Pub. date: 2010 | Online Pub. Date: December 15, 2009 | DOI:
10.4135/9781412971966 | Print ISBN: 9781412940504 | Online ISBN:
9781412971966| Publisher:SAGE Publications, Inc.About this
encyclopedia Highlander Folk School Karen A. Johnson The
Highlander Folk School (now the Highlander Research and
Education Center in New Market, Tennessee) has a long legacy of
providing a space for grassroots activists who were involved in
numerous key struggles for social and political transformation
in the United States. In its first 30 years, Highlander
functioned as an adult education and community folk school for
poor, “unlettered,” unemployed mill and miner Appalachians
during the Depression as a leadership training center for
workers in the southern labor union movement, as an educational
and organizational mechanism for members in the Farmer's Union
in the South, and as a meeting place for African American and
White civil rights activists. This entry discusses its history
and accomplishments, with special reference to