Library Collections of Highlander Material
Tennessee State Library and Archives
403 Seventh Avenue North
Nashville, TN 37243-0312
(615) 741-2764
A portion of the earlier Highlander material is housed in the Tennessee State Library and Archives in Nashville. To view the online list of the Archives’ holdings, go to http://www.tennessee.gov/tsla/history/manuscripts/index.htm and click on “Guide to Manuscript Materials.”
The Archives’ “Manuscript Collection” includes Highlander material from 1932 to 1969 ((Mf#990) as well as a “Highlander Folk School Audio Collection.” The “Microform Collection” includes the Highlander FBI Files (Mf#1407). For information about how to access this material, please contact the Archives at the address and phone number above.
Wisconsin Historical Society
816 State St.
Madison, WI 53706
(608) 264-6400
The majority of the Highlander archives from 1917 through 1987 — as well as the papers of Myles Horton, Frank Adams, Septima Clark, and others associated with Highlander — are housed at the Wisconsin Historical Society. Microfilm of these archives is available through interlibrary loan. The Society will also make paper copies, charging only for copying and shipping.
The titles of specific archive collections may be searched through the Society’s online catalog, ArCat. To use ArCat, go to http://arcat.library.wisc.edu/, click on “Guided Search,” enter “Highlander” into the first “Search For” box, and then click the “Search” button. The program will then display a list of all the archives that contain references to Highlander, including the Highlander archives themselves.
A portion of the Society’s collection of Highlander photographs is available online. Click here to view these photographs.
W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection
Carol G. Belk Library
Appalachian State University
Boone, NC 28608
(828) 262-4041
(828) 262-2553
The W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection houses an extensive collection of material on Appalachia, including the papers of Helen Lewis, a long-time Highlander associate, and the records of the Appalachian land ownership study that Highlander helped to coordinate in the late 1970s. Appalachian State also has a useful list of other Appalachian Studies links.
Web Sites and Online Articles about Highlander
Guy & Candie Carawan: A Personal Story Through Sight and Sound – personal reminiscences of cultural and political work from the 1960s to the present in the Sea Islands of South Carolina, the Civil Rights movement, and Appalachia by two long-time associates of Highlander.
Education for Citizenship: A Foundation’s Experience by Carl Tjerandsen. A history of the Emil Schwarzhaupt Foundation, which provided critical support to Highlander and other social justice efforts during the 1950s and 1960s. Chapter 4, “Learning to Secure and Use Civic Rights: Through Changing the Individual,” discusses the Highlander.
“Employing Music in the Cause of Social Justice: Ruth Crawford Seeger and Zilphia Horton” – by Julia Schmidt-Pirro and Karen M. McCurdy. Excerpted from a longer article published in Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore (Volume 31, Spring-Summer 2005), the membership magazine of the New York Folklore Society.
Myles Horton: The Radical Hillbilly – By UAW Region 8 Webmaster John Davis – UAW Region 8 Activist Hall of Fame
Civil Rights Movement Veterans – A website devoted to the Southern Freedom Movement that tells the story of the movement by those who actually lived it. The site emphasizes the central role played by ordinary people transforming their lives and their society through extraordinary courage.
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights – The nation’s premier civil rights coalition, LCCR has coordinated the national legislative campaign on behalf of every major civil rights law since 1957.
Southern Regional Council (SRC) – working to promote racial justice, protect democratic rights and broaden civic participation in the Southern United States.
Voices of Civil Rights – personal accounts of America’s struggle to fulfill the promise of equality for all; collected and preserved by AARP and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. The site includes oral histories of participants in the Civil Rights Movement, a civil rights timeline, and information about civil rights struggles today.
Alternate ROOTS – an organization committed to “the intersection of Arts and Activism,” Alternate ROOTS supports the creation and presentation of original art rooted in particular communities of place, tradition, or spirit; and encourages culture workers to be allies in the elimination of all forms of oppression.
Appalshop – a media arts and cultural center that produces and presents work celebrating the culture and voices the concerns of people living in the Appalachian Mountains.
Bread and Roses Cultural Project – the cultural arm of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Local 1199. Their 220,000 predominantly Latina and African American women members are employed in all job categories in health care institutions throughout the New York metropolitan area, New Jersey and Florida. Check out their Social Justice Calendar.
