On May 9th, over three dozen members, leaders, and supporters of the Virginia Immigrant People’s Coalition rallied at the construction site for the new Federal Courthouse in Richmond, VA, to protest a recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid at the site that resulted in the arrest of 33 workers suspected of being undocumented immigrants.

The rally helped draw attention to the impact of ICE raids on immigrant families and communities. It was covered by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, as well as other local media. You can read the Times-Dispatch article here.

The Virginia Immigrant People’s Coalition is one of the groups participating THREADS, Highlander’s new leadership and organizing school. THREADS is bringing together organizations from immigrant, African American, Native American, and low-income and working class white communities in an 18-month training program designed to strengthen their organizing and leadership skills and their ability to connect people and issues across difficult divides to build a broad-based movement. You can read more about THREADS here

Members of the Coaltion also participated in Highlander’s March 2008 interpreter training session. Information about our Multilingual Capacity Building Program, which organized and facilitated the session, is available here.

On June 6, Democracy Now host Amy Goodman interviewed Adrienne Maree Brown of the Ruckus Society about media justice, election protection, and the issue of race in the 2008 election. The interview coincided with the opening of the National Conference for Media Reform, held in Minneapolis on June 6-8.

During the conversation Ms. Brown mentioned that the term “media justice” was coined at a meeting at Highlander that had a profound effect on the media reform movement.

ADRIENNE MAREE BROWN: The term was coined five years ago at the Highlander Center in Tennessee.

AMY GOODMAN: Where Rosa Parks trained before she sat down on the bus?

ADRIENNE MAREE BROWN: Where Rosa Parks trained, where Martin Luther King was. I mean, there’s so many great legends that were trained there. And, you know, sitting up on that hill, you know, sitting around in the little rocking chairs, that term was developed. And it was really the idea of not just media reform, not just changing exactly what it is, but really striving towards justice for communities through media.

The meeting that Adrienne Brown refers to here is the Media Justice Gathering that Highlander hosted in August 2002, which brought together media advocates, activists, and organizers from across the country to analyze the political and technological landscape and develop new organizing strategies for the media reform movement. A report from the gathering is available here.

You can listen to Amy Goodman’s interview with Adrienne Maree Brown and read the transcript of their conversation here.

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The Southern Energy Network’s blog entry about the National Conference for Media Reform also mentions that the framework for media justice was “first developed” at Highlander. You can read the blog entry here.

On the Road to Freedom: A Guided Tour of the Civil Rights Trail
by Charles E. Cobb Jr. Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill. $18.95

SNCC veteran Charley Cobb has written a comprehensive guide to travel in the South if you wish to learn about how people have challenged and changed racial discrimination beginning long before the 1960s. Highlander is prominent in the story — both in its Tennessee location and in South Carolina where the Citizenship School program began. Well written and loaded with individual stories and historic photographs, this book is a real treasure.

Sing for Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs
by Guy and Candie Carawan. NewSouth Books, Montgomery and Louisville. $21.95

This is a new edition of a historic collection of freedom songs that has been out of print for a number of years. Sing for Freedom contains sheet music for over one hundred freedom songs — including “We Shall Overcome” and “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize” — but this volume is more than just a song book. It contains numerous firsthand reports from participants in the freedom rides, protests, and sit-ins, many of them young students, as well as photographs of movement events. Longtime staff members Guy and Candie Carawan collected many of the songs at Highlander cultural workshops between 1960 and 1965.

Sing for Freedom is available through the Highlander bookstore.

To make an online gift to Highlander in memory of Lewis Sinclair, click here.

Highlander’s staff and Board celebrate the life and mourn the passing of Lewis Sinclair, a tireless advocate for social justice and human rights whose work with Highlander spanned more than 50 years.

In 1956, Lewis, his wife, and son stopped at the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee, on their way to visit family in Mississippi. His son was so impressed by Highlander that he joined an integrated youth camp that was underway at the time and stayed for two weeks. By 1959, Lewis himself had joined the Board and become actively involved in the work of the school.

Lewis Sinclair (left) at Highlander’s Knoxville facility; 1960s.

In 1961, Lewis provided critical assistance to Highlander when it was forced to move to Knoxville after its charter was revoked and its land and buildings were confiscated by the state of Tennessee because of its work with the Civil Rights Movement. As vice-chair of the Knoxville Area Human Relations Council, he was one of the few prominent residents to support Highlander, and he was forced to leave the Council as a result. He also joined the Board of the reconstituted Highlander Research and Education Center, where he continued to serve – most recently as an emeritus Board member – until his passing on June 8th.

As a member of the Board, Lewis was involved in all aspects of the Highlander’s work, including its work with the Civil Rights Movement, the environmental justice movement, and, more recently, the immigrant rights movement. He also traveled to Mexico, China, and Nicaragua with Highlander’s founder Myles Horton and other members of the Highlander Board and staff, helping to forge connections between Highlander and popular educators and activists around the world

Lewis and Mary Sinclair at Highlander’s 75th anniversary; 2007.

Born in 1914, Lewis was the first African American man to receive a graduate degree from the University of Tennessee, and he worked for many years as an economist for the Tennessee Valley Authority. In addition to his work with Highlander, he served on the boards of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Center for Human Rights, where he helped protect the rights of poor defendants in death-penalty cases.

Lewis’s long commitment to Highlander, through good times and bad, made him a unique and valuable member of the Board. He was good at raising questions about Highlander’s work and at challenging decisions he thought might take the organization in the wrong direction. He also inspired countless Highlander Board and staff members with his optimism, his sense of humor, his love of music and dancing, his deep commitment to justice, and his determination to see things change.

Along with many others, we will miss Lewis Sinclair. Our thoughts are with his wife Mary, his son James, and the other members of his family during this difficult time.

Please leave your thoughts and memories of Lewis by commenting on this post. Click here to comment.

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July 17, 2008 – Gifts in memory of Lewis may be sent to the following:

• Southern Center for Human Rights – 83 Poplar Street, NW, Atlanta, GA 30303
• Open Door Community – 910 Ponce de Leon Ave., NE, Atlanta, GA 30306
• Highlander Center – 1959 Highlander Way, New Market, TN 37820

To make an online gift to Highlander in memory of Lewis, click here.

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Audio Clips

Excerpts from a 2007 interview with Lewis Sinclair by Highlander staff member Susan Williams. (The files may take a few seconds to begin playing. If the audio is not working, contact hrec (at) highlandercenter.org.)

• Introduction
  

• First Visit to Highlander
  

• First Impressions; Grundy County; Septima Clark
  

• Septima Clark & Rosa Parks
  

• Highlander’s Leadership Training
  

• Why Highlander Has Lasted