A man with ties to white supremacist movements pleaded guilty Monday to firebombing the Highlander Research and Education Center in Tennessee, a landmark institution that trained civil rights pioneers including Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. Regan Prater also confessed to attempting to aid the militant group Hezbollah by compiling and offering to share personally identifiable information about individuals he claimed were affiliated with the Israeli government.
The arson at the New Market facility occurred in March 2019, destroying an office and causing more than $1.2 million in damage. The blaze incinerated irreplaceable historical documents, artifacts, and speeches spanning decades, including materials from the civil rights era. No one was injured in the early morning fire.
Prater's arrest came in April 2025, more than six years after the attack. Federal investigators linked him to the crime through social media posts and private messages in white supremacist group chats. In one exchange, when a witness asked if he had set the fire, the person using the screen name "Rooster" initially denied involvement but then described the exact method: a sparkler bomb and napalm. A white-power symbol identified as a "triple cross" was spray-painted near the fire site, the same symbol that appeared on a firearm used in the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings.
The original arson charge was dismissed Monday in favor of a more comprehensive criminal information filed in February that included the terrorism-related count. Under a plea agreement, the government indicated that a sentence of no more than 20 years would be appropriate. Sentencing is scheduled for September 9 in Knoxville.
Highlander holds singular importance in American civil rights history. Rosa Parks attended a workshop there in 1955 on school integration, six months before her refusal to move to the back of a bus in Montgomery sparked the bus boycott. She credited the center with strengthening her resolve to become an activist. Two years later, Parks returned with King to mark the school's 25th anniversary, when King delivered a keynote address on achieving freedom through nonviolence.
This is not Prater's first arson conviction. In June 2019, just three months after the Highlander fire, he set a blaze at an adult novelty store in east Tennessee. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years in federal prison, ordered to pay $106,000 in restitution. Investigators recovered a cellphone at that scene belonging to Prater, which contained a video showing someone inside the store igniting an accelerant.
Author James Rodriguez: "A white supremacist burning down the Highlander center and then trying to help Hezbollah shows how fragmented and ideologically incoherent these extremist networks have become, but the damage to irreplaceable civil rights history can never be undone."
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