Horton says in her dissertation on
Highlander:
          
            Those resources were exploited in classic 19th century style,
and the economy there had begun to collapse decades before the
depression. The only thing left in Grundy County at the time was
cut-over timber, mined-out fields, and unemployed workers.
          
          Most of the people had turned to farming for a living--subsistence
farming--they were desperately poor.
          The first phase of Highlander's work began to center around Grundy
County and the small community of Summerfield. During the first three
years that they were there, the Highlander staff helped establish a
union for WPA workers and a community cannery. Mom Horton, Myles'
mother, helped set up a quilting cooperative. Later staff members
helped establish a community nursery school. At the same time,
however, the staff was beginning to look towards regional
issues. Myles had 

never intended that Highlander be just a community
school.
          *   *   *   *
          By the time the CIO was formed in 1936, Highlander was in the thick
of labor education. Myles helped select many of the Southern CIO
organizers. And from then until the late 1940's, Highlander was
predominantly a labor school working very closely with the CIO and
with some of the AFL unions. Unions from across the South sent members
to Highlander to be trained in sessions ranging from one week to five
weeks. Workers learned to put out a local union newspaper, to speak in
public and to produce leaflets. They participated in courses on labor
history, the history of social change and economics. Sessions were
taught by Highlander staff members and by CIO and other union
officials in the South.
          By the late 1940's however, Highlander's role as a labor school was
headed for an end. At issue was its relationship with unions who had
been kicked out of the CIO for refusing to sign the anticommunist oath
called for by the Taft-Hartley Act. More fundamental was the question
of the independence of the school--whether it would be run by the CIO
or whether it would maintain itself as an independent institution. The
papers of Highlander for this particular period show how hard it
fought to work with the unions, battling on the issue of race,
subsidizing many of the union sessions--while also striving (naively
in retrospect) for union support of the school.
          Highlander did not espouse any particular ideology nor did it
refuse to work with anyone because of ideology. Highlander did not
apply a loyalty test to people who came to the school. At the same
time. it had been very careful not to align with the Socialist Party,
from which many of its early staff members had come. However, as
political debate heated up within the unions, especially over the
anti-communist provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act, political debate
heated up around Highlander. By 1949, it was apparent to both the CIO
and Highlander that the uneasy truce that had existed for the past few
years could no longer go one. The CIO did not attack Highlander, it
simply dropped it from its list of approved institutions to hold its
schools.
          One of the most controversial issues, one that continued to arise
throughout Highlander's period of working with the unions, was the
matter of race. Although Highlander had had a policy of being an
integrated institution from the time it opened in 1932, the unions had
been very reluctant to actually sponsor integrated schools. It was not
until 1944, when the United Auto Workers held an integrated session at
the school, that a residential session involved both black and white
members. Eating at a table together, sleeping in the same dormitory
rooms, using the same bathrooms were very emotional subjects during
this time. Some of the members went away feeling that they had been
changed by their living experience while at Highlander, but others
were not convinced about a place that openly condoned white and black
living--and especially one that had as many "Yankee" visitors.
          Its union experience forced the Highlander staff to think more
clearly about the issue of race and its meaning for the future of the
South. This was one of the turning points in Highlander's history.
           *  *  *  *
          In the early 1950's Highlander hosted small meetings to talk about
the coming of school integration in the South. It was quite apparent
to the staff and others who were concerned about social issues during
that time, that a Supreme_Court decision on school desegration would
be handed down by the Warren Court.
          In the summer of 1953, Highlander held three meetings on the issue
of school desegregation. Community leaders came from across the
South. Neither the staff nor the people they invited there knew
exactly what would happen when people got there.
          Here it is critical to understand Highlander's role as an
educational institution for developing leadership. Rather than go into
communities and organize around a particular issue, Highlander's goal
was to pull out, train and help develop leaders from communities. This
is seen most clearly in the civil_rights period when people from
across the South came to the residential setting of Highlander, talked
about the issues at hand and then returned to their communities.
          For fifteen years Highlander played an integral role in the civil
rights movement. Until the passage of the first civil_rights bill in
1964, it remained one of the few places available for interracial
meetings. From tentative efforts with community leaders on school
desegregation, the school moved to establish a major literacy and
voting 

