The Radical Civil Rights Movement: The Highlander Folk School and the Legacies of the Left in Cold War America.

This article focuses on the history and significance of the Highlander Folk School, an integrated educational institution in Tennessee, and its role in the civil rights movement amid Cold War-era anti-communist repression. It examines how a 1957 photograph of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Highlander was weaponized by segregationists to falsely label the school a "Communist training school," despite Highlander's democratic, grassroots approach to education and its commitment to racial integration, economic justice, and anti-colonial solidarity. The article traces Highlander's roots in the 1930s Southern United Front, its connections to the American Left, and its survival through state investigations and property confiscation, largely due to its ties with civil rights activists like Rosa Parks and King. Ultimately, Highlander is portrayed as a vital space where radical ideas and strategies of the American Left were preserved and reimagined, helping shape the civil rights movement's broader goals beyond Cold War constraints.