Guy & Candie Carawan: A Personal Story Through Sight and Sound – personal reminiscences of cultural and political work from the 1960s to the present in the Sea Islands of South Carolina, the Civil Rights movement, and Appalachia by two long-time associates of Highlander.
The Labor Heritage Foundation – works to strengthen the labor movement through the use of music and the arts. Their site contains a catalogue of labor music, books, art, and video; a directory of labor artists and musicians, chants for a lively picket line; and much more.
Regional
Democracy North Carolina – a non-partisan organization ensuring equal access and full participation of all voters in the electoral process.
Early Childhood Equity Alliance – ECEA nurtures and connects people engaged in racial and social justice education and action with and for young children, families, and communities. Their Web site, Roots for Change (www.rootsforchange.net), contains information about their programs and a link to their online journal.
Grassroots Leadership – a statewide community organizing effort that works with established and emerging community-organizing groups to provide them technical assistance and training, and the support they need to coalesce around issues in their own communities.
Greater Birmingham Ministries (GBM) – an ecumenical and interfaith organization in Birmingham, Alabama, with a thirty-year history of direct services and community organizing that carries out a faith-based response to poverty by meeting people’s emergency needs while also pursuing social and economic justice for all people.
Jobs with Justice of East Tennessee – a coalition of faith-based and community-based organizations, labor unions, and individuals committed to social and economic justice for working people and their families in East Tennessee. The site includes information about the organizing effort among low-wage Latino workers at the Koch Foods poultry processing plant in Morristown, TN.
National
Center for Community Change – provides backup support and resources to help low income people, especially people of color, build powerful, effective organizations through which they can change their communities and public policies for the better
Jobs with Justice – a national campaign for workers’ rights.
Poor People’s Economic and Human Rights Campaign – The Poor People’s Economic and Human Rights Campaign is building a movement that unites the poor across color lines to abolish poverty everywhere and forever. PPEHRC works to accomplish this aim through the promotion of economic human rights, based on articles 23, 25, and 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantee all people the right to housing, health care, a living wage job, and education.
United States Solidarity Economy Network
United for a Fair Economy (UFE) – a “movement support” organization that provides media capacity, face-to-face economic literacy education, and training resources to organizations and individuals working to address the widening income and asset gap in our country.
Alliance for Appalachia
Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center – a center for the experiential learning of Earth Literacy based on the cornerstones of spirituality, sustainability, and community, the Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center offers meeting and retreat facilities and sponsors a variety of ecological programs.
Save Our Cumberland Mountains – a non-profit Tennessee grassroots citizen’s organization working for environmental, social, and economic justice, in areas such as forestry, strip mining, toxic waste, tax reform, dismantling racism, and other issues on a local level.
Foundations/Funds
Appalachian Community Fund (ACF) – a regionally based and community-controlled grant-making organization supporting groups working on economic, environmental, social and racial justice issues servicing groups in eastern Kentucky, southwest Virginia, east Tennessee and all of West Virginia.
Community Shares of Tennessee – dedicated to supporting social change organizations in Tennessee in order to promote a more just and caring community.
Immigrant and Farmworker Rights
Coalition for Human Rights/Coalición de Derechos Humanos
Coalition of Immokalee Workers – an organization of Latino, Haitian, and Mayan-Indian farmworkers in Florida, fighting for respect, fair wages, better and cheaper housing, stronger laws and stronger enforcement against those who would violate workers’ rights, and an end to indentured servitude in the fields. CIW sponsors the Taco Bell Boycott.
Fair Immigration Reform Movement (a project of the Center for Community Change)
National Community for Latino Leadership (NCLL) – working to promote the social, cultural, and economic advancement of the United States and its Latino communities through action research and the sharing of knowledge about Latino leadership.
National Immigration Law Center
National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights
New American Opportunity Campaign
Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition – state-wide, immigrant and refugee-led collaboration whose mission is to empower immigrants and refugees throughout Tennessee to develop a unified voice, defend their rights, and create an atmosphere in which immigrants and refugees are viewed as positive contributors to the state.
Instituto Mexicano para el Desarrollo (IMDEC) – a leading popular education center in Mexico.
