Highlander Research and Education Center
John Gaventa, Executive Director
Dr. Helen Thomas, economics program coordinator
Candie Carawan, residential education coordinator
Larry Wilson, environmental program coordinator
Susan Wilson, economy schools and environmental/economy program coordinator
Ron Davis, youth program coordinator
Wokie Wicks, financial coordinator
Joyce Dukes, SALT program coordinator
1959 Highlander Way
New Market, Tenn. 37820
(615) 933-3443

"There comes a moment, a turn, when people stop thinking about what has happened to them, and start thinking about what they can make happen."

This old truism of community organizing stands, as well as anything, for the principles that underlie the 60-year-old Highlander Center, which, to the extent that such a complex program can be boiled down to a single sentence, serves as a school for grassroots community organizers in the Appalachian and Southern states.

Founded in 1932 by Myles Horton and a group of supporters as the Highlander Folk School, a "school for adults," where people of like spirit could meet, share their experiences and learn from each other, the center has continued with essentially little change in its basic principles.

Such famous organizers as Martin Luther King came there (earning the school some notoriety among local segregationists, who considered the institution "communistic"); so did Rosa Parks, who contrary to the myth that her leadership of the Montgomery, Ala., bus strike was merely the act of a tired woman who would not be moved, was trained here before the strike. And, in more modern times, many well-known Appalachian organizers, like Becky Simpson of the Cranks Creek Survival Center, have won fellowships here to share and to learn.

Horton organized Highlander, then in the town of Monteagle, Tenn., originally to train Southern union organizers. Its primary focus moved to desegregation in the '50s, and the resulting controversy inspired state officials to take legal action to yank its charter as a school in 1960. Unbowed, Horton moved the institution to Knoxville's inner city, and then, about two decades ago, to its current setting on 110 beautiful acres of hilltop meadow with a view of the Great Smoky Mountains, about 20 miles out into the countryside east of Knoxville.

Now, while Highlander continues deeply involved with matters of race and poverty, its programs reach into every area of American life in which people are discriminated against and oppressed: race, religion, gender, class, sexual preference, age and physical ability.

"We bring people together to learn from each other," says Highlander's mission statement.

Its basic model, operating in similar fashion in its residential workshops and residential training sessions, works this way in its Southern and Appalachian Leadership Training (SALT) program, Joyce Dukes explained. About once a year, a call for applications goes out to the broad network of change-related organizations with which Highlander is in contact. Staff reviews applications and selects as many fellowship grants as possible (14 last year, from 58 applications) from active, working organizers in the region. Fellows receive transportation assistance and a $200 monthly stipend, and attend six weekend sessions at Highlander, one every six weeks, for the nine-month fellowship period. They stay in dormitories on the grounds, and child care is provided.

During sessions, basically, they learn from each other, with heavy reliance on resource people and Highlander's extensive library. "We sit around this big room in rocking chairs and talk," Dukes said. "It's laid back, blue-jeans, very very casual. No pressure, but there's a lot going on. It's a very participatory project. We've recognized that people learn a lot just by living and dealing with problems, and so a lot of peer learning goes on."

At the end of the program, in addition to all the factual material they've learned about organizing, fellows take away two more crucial tools, Dukes said: They've built a new network among themselves, and they will have Highlander itself, through its library and staff, for support.

Highlander is funded primarily by private foundation grants, individual donors, and capital fund drives. One model funding project, "Friends of Highlander," comprises a half-dozen committees of supporters who live in larger cities and raise donations there. It has a staff of approximately 20, and an annual budget of about $750,000.

Highlander has earned a glowing reputation over its 60 years. Shortly after Myles Horton died in 1990, New York Times reporter Peter Applebome came to New Market and wrote a short story about him and the center.

Quoted in that story, Candie Carawan summed up the center and its mission well: "From its start, this has been one of the few places that takes seriously the notion that grass-roots people, dispossessed people, who do not have money or power or much formal education can solve their own problems."

Added John Gaventa, the 1993 Executive Director: "The issues change, but the philosophy remains the same."

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

Browse his book, Reinvesting In America, at Amazon.com.

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