The library on the former grounds of the Highlander Folk Center, in which Rev. Martin Luther King once lectured, is one of few buildings remaining on the Grundy County site closed by the state in 1961. (John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)
This story originally appeared on Tennessee Lookout .
This much is not in dispute: In 1961, the state of Tennessee took 200 acres of land from Highlander Folk School on Monteagle Mountain in Grundy County. Took, as in confiscated on bogus charges of alcohol sales without a license.
But the real reason for the confiscation stemmed from fears of civil rights and union activism after two decades of training now-icons such as Rosa Parks and Diane Nash at Highlander.
This much is also not in dispute: Five plots of that now subdivided land are owned by a nonprofit called the Tennessee Preservation Trust (TPT). The sale of those plots to Todd Mayo, the for-profit owner of The Caverns, a rural concert venue, is pending. And the current Highlander administration, which had its offer to buy the land rejected, is furious.