Encyclopedia

Located in McKenzie, Carroll County, Bethel College is one of two institutions of higher learning for the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. In 1842 the college began in nearby McLemoresville as the Bethel Seminary, established by the West Tennessee Synod, Cumberland Presbyterian…

Bethlehem House is an example of early interracial cooperation among southern women. It opened in October 1913 at the corner of Tenth and Cedar Streets as a joint effort of the Methodist Training School, Fisk University, and the Woman's Missionary…

The Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park, located in Nashville, honors two hundred years of statehood with an innovative urban park of nineteen acres. Designed by Tuck Hinton Architects, with Ross/Fowler Landscape Architects, the park opened in 1996 and was the…

Big Cypress Tree State Natural Area lies in the floodplain of the Middle Fork of the Obion River between the towns of Sharon and Greenfield in Weakley County. Its 330 acres contains bottomland hardwood forests and a variety of animal…

Big Hill Pond State Park is located at the junction of the Tuscumbia River and the Hatchie State Scenic River in southwest McNairy County. Containing over 4,200 acres and featuring scenic wetlands, timberland, hardwood bottom land, the park centers on…

The Big Ridge State Park contains 3,642 acres of reclaimed land and is headquartered in Union County about twelve miles east of Norris. Developed in tandem with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) project at Norris Dam, park construction began October…

The Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area of the Cumberland River drains an area of 1,382 square miles in Tennessee's Scott, Fentress, Pickett, and Morgan Counties and in Kentucky's Wayne and McCreary Counties. It threads through 106,000 acres…

Born in Iredell County, North Carolina, John H. Bills was one of the founders of Bolivar, in Hardeman County, and a leader of the Tennessee Democratic Party in the nineteenth century. He came to the West Tennessee area in 1818…

As Hollywood produced some of its best films and secured its place internationally as the mecca of movie-making, the Memphis Board of Censors gained nationwide notoriety for its draconian brand of censorship. Founded in 1911 by Mayor E. H. Crump,…

Adolpho A. Birch, a pioneering African American jurist, became the first black man to hold several judicial posts in Nashville and the first to assume the chief justice position of the Tennessee Supreme Court. Birch was born in Washington, D.C.,…

Black Bottom was notable as a Negro neighborhood in downtown Nashville until the 1950s. The area was nicknamed “Black Bottom” because of periodic river floods that left muddy residue on the streets. This area existed since 1832 as the Sixth…

During the first decade of the twentieth century, violence erupted in the tobacco belt of western Kentucky and northern Middle Tennessee as farmers tried to ease their economic distress. Collectively, these acts of violence became known as the Black Patch…

Gideon Blackburn, Presbyterian minister, college president, and missionary to the Cherokees, was born in Augusta County, Virginia, on August 27, 1772. As a young boy, Blackburn moved with his parents to what is now East Tennessee.  In 1787,  he became…

Ray Blanton, three-term congressman and one-term governor, was born in April 1930, in Hardin County and grew up on a farm close to the small town of Adamsville in McNairy County. His "dirt-poor" upbringing in the cotton fields of West…

The oldest and northernmost county in the Sequatchie Valley is Bledsoe County; it became Tennessee's thirty-third county by an act of the Tennessee legislature in November 1807. It was named for Anthony Bledsoe, a Revolutionary War patriot who migrated to…