Across the United States, public squares have once again become classrooms. Protesters march for racial justice, climate action, women’s rights, and the defense of democracy itself. Chants, handmade signs, and mass gatherings turn sidewalks and streets into forums of civic learning. For some, these scenes feel like sudden eruptions of anger in turbulent times. In truth, they are part of a long American tradition: democracy as a lived, collective act.
Few figures shaped that tradition more than Myles Horton, an educator from Tennessee who rarely appeared in headlines but whose influence ran through the labor movement, the Civil Rights Movement, and today’s grassroots organizing. Horton believed democracy could not be taught through textbooks alone. It had to be practiced in community—through dialogue, struggle, and shared problem-solving.
Through the Highlander Folk School, which he co-founded in 1932, Horton created a workshop for democracy. Farmers, miners, teachers, and seamstresses discovered their own power and learned to use it against injustice. Highlander’s approach was simple but radical: ask people what they know from their own lives, what they want to change, and how they might act together. This method turned ordinary people into organizers and ordinary gatherings into movements.
At a time when democracy is under strain, Horton’s “pedagogy of protest” feels as urgent as ever. He reminds us that protest is not a disruption of democracy—it is democracy.
From Tennessee to Denmark: Seeds of an Idea
Born in 1905 in rural Tennessee, Horton grew up surrounded by poverty but also by a culture of mutual support. Odd jobs in sawmills and among immigrant workers exposed him early to injustice and solidarity alike. After college and a brief stint at Union Theological Seminary, Horton traveled to Denmark in the late 1920s, where he encountered the folk school movement—community-based learning centers that empowered rural peasants to participate in civic life.
The Danish model struck him as revolutionary. If farmers in Denmark could transform their society through participatory education, why not workers and sharecroppers in the American South? Horton returned home convinced the U.S. needed its own folk schools—not focused on degrees or curricula, but on dialogue, culture, and collective problem-solving.
Founding Highlander Folk School
In 1932, at the height of the Great Depression, Horton and allies established the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee. From the beginning, it was unlike any other school. There were no grades, no diplomas, and no lectures from experts. Instead, workers and farmers sat in circles, posed their problems, and learned from each other.
Horton’s method was deceptively simple. A coal miner might describe unsafe conditions. Others would add their experiences. Together, they would analyze what had worked, what had failed, and what might be tried next. Horton facilitated but never dictated. Knowledge emerged from the group itself.
This process—what later thinkers like Paulo Freire called dialogical education—treated ordinary people as the experts of their own lives. Highlander became a hub for labor organizing in the 1930s and 1940s, helping textile workers, miners, and sharecroppers build unions and demand fair treatment.
To business leaders and segregationists, Highlander was dangerous. It empowered people long denied power. State surveillance and accusations of communism followed, but Horton pressed on. As he often joked, the school’s enemies gave it more publicity than its friends ever could.
Highlander and the Civil Rights Movement
By the 1950s, Highlander shifted focus from labor to racial justice. Horton understood that economic democracy in the South was impossible without confronting segregation. Highlander became one of the rare spaces where Black and white people could meet as equals.
One of its most transformative initiatives was the Citizenship Schools, developed by educator Septima Clark with Horton’s support. These schools taught African Americans not just literacy but also how to pass discriminatory voter registration tests and claim their rights. The model spread across the South, equipping thousands of new voters and leaders.
Highlander also touched history at key moments. In 1955, just months before her quiet act of defiance in Montgomery, Rosa Parks attended a Highlander workshop. Parks later credited the experience with strengthening her resolve to resist injustice. Leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis also trained at Highlander, using its space to strategize and build solidarity.
Segregationists struck back. In 1961, Tennessee authorities raided Highlander and revoked its charter, branding it a “Communist training ground.” Horton was unfazed. He simply reopened under a new name—the Highlander Research and Education Center—and continued the work.
The Pedagogy of Protest
What set Horton apart was his refusal to claim the role of leader or savior. His philosophy was grounded in collective learning—the idea that knowledge and power emerge when people reflect together on their own experiences.
Horton explained it simply: “The people who come here have to educate each other.” His role was not to provide answers but to create conditions where participants could discover them for themselves. This was protest as education, education as protest.
The method had three hallmarks:
- Start with lived experience – People’s own struggles became the curriculum.
- Dialogue, not lectures – Circles replaced rows; questions replaced answers.
- Collective action – Learning was measured not by tests but by what people did together afterward.
This pedagogy shaped labor strikes, fueled civil rights campaigns, and continues to echo in today’s movements.
Highlander Today
Highlander survives today in New Market, Tennessee, still carrying Horton’s vision forward. Renamed the Highlander Research and Education Center, it partners with movements across the South and beyond—supporting immigrant-led organizations, Black Lives Matter chapters, climate justice campaigns, and rural economic justice groups.
Its methods remain familiar: storytelling, dialogue, and cultural work. Music, art, and collective reflection are woven into workshops, just as freedom songs once were. In 2019, when white supremacists targeted Highlander with arson and graffiti, the center responded not with retreat but with renewed commitment.
Highlander today is not a museum of past struggles. It is a living workshop for democracy, still proving Horton’s belief that ordinary people can do extraordinary things when given space to learn and act together.
Conclusion
Myles Horton taught that democracy is not memorized in classrooms but practiced in the unpredictable work of people organizing together. Highlander’s legacy shows that farmers, miners, teachers, and seamstresses could transform themselves into leaders—and in doing so, transform society.
The lesson is clear: protest is not the breakdown of democracy but its renewal. Each march, sit-in, or rally is a form of civic education, teaching participants that they are not alone and that their voices matter.
As authoritarianism threatens and divisions deepen, Horton’s vision challenges us to rethink civic education itself. It is not about memorizing amendments or the mechanics of government. It is about recognizing injustice, asking hard questions, building solidarity, and taking collective action.
“We make the road by walking,” Horton often said. That road—messy, uncertain, but deeply democratic—is still being made in the streets, community centers, and kitchens where ordinary people gather to dream and act. In those spaces, Horton’s spirit endures, and so does the possibility of democracy renewed.
Progressive Teachers Network 
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