Myles Horton

Life & Legacy

Myles Falls Horton (July 9, 1905 – January 19, 1990) was an American educator and political activist. In 1932 he co-founded the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee as a center for adult learning. Over the decades, the school was involved in struggles for labor rights, civil rights, and environmental protection. Highlander's students and teachers included prominent Civil Rights Movement leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks (who studied with Horton shortly before her 1955 decision to keep her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama), Fannie Lou Hamer, Andrew Young, Stokely Carmichael, Septima Clark, John Lewis, James Bevel, Bernard Lafayette, and others who would create the Nashville Student Movement.