by Leslie Lytle, Messenger Staff Writer

“I’ll look forward for sure to meeting with them after the close. There’s plenty of common ground to be found,” said Todd Mayo in late August in response to a Messenger story recounting the Highlander Research and Education Center’s concerns about Mayo’s purchase of the historic Highlander Folk School site in Monteagle, the Center’s birthplace [see Messenger August 22, 2024]. Highlander Folk School’s labor and civil rights work transformed the future of America. Caverns owner Mayo dismissed rumors he planned to turn the site into a music venue. But controversy shrouded the sale. The Center, too, had bid on the property, and the property owner, the Tennessee Preservation Trust, rejected the Center’s higher bid, tapping Mayo as the future owner. The Center worried the institution would be excluded from plans for the historic site’s future, as had been the case in the past.

In a dramatic about face, a press release on the eve of the Winter Solstice announced a land trust established by Mayo would sell the property to the Center. “The story is one of justice on multiple levels,” Mayo observed. “There’s justice in the land being returned to the organization it was confiscated from, and there’s justice in acknowledging the great work that historic preservationist David Currey and the TPT did in protecting, preserving, and saving it.”

In 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression and economic collapse, Myles Horton, Don West, and Jim Dombrowski established the Highlander Folk School. Their vision for social justice included adult workshops for the region’s miners, timber workers, and other exploited laborers to help them overcome their lack of education and to organize against low wages and poor living conditions. In the 1950s Highlander took up the cause of civil rights. Citizenship Schools throughout the southeast taught literacy skills needed to vote, while in Monteagle up and coming civil rights leaders learned strategies for non-violent civil disobedience. Rosa Parks spent two weeks at Highlander before refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus.

A photo of Martin Luther King, Jr. at a workshop led to Highlander being targeted as a communist training school. In 1961 the state revoked the school’s charter and confiscated the property. The next day, Highlander renamed itself Highlander Research and Education Center and reopened at a new location in Knoxville. Repeated racial harassment throughout the 1960s prompted the Center to relocate to its current headquarters in New Market in 1971.

Fast forward to 2014. The main remaining structure, the library building, was listed for sale and threatened with demolition. Currey purchased the property through a nonprofit he established, the Tennessee Preservation Trust. Under Currey’s guidance, TPT led a 10-year restoration project, returning the library to its original historic condition.

Initially Currey and the Center shared in strategizing and planning. Then communication broke down. Although ultimately successful, TPT’s application to have the site listed on the National Register of Historic Places met with controversy. The Center opposed the nomination objecting TPT had not involved the Center in planning, fundraising and programming for the historic venue. “Highlander’s continued legacy over 90 years is not the Tennessee Preservation Trust’s story to tell without Highlander’s consent,” said then Co-executive Director Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson.

When TPT rejected the Center’s 2024 bid to purchase the property, the Center clung to hope the new owner Todd Mayo might let them play a role in crafting historic Highlander’s future.

The Center’s dream wish list: “a museum that tells the real story of the movements that grew out of and were connected to the school,” said Evelyn Lynn, Highlander Center Special Projects Organizer. “These are stories about how regular folks have brilliance and come up with solutions that can change the course of history.” The participatory design model the Center envisioned included traditional folk-school programing to bring people together to learn and share skills, everything from crafts, to car repair, to music.

“How do we get Todd to talk to us,” Lynn asked.

With legalities surrounding the sale still pending, Mayo was receptive, but reluctant. “It’s awkward,” he said. “There’s no reason to meet about it, until there’s a reason to meet.”

“I 100 percent believe the New Market folks should have a voice,” Mayo said, but he expressed concern the institution would settle for nothing less than 100 percent ownership. Lynn protested that was not the Center’s goal.

Ultimately, the Center and Mayo did talk. In August, Mayo had proposed hiring a mediator to resolve differences between Currey and the Center. Negotiations went on for several months with no mediator needed. It is not a stretch to call the outcome a better than hoped for “win-win.”

“Highlander is forever grateful for the efforts of David Currey, Tennessee Preservation Trust and Monteagle mountain resident, Todd Mayo, for their efforts to acquire, restore, protect, and preserve the property,” said Rev. Allyn Maxfield-Steele, Highlander’s Co-Executive Director.

“Many people told us that this site had been lost forever,” said historic preservationist Currey. “We refused to accept that answer. The Tennessee Preservation Trust made a tremendous effort to bring the original Highlander campus back to life so that everyone could learn about and experience this part of our historic past.”

The Center will carry forward that commitment, a commitment to remaking the world better, a vision crystallized in a statement from their website: “The Highlander Research and Education Center is a catalyst for grassroots organizing and movement building in Appalachia and the South ... Since 1932, Highlander has centered the experiences of directly-impacted people in our region, knowing that together, we have the solutions to address the challenges we face in our communities and to build more just, equitable, and sustainable systems and structures.”