Abstract: Records of the Highlander Research and Education Center, 1917-2017, an adult education center and its predecessor, the Highlander Folk School, documenting its programs and workshops including labor, civil rights, and Appalachian poverty, and the harassment of Highlander by government agencies. Highlander continues to evolve taking on new causes including: environmentalism, globalization, LGBTQ issues and grassroots leadership in under-resourced communities. Files include: correspondence; minutes; annual reports; financial records; workshop materials; legal papers; play scripts and song books; clippings; speeches, writings and publications; tape recordings of meetings, interviews, addresses and speeches, workshops, etc.; and photographs of meetings, workshops and the grounds.

Abstract: Papers, mainly 1921-1990, of Myles Horton, the founder-director of the Highlander Folk School (later known as the Highlander Research and Education Center) in Monteagle, Tennessee, largely documenting his career before and after his association with the school. Included are personal and family materials including extensive oral histories about Highlander, labor history, civil rights, and other topics; speeches and writings (some available in recorded form); a copy of The Long Haul, his autobiography; correspondence with May Justus, Rosa Parks, and other Highlander staff and students; information pertaining to travel to Nicaragua and other countries in pursuit of his interest in adult education; diaries relating to his education at Cumberland University, Lebanon, Tennessee; genealogical information about the Horton Family; and papers of his first wife, Zilphia Mae Horton, a singer and noted collector of folk music. Extensive subject files compiled to supplement his travel, writings, and public speaking contain references to Paulo Freire, Nikolai Grundtvig, Huey Long, and others. Among the early career materials are surveys of churches in McHenry County, Illinois and a folder of restricted reports on mental patients admitted to the Worcester State Hospital in Massachusetts. A scrapbook documenting the efforts of Lilian Wyckoff Johnson, the original owner of the Highlander property, about her efforts to establish a college for women contains correspondence from John Dewey, Frederick Jackson Turner, and Woodrow Wilson.