KNOXVILLE, Tenn.
A Tennessee man with ties to white supremacist organizations entered a guilty plea Monday to charges stemming from a 2019 arson attack that destroyed offices at the Highlander Research and Education Center — a storied social justice institution that shaped some of the most consequential figures in American civil rights history.
Regan Darby Prater, 28, currently of Tullahoma, entered a guilty plea to one count of arson and one count of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee at Knoxville.
Court documents establish that Prater used a so-called “sparkler bomb” — a napalm-based incendiary device ignited by a common sparkler — to destroy facilities maintained by the Highlander Center, a school for grassroots leaders and social movements in New Market, Tennessee. As part of his guilty plea, Prater admitted that he drove from his home in Tullahoma to the Highlander Center, ignited the sparkler bomb, and destroyed a building, ultimately causing over $1.2 million in damage. Before he detonated the bomb, Prater spray-painted the symbol of the Iron Guard, a 1930s-era paramilitary arm of the Romanian Nazi Party, in the Highlander Center parking lot.
The blaze broke out in the early morning of March 29, 2019. No one was injured, but decades’ worth of irreplaceable documents were lost — including artifacts, speeches, and other materials from different eras of the Civil Rights Movement.
The facility trained civil rights icons, including Rosa Parks, who helped spark the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, and future Congressman John Lewis, who was among the voting rights marchers attacked on the Edmund Pettus Bridge during “Bloody Sunday” in 1965.
Prater also pleaded guilty to attempting to aid a foreign terrorist organization for efforts to provide the militant group Hezbollah “a list of personally identifiable information for individuals purportedly affiliated with the government of Israel,” according to a criminal information filed in February.
Investigators linked Prater to the crime through his posts in white supremacist online forums, where he allegedly described how he used a “sparkler bomb and some napalm” to start the blaze.
Sentencing has been set before U.S. District Judge Thomas A. Varlan for September 9 in Knoxville. Prater faces up to 20 years in federal prison, along with related fines, restitution, and a term of supervised release.