TransAfrica Forum – a research, educational, and organizing institution for the African-American community offering constructive analyses of issues concerning U.S. policy as it affects Africa and the Diaspora in the Caribbean and Latin America and sponsoring seminars, conferences, community awareness projects and training programs.
U.S. Social Forum – “Another World is Possible * Another U.S. Is Necessary” – includes information about upcoming events and the 2007 U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta.
Bread and Roses Cultural Project – the cultural arm of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Local 1199. Their 220,000 predominantly Latina and African American women members are employed in all job categories in health care institutions throughout the New York metropolitan area, New Jersey and Florida. Check out their Social Justice Calendar.
George Meany Center for Labor Studies – National Labor College
The Labor Heritage Foundation – works to strengthen the labor movement through the use of music and the arts. Their site contains a catalogue of labor music, books, art, and video; a directory of labor artists and musicians, chants for a lively picket line; and much more.
United Association for Labor Education
Independent Media Center – “a network of collectively run media outlets for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of the truth.”
Institute for Southern Studies – a resource for grassroots activists, community leaders, scholars, policy makers and all individuals and organizations working to bring lasting social and economic change to the region.
War Times, a bilingual (English/Spanish) bimonthly newspaper “dedicated to telling the truth about the ‘war on terrorism.'” Recent issues have covered the UN, attacks on immigrants, the peace movement, and more.
FreePress – a national organization working for media reform.
Radio for People – a national coalition for promoting and supporting grassroots independent media. Radio for People includes independent groups, lawyers, radio engineers, radio stations, free media advocates, professional associations, social justice activists, and many other concerned folks who have joined together in anticipation of the upcoming FCC noncommercial license application window, to encourage the creation of more independent community radio stations.
Save the Internet – a broad national coalition fighting to preserve Internet neutrality.
Midwest Academy – The Midwest Academy offers onsite training and consulting as well as five day training sessions for leaders and staff of citizen and community groups. The Academy is one of the nation’s oldest and best known schools for community organizations, citizen organizations and individuals committed to progressive social change.
Southern Echo – Southern Echo is a leadership development, education and training organization working to develop grassroots leadership across Mississippi and the Southern region.
GlobalLocalPopEd.org – An online clearinghouse of popular education resources for grassroots organizations looking to integrate a global perspective into local work. The site contains profiles, downloadable tools, games, and curriculum, and other resources such as a bibliography, listings of popular education artists, and links that were contributed to the project by community-based organizations that have successfully incorporated the global into their local work.
Instituto Mexicano para el Desarrollo (IMDEC) – a leading popular education center in Mexico.
Institute for People’s Education and Action (IPEA) – a grass-roots association of North American folk schools, popular education centers, community and academic institutions, resource organizations, and individuals.
Jefferson Center for Education and Research – a popular education center that creates opportunities with rural working people in the Pacific West, across languages and cultures, to achieve environmental, economic, and social justice.
Project South – a community-based membership institute that develops and conducts popular political and economic education and action research for organizing and liberation.
Popular Education News – A website with popular education/community organizing resources for facilitators and practitioners:
Community Justice Network for Youth – The Community Justice Network for Youth (CJNY) is a program of the W. Haywood Burns Institute. This program is comprised of community based programs, grassroots organizations, service providing agencies, residential facilities and advocacy groups that focus their work on youth of color. The CJNY’s primary function is to be a support network for organizers and practitioners who are on the ground working with youth who are at risk or already involved in the juvenile or criminal justice systems.
Funders’ Collaborative on Youth Organizing – A collective of local, regional, and national foundations and youth organizing practitioners dedicated to advancing youth organizing as a strategy for youth development and social change. Check out their report on youth organizing in the South: A New Generation of Southerners: Youth Organizing in the South, by Charles Price and Kim Diehl.
School of Unity and Liberation (SOUL) – SOUL is working to lay the groundwork for a powerful liberation movement by supporting the development of a new generation of young organizers – especially young women, young people of color, queer youth and working-class young people. It offers political education and organizing skills training programs designed specifically to meet the particular needs of emerging movement leaders.
1959 Highlander Way
New Market, TN 37820
(865) 933-3443
hrec@highlandercenter.org