Racist symbol spray painted at Tennessee center once crucial in Civil Rights Movement

The Highlander Center once hosted Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks but is now burned down. But a white power symbol found there suggests an insidious element has been near

Dawn Onley

Apr 3, 2019

Booty Call Arson — A fire destroyed the main offices of the Highlander Education and Research Center in New Market, Tenn. on March 29. The center is a social justice center that trained the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders. (Sammy Solomon/New Market Fire and Rescue Team via AP)

A white power symbol was spray painted on the parking lot of an historic Tennessee social justice center that was destroyed in a fire last week.

Leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Ralph Abernathy and Peter Seeger, once trained and organized from the Highlander Research and Education Center, located about 30 miles from Knoxville. No one was injured in the fire, however historic documents, speeches and Civil Rights memorabilia were destroyed, the center posted on Facebook.

A representative from the center said in a press release the symbol was spotted after firefighters responded to the fire. It was located on a parking lot near the main office.

“While we don’t know the names of the culprits, we know that the white power movement has been increasing and consolidating power across the South, across this nation, and globally,” the center said in the release, according to NBC News. “Since 2016, the white power movement has become more visible, and we’ve seen that manifest in various ways, both subtle and overt.”

The center was instrumental as a place that once provided training and organizing efforts for civil rights activists. According to its website, Highlander Research and Education Center helped organizers train for and plan the Montgomery, Alabama boycott and it also served as a place where activists met and launched the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. It dates back to 1932, when Myles Horton started the Highlander Folk School.

On Tuesday, the center urged residents to remain vigilant and committed.

“Now is the time to be vigilant. To love each other and support each other and to keep each other safe in turbulent times,” the release read. “Now is not the time to dismiss how scary things are, which makes it even more important to have concrete assessments of concrete conditions, and sophisticated strategies to build a new world.”

In a press statement, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office said investigators were working with the state to determine the cause of the fire.

“We are investigating a symbol that was painted in the parking area of the office to see if it has any affiliation to any individual or group,” the sheriff’s office added, according to NBC News.

One thing seems certain: the incident didn’t happen in a vacuum. One day prior to the fire at Highlander, Oklahoma Democratic Party headquarters as well as a Chickasaw Nation office both reported that vandals had spray-painted racist graffiti at their sites. The offensive symbols included a swastika, the year “1488″ — which white supremacists often use to invoke Adolf Hitler — and also anti-Chinese slurs.

Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt called the vandalism “abhorrent,” and other legislators, including U.S. Reps. Tom Cole and Markwayne Mullin, lambasted the racists who left the symbols.

“There is no place in our communities for such despicable symbols and language so clearly meant to threaten other human beings and those with differing points of view,” Cole said, according to NBC News.