Highlander Research and Education Center, New Market, Tenn.; founded as the Highlander Folk School in 1932 in Monteagle, Tenn., by Myles Horton (1905–90), who was influenced Denmark's folk high schools. At first the school focused on training union organizers, but in the 1950s Highlander became a center of the civil-rights movement. The state of Tennessee revoked the school's charter in 1961 and seized its facilites, but Horton reopened under the current name and relocated, first to Knoxville and then to New Market. In the 1980s the school shifted to balancing environmental concerns with the struggle for economic recovery in the South while maintaining its traditional focus on equality and social justice.
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