The Highlander Folk School: Incubator for Grassroots Democracy and Its Impacts on the Southern Civil Rights Movement

Author

• Kathleen McMichael Goodyear, Pittsburg State UniversityFollow

Date of Award

Spring 5-15-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

History

First Advisor

Dr. John L. S. Daley, [email protected]

Second Advisor

Dr. M. Kyle Thompson, [email protected]

Third Advisor

Dr. Kirstin Lawson, [email protected]

Fourth Advisor

Dr. Gary Wilson, [email protected]

Keywords

civil rights movement, grassroots organizing, participatory democracy, social change, racial integration, student activism

Abstract

Despite the Highlander Folk School’s having played multiple vital roles in the Southern civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, the general public remains unaware of Highlander, which is largely due to its having been omitted from most U.S. history survey course textbooks and ignored by most mainstream historians. These sources perpetuate the image propagated by the 1960s media that the movement was largely composed of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his fellow charismatic Black male ministers leading their flock of followers—but the movement was much more than that. Highlander’s rich history in nurturing Southern grassroots activism reveals the important impacts that everyday people—men and women, Blacks and Whites, youth and adults—have had and can make in their communities to effectuate social change. During the movement, Highlander (1) held desegregation workshops where Black and White adults together discussed the challenges of integrating their public schools, (2) hosted interracial youth programs, (3) developed a groundbreaking network of Citizenship Schools teaching adult literacy, voter education, and grassroots community leadership development, (4) supported the emerging interracial college student movement and its self-organization as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and (5) played multiple supportive roles in SNCC’s voter education and Freedom Summer projects in Mississippi. It did all this while being constantly persecuted for its interracial stance.

Comments

ORCID® Identifier http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2932-4135

Recommended Citation

Goodyear, Kathleen McMichael, "The Highlander Folk School: Incubator for Grassroots Democracy and Its Impacts on the Southern Civil Rights Movement" (2026). Electronic Theses & Dissertations. 835.
https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/etd/835