He began to help lead a grassroots adult educational program at the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee, in 1976, and was director from 1993 until 1996. He received a MacArthur Award in 1981 for his work with the Highlander Center. His first publication, Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley, broke new theoretical and empirical ground in the study of social power, winning the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Book Award of the American Political Science Association, the V.O Key Book Award of the Southern Political Science Association, the Lillian Smith Book Award of the Southern Regiona Council, and the W.D Weatherford Book Award, and earned co-runnerup in the first annual Robert F. Kennedy Book Award competition.
