folk school

“The land should be repatriated, back to the Highlander Folk School, which is now the Highlander Research and Education Center.”

Henderson said she’s grateful the trust stepped in when the center couldn’t afford to, but she doesn’t see the old Folk School as separate from Highlander now, which is celebrating 90 years of organizing with a homecoming later this month.

Enraged by race-mixing at the Highlander Folk School in the 1950s, Tennessee officials confiscated the property and auctioned it off in pieces in a vain attempt at stifling the civil rights movement.

On one side are preservationists who want to turn the Highlander Folk School library into a historic site.

“Approving the nomination of the Highlander Folk School Library in its current form will allow an elite, white-led institution to coopt and control the historical narrative of a site most significant for its work with Black, multiracial, poor and working-class communities,” states the letter, which also accuses trust members of having glorified the Confederacy.