rights project in the Sea Islands of South_Carolina, held
workshops with students participating in the sit-in movement, actively
participated in the training of civil_rights workers for Freedom
Summer of 1964, and continued following up on all of these efforts
until the time of the Poor Peoples March in Washington in 1967.
          *   *    *    *
          From its early days in 1932, Highlander had enjoyed a warm
relationship with the surrounding community of Grundy County. Square
dances held at the school, volleyball games, and community suppers
were commonplace. In addition, Highlander operated a community nursery
school, first organized by Claudia Lewis, who later wrote about her
experiences in a book entitled Children of the
Cumberlands. She was followed by Joie Willimetz, a graduate of
Wellesley, who used her own personal contracts to raise money and
supplies for the school. The Folk School also published a small
community newsletter called the Summerfield News, the
work of an Antioch student, Elaine Van Brink, who spent four years at
Highlander. She toured the community on her bicycle gathering news for
the paper, typed and mimeographed it at Highlander, then later
distributed it with the help of local newsboys and girls. The
newsletter featured poetry, community news items, and a gossip
column.
          Despite indications of good reciprocal community relations,
however, there was always some opposition t o the school and its
ideas. In the early 1940's Highlander had come under attack by a local
group called The Grundy County Crusaders, who had threatened to march
on the school. Residents of the area who liked the school simply
ringed the area, and no harm was done.
          As Highlander made the crucial turn toward involvement in the civil
rights movement, and its students were drawn from predominantly black
communities, the Folk School lost its strong community ties. It was
not the antagonism of the local community however, that succeeded
eventually in closing the school, but the antagonism of the state.
          In 1957, Highlander held its twenty-fifth anniversary.
          One of its major speakers that year was Dr. Martin_Luther_King,
Jr. King had just finished a year of leading the Montgomery Bus
Boycott and had recently moved to Atlanta to help set up the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference.
          The governor of Georgia, Marvin Griffin, wanted to discredit King,
and the state legislature of Tennessee wanted to discredit
Highlander. When Dr. King spoke at Highlander, Governor Griffin sent a
reporter and a photographer. A few months later a four page tabloid
began circulating about the "communist training school in East
Tennessee where Martin_Luther_King had been." There were two
billboards across the South during that time--"Martin_Luther_King at
Communist Training School" and "Impeach Earl Warren."
          In 1959, Highlander was raided during a weekend workshop, two staff
members were carted off to jail, and several counts were leveled
against the school: operating a school for the profit of the director,
selling beer without a license, and operating an integrated
school. Selling beer without a license was the technicality that
closed the school.
          It took two years, until 1961, for the state of Tennessee to
actually shut Highlander. Finally, the state confiscated and sold at
auction approximately two hundred acres of land and several buildings,
including a nursery, a community building, a library and staff
houses. To this day, Highlander has never received any
remuneration.
          As soon as they could, the staff rechartered, reorganized and
opened again under the name of the Highlander Research and Education
Center.
          *  *  *  * 
          Through its participation in the 1967 Poor Peoples' March on
Washington and in Resurrection City, the encampment of poor_people on
the Mall, Highlander began another major shift of emphasis. Many
people who gathered in Washington that summer believed that there was
a possibility of realizing King's dream of a multiracial poor_peoples'
coalition. Several groups at Resurrection City encouraged Highlander
to come back home and work in the Appalachian coalfields. Already it
had begun making contacts in the mountains and had established strong
ties with urban Appalachian groups such as the JOIN Community Union in
uptown Chicago.
          Highlander did come back to the mountains and began working more
intensely with strands of a developing poor_peoples' movement in the
Appalachians; included were anti-stripmine activists and various
community action groups that were aided and abetted by the OEO (Office
of Economic Opportunity) language calling for one-third representation
of the poor. The staff during this time changed dramatically. It was
much younger and more reflective of its new constituency.
          The Appalachian period of Highlander is more difficult to
categorize than the labor or civil_rights periods. Even though there
were very active groups in the 

