A Tullahoma man faces a lengthy jail sentence after he entered guilty pleas to setting fire to a historic building in 2019, torching it due to his white-supremacist beliefs.

According to a plea agreement filed in U.S. District Court in Knoxville, Regan Darby Prater pled guilty to malicious use of fire and attempted provision of material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

The latter of those charges carries a punishment of up to 20 years in prison, a lifetime of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000.

The fire happened at the historic Highlander Center in New Market. The facility was where civil rights leaders like Rosa Parks and John Lewis were trained, giving the historic building importance in the preservation of civil rights history.

According to a plea agreement, Prater admitted that he set the fire with a “sparkler bomb.”

In his plea agreement, Prater attested to what happened on March 29, 2019.

He admitted he drove from his home in Tullahoma to New Market, where he broke into the administrative building of the center.

He then placed a “sparkler bomb”, which destroyed the building and caused $1.2 million in damages. A sparkler bomb is a napalm-based incendiary device that utilizes a common sparkler firework as a fuse.

“Prior to detonating the sparkler bomb, the defendant spray-painted the symbol of the Iron Guard on the ground in Highlander’s parking lot,” the plea agreement stated. “The defendant knew at that time that the Iron Guard was the paramilitary arm of the Romanian Nazi Party in the 1930s. The defendant also knew at that time that the same symbol of the Iron Guard was engraved on the receiver of the rifle used in the terrorist attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand, two weeks prior that claimed the lives of 51 people.”

The document continued to state that Prater selected the Highlander for his attack “because of his white-supremacist beliefs and his perception of Highlander’s faith-based educational priorities and its association with the Civil Rights Movement.”

In a separate incident, the plea agreement also reveals that Prater tried to provide individuals he believed were affiliated with Hezbollah with the personal information of more than 35,000 individuals affiliated with the Israeli government.

In his communication with Hezbollah, he reportedly told them “good hunting” when it came to fighting against Israel. Hezbollah was considered a terrorist organization at the time of his actions.

Prior to being arrested in 2025 for the arson at the Highlander Center, Prater had been sentenced to five years in federal prison for setting fire to an adult video store in Manchester in June 2019.

The original Highlander Center was constructed in Monteagle in 1932.

It had been in New Market for nearly 50 years before the fire. The center is known for working closely with Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks to promote civil rights activism and hosted workshops involving prominent civil rights leaders, including Julian Bond and Stokely Carmichael.