FBI Files on Highlander Folk School on Microfilm

The Highlander Folk School (HFS) in Monteagle, Tennessee, was established in 1932 by Myles Horton, a native Tennessean, who wanted to "provide an educational center in the South for the training of rural and industrial leaders, and for the conservation and enrichment of the indigenous cultural values of the mountain." The school accepted workers whom their unions considered potential leaders, and the unions paid most of their way through the school. These workers were trained in such endeavors as collective bargaining, contract negotiation, and strike organization, as well as less weighty, but presumably no less important, skills like poster-making and song-singing. Rosa Parks was trained by Highlander prior to her historic role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, other activists who participated in training include members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Septima Clark, Anne Braden, Martin Luther King, Jr., James Bevel, Hollis Watkins, Bernard Lafayette, Ralph Abernathy and John Lewis in the mid - and - late 1950s. The state of Tennessee closed the school in 1961 because of backlash against the school's involvement with the Civil Rights Movement.

Highlander reorganized and moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, where it reopened as the Highlander Research and Education Center.