mountains throughout this time, the
movement in Appalachia never developed into the kind of mass
mobilization that the Highlander staff hoped for. Perhaps, in order to
succeed, it would have had to emerge with a mass movement of poor
people from all over the country. On the other hand, perhaps
Highlander attempted to expand too quickly during the late 1960's, as
it established a Highlander-West to work with Chicanos in the
Southwest and set up extension programs in the uptown area of
Chicago.
          In 1971, urban renewed out of Knoxville, the school moved
physically back to the mountains. It is located now near New Market,
Tennessee on a 110 acre farm overlooking the Smokes. The Appalachian
emphasis has evolved into current projects: a health program which
works with clinics in the mountains and with the providers of basic
human services; a resource and education center established in 1976;
and a cultural program. More recently Highlander has developed a labor
education program which came from work with the Amalgamated Clothing
and Textile Workers Union and the United Furniture Workers Union.
          *   *   *   *   
          Highlander started out as a Southern/Mountain school and during its
fifty year history it has been both of those things. The term
Appalachian was not in vogue in 1932 when Myles and Don settled on the
Cumberland Plateau, but Highlander was a well-known term, thus the
Highlander Folk School. During its first two decades, Highlander
worked with people from the mountains and with people from other parts
of the South.
          The school's identification during those early years was much like
the Cumberland Plateau where it was located — perched both
figuratively and literally between the coalfields to the north and the
agricultural regions to the south. Until the early 1950's it was able
to maintain itself successfully as both a Southern school and a
Mountain school. During the period of the civil_rights movement,
however, Highlander became almost totally a Southern institution. Then
during the late 1960's and early 70's it became a strictly Appalachian
institute.
          Much of Highlander's work in the coalfields reflected the
assumption that Appalachia is a colony. Currently Highlander is in
still another stage of development and thinking about its region and
about other regions. The distinctiveness of both the Appalachian
coalfields and the South has eroded as they have both become more
Americanized. The fact that each remains a colony--wealth from their
natural resources is spirited away to absentee owners--makes them in
one sense no more distinctive than the Indian lands of the Southwest
or any of the Latin American, African or Asian nations plundered for
their natural and human resources by trans-national corporations.
          For the last five years, Highlander has neither called itself an
Appalachian institution nor a Southern institution. As it once was in
the early days on the Cumberland Plateau, it is again perched between
two worlds. Its recent work with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile
Workers Union and the Furniture Workers. Union has placed Highlander
once again in the position of working with black_people from the
South. Yet the work in Appalachia has continued and in many cases has
grown and expanded. This is perhaps best exemplified by the land
ownership study recently concluded, and by other work coming out of
Highlander's resource center.
          Two years ago when Highlander started talking about celebrating its
fiftieth anniversary, there was a commitment on the part of the board
members and the staff to use this occasion to explore the future--to
celebrate and affirm the past, but more importantly, to look as
unflinchingly as possible into the future, and what may be expected in
time to come.
          In the 1930's and 40's, Highlander had a very clear cut decision to
make: to work with the labor movement or not to work with the labor
movement. In the 1950's and 60's, it had the same kind of decision to
make regarding the civil_rights movement. In the 1960's and early
70's, it found a natural place working in the Appalachian
coalfields. The question arises in 1982: What is now Highlanders situation and place? 
          Its place now can neither be defined by a
county or a regional line and its situation is
one shared with all the people of the world--tottering on the brink of
nuclear disaster.
          While Highlander must take its cues from the place where it works
most closely, both the Appalachians and the Deep South, and focus on
the issues that affect the people of these areas, it is quite clear
that the issues affecting Highlander and the people it works with are

also issues that affect people all over the world. We cannot talk to
people in one Appalachian community about toxic wastes without
understanding that toxic waste has to be buried somewhere, and if not
here then perhaps in someone else's community. We cannot talk to
people about absentee ownership of land without understanding that the
same thing holds true in the Southwest and other parts of the
country. We cannot talk about occupational health and safety as it
relates to industries in this area and not understand that it affects
workers all over the United_States and all over the world. We cannot
simply talk about the environmental health of the Tennessee Valley,
lest our Canadian friends remind us about the effects of acid rain.
          We feel poised on the edge of a new era at Highlander--an era which
may see us working more again on issues that relate to minorities in
the Deep South, and maintaining our ties with the communities of
Appalachia.
          The problem before us will be to keep our focus and understand
always the strength and knowledge that comes from our own people. But
we must also begin to see ourselves as part of a larger
community. What is it that our Southern/Appalachian communities have
in common with the Indian communities of the Southwest--especially as
it regards the rape of the land and the theft of natural resources?
What is it that we have in common with workers from Latin America as
they battle the same trans-national corporations that affect us? And
what do we have to teach other people?
          Highlander doesn't know the answers to all of these questions. The
lesson we can learn from Highlander's past is really the same as it
was in 1932 as articulated by Myles Horton in the small community of
Ozone.
          
            You don't have to know the answers. You raise the questions,
sharpen the questions, get people to discussing them.
          
          If anything is different now, it is that we must not only raise and
sharpen the questions within our own community and region, but in the
larger world community--anywhere that people are fighting for
justice.
          Illustrators: Malcolm Chisolm, artist and blacksmith, was on the
Highlander staff in 1933. He left Highlander to fight with the Abraham
Lincoln Brigade and died in the Spanish Civil_War.
          Candie Carawan its currently on the Highlander staff.
          
            Sue Thrasher is on the program staff at
Highlander.
          
        
