Highlander Research and Education Center, a Tennessee institution known for training civil rights organizers, has been the focus of a decades-in-the-making federal case after an arson fire in 2019 destroyed irreplaceable records and damage approached seven figures. On Monday, Regan Prater pleaded guilty to charges described in court filings tied to the Highlander blaze, according to an AP report on the court documents.
The court record said Prater also pleaded guilty to an additional charge related to Hezbollah. Prosecutors tied that part of the case to efforts to provide the Lebanese militant group with information that included personally identifiable details of individuals described as affiliated with the government of Israel.
The arson plea stems from a fire that broke out in the early morning of March 29, 2019, when no injuries were reported but decades of documents were lost. Prosecutors said the blaze caused more than $1.2 million in damage, and Prater’s arrest came last April, more than six years after the March 2019 incident at the New Market-based center.
In the federal process, Prater had been linked in filings to white supremacist movements, with prosecutors citing communications tied to group chats and a private message described in the court record. An affidavit filed in federal court in East Tennessee last year said posts in several group chats affiliated with white supremacist organizations connected Prater to the crime, AP reported.
The affidavit described a witness who sent screenshots to the FBI as asking a person authorities believed was Prater whether he set the fire. In that message, AP said the screen name “Rooster” wrote, “I’m not admitting anything,” but later described how the fire was set using “a sparkler bomb and some Napalm.”
Prosecutors also described physical evidence near the site. AP reported that a white-power symbol was spray-painted on the pavement, and that an affidavit described it as a “triple cross,” also found on one of the firearms used by the Christchurch, New Zealand, shooter who killed 51 people at mosques on March 15, 2019—about two weeks before the Highlander fire.
In court on Monday, sentencing was scheduled for Sept. 9 in Knoxville, AP said. A public defender representing Prater did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment, according to the report.
The plea agreement and charging history reflected a shift in how prosecutors pursued the case. AP reported that Prater was initially charged in 2025 with one arson count, but that the earlier indictment was dismissed in favor of a criminal information filed in February. The later filing included the Hezbollah-related charge, and prosecutors agreed in a plea agreement filed the following day in February that a sentence of no more than 20 years was appropriate, AP reported.
Highlander is known for training civil rights leaders, and AP said Rosa Parks attended a workshop there on integration in 1955—about six months before she refused to move to the back of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. AP also reported that Parks returned to Highlander two years later with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. for the school’s 25th anniversary celebration, where King gave a keynote on achieving freedom and equality through nonviolence.
The Highlander fire occurred shortly before the courthouse proceedings that now culminate in Prater’s pleaded admissions. AP reported that the blaze destroyed decades of irreplaceable materials, including artifacts, speeches, and records from different eras, while the case advanced after Prater was arrested last April.