2022-2023 Activist in Residence
Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson

Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson is an Affrilachian (Black Appalachian) woman from the working class, born and raised in Southeast Tennessee. She is the first Black woman to serve as co-executive director of the Highlander Research & Education Center in New Market, Tennessee.

As a member of multiple leadership teams in the Movement for Black Lives, Henderson has thrown down on the Vision for Black Lives and the BREATHE Act. She has served on the governance council of the Southern Movement Assembly, the advisory committee of the National Bailout Collective, and is an active leader of The Frontline.

Henderson, a long-time activist, has done work in movements fighting for workers, reproductive justice, LGBTQUIA+, and more. Additionally she is working around issues of mountaintop removal mining and environmental racism in central and southern Appalachia, and has served on the National Council of the Student Environmental Action Coalition.

Henderson is the past president of the Black Affairs Association at East Tennessee State University and the Rho Upsilon Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. She holds a B.A. in English with a minor in African and African American History from East Tennessee State.