African American

The Golden Circle Life Insurance Company was first established in 1950 as a fraternal organization through the efforts of Charles Allen Rawls, a Haywood County mortician who believed that the African American community should unite and create a cash benefit…

Reverend Sutton E. Griggs, minister, writer, and community leader, was born in Chatfield, Texas, in 1882. He was the son of Allen R. Griggs, a former slave and Baptist minister. He attended public schools in Dallas, Texas, before attending Bishop…

Millie E. Hale contributed significantly to the health and welfare of Nashville's African American population in the early twentieth century by establishing a small hospital for those turned away by white institutions. A graduate of Fisk University and the Graduate…

William J. Hale was president of Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial College from its founding date (1912) until his retirement in August 1943. Under his leadership Tennessee A&I State College became a notable African American institution and one of Tennessee's best…

Internationally known author Alex Haley was born in Ithaca, New York, on August 11, 1921, and died in a Tennessee hospital of complications from diabetes in February 1992. When he was a child, his family moved to his mother's hometown…

W. C. Handy, African American composer, bandleader, publisher, and "Father of the Blues," combined the contemporary ragtime and Latin rhythms he had encountered in vaudeville, minstrel shows, and extensive travels with the black folk music of his heritage into the…

Using little more than roots, shells, and paint, visionary artist Bessie Harvey assembled a diverse cast of figures that appeared vividly before her mind’s eye. Biblical characters, African ancestors, mythological creatures, and episodes from African American history materialized under her…

Born August 20, 1942, in Covington, Tennessee, Isaac Hayes has received countless awards for a forty-plus-year career in music, film, television, and radio. His music has influenced funk, soul, and disco, and many artists, rappers included, have emulated his smooth…

Roland Hayes was one of the most popular opera singers of his generation and an important supporter and mentor to such significant African American artists as Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson. Born in Curryville in northern Georgia to former slaves…

Born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, George E. Haynes was the only child of Louis and Mattie Sloan Haynes. At a young age he moved with his parents to New York, where he spent his youth. In 1903 he received his…

Josephine Groves Holloway became the first African American professional worker at the Cumberland Valley Girl Scout Council (CVGSC) in Nashville in 1944. She began her interest in girl scouting in 1923, when, as a recent graduate of Fisk University, she…

Benjamin L. Hooks, civil rights attorney, minister, judge, and executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was born in Memphis, the son of Robert B. and Bessie Hooks and the grandson of Julia Britton…

Julia Britton Hooks, an African American clubwoman known as the "Angel of Beale Street," was born free in 1852 in Frankfort, Kentucky. Her parents, Henry Britton, a carpenter, and Laura Marshall Britton, encouraged her training in classical music. In 1869…

John Hope, educator and university president noted for his ability to impart encouragement and stimulation to his students, began his distinguished academic career in Tennessee during the racially turbulent 1890s. John Hope was born in Augusta, Georgia, in 1868, into…

Louis Hughes, author and businessman, was born a slave in Virginia in 1832. Hughes remained in bondage over thirty years and spent most of that time in Tennessee. While still in slavery, Hughes secretly learned to read and write and…

Styles L. Hutchins, noted African American attorney in turn-of-the-century Chattanooga, was born November 21, 1852, in Lawrenceville, Georgia. He attended Atlanta University and after completing his studies, taught in local schools until 1871. In that year he became principal of…

From 1978 to 1997, the annual Memphis in May Festival culminated with vocalist James Hyter's performance at the Sunset Symphony. Each year, audiences sang along with Hyter's rendition of the show tune "Ol' Man River" and repeatedly called for encores.…

Tennessee's nineteenth-century iron industry was located along the Western Highland Rim. Throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, a large part of this upland portion of the Tennessee River Valley, from Stewart to Decatur Counties, produced a high-quality brown iron ore…

Entrepreneur and philanthropist Cal Johnson was born to Cupid and Harriet Johnson in Knoxville on October 14, 1844. The Johnson family, slaves of Colonel Pless McClung, lived on the site of the old Farragut Hotel Building at the corner of…

Charles S. Johnson, distinguished sociologist and African American leader, was born in 1893 in Bristol, Virginia. He was educated at Wayland Academy in Richmond, Virginia Union University, and the University of Chicago, where he undertook graduate work with the distinguished…