Introduction

Myles Horton was born on July 5, 1905, in Savannah, Tennessee. His greatest accomplishment was the founding of the Highlander Folk School.

Youth

He changed his beliefs by going to a ministry theological school to become a minister. He was influenced to go to the school by a good friend named Reinhold Niehbor. In his senior year in high school, Horton began organizing interracial meetings at the YMCA. His searching took him to the University of Chicago and eventually to the folk school movement in Denmark before he was ready to return to Tennessee and start his own school.

He was involved in the civil rights movement by founding a school called the Highlander Folk School. Some of the people that attended the school or worked at the school were a part of the civil rights movement such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, former mayor of Atlanta Andrew Young, and Ms. Rosa Parks. Horton worked closely with labor unions, anti-poverty organizations and civil rights leaders.

Horton had courage by founding a school no matter what the odds were against him (racism and working with black people). The school's integrated classes and its theories brought it to the attention of law-enforcement officials. In the 1960s, the Highlander Folk School was ordered to close by the Tennessee courts. It was closed on the grounds that it violated its charter by "permitting integration in its school work." Also, they said it had operated for Mr. Horton's personal benefit and that it had sold beer in violation of the Tennessee law. In 1957, the Senate Internal Security subcommittee, investigated Highlander for reported Communist ties. Myles repeatedly denied that he was a Communist or that the school had links with the Communist party.

Horton is often credited with being one of the sparks that ignited the civil rights movement in the United States. At the school's fiftieth anniversary in 1982, hundreds of Americans from around the country came to new Market to pay tribute to Myles- an event celebrated in a feature documentary film "You Gotta Move." His searching took him to the University of Chicago and eventually to the folk school movement in Denmark before he was ready to return to Tennessee and start his own school.

"We believe that education leads to action."

"If you advocate just one action, you're an organizer."

Phaydra T. Sample