African American

Despite opposition from local whites and without northern missionary help, leaders in the Gay Street Colored Christian (Disciples of Christ) Church in Nashville established Tennessee Manual Labor University, the only freedmen's college in Tennessee founded by African Americans, in 1867.…

Opened in 1912, Tennessee State University (TSU) has become one of Tennessee's most recognized public higher education institutions, both nationally and internationally. Its athletes, including Ralph Boston, Wyomia Tyus, and Wilma G. Rudolph, have won twenty-nine medals in the Olympic…

The Tennessee Vocational School for Colored Girls opened in Nashville on October 9, 1923. Prior to its opening, the state confined African American girls who needed correctional services in institutions with convicted adults. In opposition to this practice, Frankie Pierce,…

In 1959 African Americans in Fayette and Haywood Counties fought for the right to vote. The concern for voting emerged as a by-product of the absence of black jurors for the trial of Burton Dodson, an African American farmer in…

Founder of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1896, Mary Church Terrell was one of the leading twentieth-century African American women activists. For more than sixty-six years, she was an ardent champion of racial and gender equality. Born…

One of the largest black-owned businesses in the state, Tri-State Bank was founded in 1946 by Dr. J. E. Walker (founder of Universal Life Insurance) and his son A. Maceo Walker. The original headquarters site at the corner of Beale…

The United States Colored Troops (U.S.C.T.) in Tennessee experienced every facet of war between 1863 and 1865. In the spring of 1863 General Lorenzo Thomas was appointed Commissioner for the Organization of Colored Troops for the Union army in Tennessee.…

Memphis-based Universal Life Insurance Company (ULICO), the second African American company in the United States to attain million-dollar-capital status (1947), has been described as one of the "ten top Negro owned and operated business enterprises in the world" and as…

Before Dr. Emma Rochelle Wheeler opened Walden Hospital in Chattanooga in 1915, African Americans who required medical care were hospitalized in the basements of existing majority hospitals such as Erlanger Hospital or Newell Clinic. Wheeler, a physician who had practiced…

Joseph E. Walker, noted physician, banker, businessman, civic and religious leader in Memphis, was born in the cotton fields near Tillman, Mississippi, in 1880 and rose to become one of the most successful African Americans of his time. Walker overcame…

Perry Wallace, Southeastern Conference (SEC) basketball trailblazer, was born in February 1948 in Nashville to Perry E. and Hattie Haynes Wallace. The youngest of six children, he received his primary and middle school education at Nashville's segregated public schools. Wallace,…

In 1948-49 white-owned WDIA in Memphis became the nation's first all-black radio station. Its owners, Bert Ferguson and John R. Pepper, hired Nat D. Williams, the first publicly identified black disc jockey. The station aired black history segments and presented…

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, journalist, feminist, and civil rights activist, launched an antilynching campaign in the 1890s that made her one of the most outstanding African American women of the nineteenth century. The eldest of eight children born to James "Jim"…

James Herbert White achieved a national reputation for innovation and excellence in African American education. He successfully created and developed notable institutions and academic programs in social and financial climates that were indifferent, sometimes even hostile to the education of…

The site of Wiley Memorial United Methodist Church, formerly Wiley Memorial Methodist Episcopal, at 500 Lookout Street has been significant throughout the history of Chattanooga. The site served as the center of community life for Ross's Landing before the name…

A. N. C. Williams, prominent African American merchant and community leader in Williamson County, was born into slavery in Spring Hill, Tennessee, in 1844. At age six, he was sold to D. R. Crutcher and moved to Franklin, Tennessee, where…

A powerful advocate for African Americans, Avon N. Williams Jr. became the leading African American lawyer in Tennessee in the protection and advancement of the rights of blacks in education, the workplace, criminal justice, and voting. Born in 1921 in…

Civil rights lawyer and Memphis businessman A. W. Willis Jr. was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on March 16, 1925. Willis received his B.A. from Talladega College in 1950 and a law degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1953. He…

Oprah Winfrey, one of the nation's most popular female entertainers, was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi, on January 29, 1954, to Vernita Lee and Vernon Winfrey. The racially segregated town offered few opportunities for African Americans, and the Winfreys migrated north,…

John W. Work III, a significant composer and director of the Fisk Jubilee Singers in the mid-twentieth century, was born in Tullahoma. His parents were John W. Work II and Agnes Haynes Work. His father was a professor at Fisk,…