Highlander: A Weekend on the HIll

southeast us | rights and freedoms | news report Monday September 03, 2007 19:29 by Clare Hanrahan mariahsage at gmail dot com

Report from the 75th anniversary celebration of Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee.

Music, song and words of challenge and hope echo in my mind from a weekend “on the hill” at the Highlander Research and Education Center's 75th anniversary celebration. Harry Belafonte’s song,Turn the World Around, united a van load of folks as we rode through the dusk into the apricot-hued sun along the two-lane highway from New Market to Knoxville for the opening reception.

We were in good company for singing. Some in the van were with the Vukani Mawethu choir, who carry forward the freedom songs of South Africa and the gospel, spirituals, labor and civil rights songs so vital to freedom movements. Others were part of the Labor Heritage/Rockin' Solidarity Chorus. It was just a taste of the power of the weekend ahead. Not until later did I realize that our shuttle driver was artist and musician Maurice Turner, the Chairman of the Board at Highlander.

By the time we arrived at the historic Laurel Theatre located in the 1898 Fort Pillow Presbyterian church, we were primed for a joyous time. Inside, the caller was explaining the steps to the Virginia Reel while the fiddlers, with bows poised, waited to strike up the music. Before the night was over, the wine casks were empty and we all had been energized by the intergenerational, multi-cultural music and dance that was especially vibrant when the Seeds of Fire youth organizing and leadership program participants took to the floor.

Back on the hill at the 106-acre farm in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, we settled into our sleeping tents as people arrived all through the night. By Saturday there were folks from every continent, thirty-five states and ten countries. As many as 1,000 crowded into open-sided tents on metal folding chairs for cultural sharing, workshops and conversations.

Paula Nelson began the open Plenary with a Cherokee prayer and blessing, in a spirit of remembering whose land we inhabit and on whose shoulders we stand as "heirs to a fighting tradition."

So many notable people were gathered on the hill, freedom fighters all, from labor, civil rights, native American struggles, Environmental justice, Katrina survivors, Immigrant rights workers, LBGTW organizers, cultural workers, farm workers, educators, film makers, story tellers and song writers. We talked about our work, our struggles, our victories and our challenges and about how to maintain courage and bravery for the long haul.

Hollis Watkins, a veteran of the civil rights movement and a founder of Southern Echo, sang with a strength rooted in his 40+ years as a freedom fighter. "I am a Southerner," he began, "a squirrel-eatin' cow herding Southerner." He credited his training in the new citizenship schools in the early days of Highlander for his successful work in movements from the Mississippi Freedom Summer to Clergy and Laity Concerned about Iraq.

Speaking on the importance of intergenerational organizing, Watkins said "The young people have come and are ready to move this organization, if old people are not ready to do what needs to be done, then respectfully move around them. The struggle is much bigger than we are."

At a plenary session with six former Highlander directors, all elders in many movements, these words of encouragement were shared: Be strong, be brave, have fun, dream and don't be afraid to take risks, and remember: an injury to one is an injury to all as we struggle together to change the world.

"This felt like a place that lifted the soul," Asheville resident Frank Adams told the gathering as he recounted the story of how he and wife Margaret found the land where Highlander Center is now located. "That's my birthin' rights to Highlander," he said. When Frank and his family arrived on the hill for the weekend, he told me it took an hour and they only made it a few feet, they were greeting so many old friends.

Old friends, new friends, songs and stories passed from generation to generation. Highlander is one of those all too few places where we can come together, learn together, meet and make change together.

On Sunday afternoon, As Guy and Candie Carawan and others were acknowledged for their long years of dedicated work at Highlander, there came, over the hill and through the cow pastures a marvelous sound and an uplifting sight. It was the New Orleans Hot 8 Brass band with a rendition of We Shall Overcome like none I've ever heard. The tent was rocking, everybody dancin' and singing, and the hills of Tennessee once again echoed the voices of freedom.