Entries

Organized in the mid-1880s shortly after the establishment of the Agricultural Wheel in Tennessee, the Colored Agricultural Wheel supported the same demands for economic and political changes that white Wheelers advocated. Similarly, the Colored Wheel adopted secret passwords and rituals…

This grassroots agrarian cooperative movement was founded in 1886 by sixteen African American farmers in Houston County, Texas, and spread rapidly across the South. Similar to the white Farmers' Alliance, the Colored Alliance advocated a program of uplift that promoted…

In 1921 the Tennessee General Assembly enacted a law "to provide for those colored men who served as servants and cooks in the Confederate Army." Senator Edgar Jones Graham of Hickman County proposed the bill, which entitled former slaves to…

This post-World War II race riot occurred in the town of Columbia on the night of February 25-26, 1946. Like other outbreaks of violence in the South in the immediate postwar era, this incident involved military veterans who were unwilling…

Columbia’s most significant combat role occurred November 24 through 29, 1864, during Confederate General John Bell Hood’s campaign to capture Nashville. On a main route between the state capital and the Deep South, Columbia was important in the struggle for…

Arthur S. Colyar, attorney, political leader, newspaper editor, and industrialist, was born in Jonesborough, one of thirteen children of Alexander and Katherine Sevier Sherrill Colyar. Colyar received his education in the Washington County common schools, and in 1828 he moved…

Tennessee's early patterns of commercial exchange determined the location and growth of its urban centers. Commercial centers typically formed at some junction of land and water that required a break in the mode of transportation, usually from animal-powered overland wagons…

The Commonwealth Fund has played an important part in the development of public health and medical education in Tennessee since the 1920s. Anna Richardson Harkness created the Commonwealth Fund in 1918 as a philanthropic outlet for the fortune amassed by…

Tennessee's system of community colleges traces its origins to the 1955-57 study Public Higher Education in Tennessee undertaken by the legislative council of the Tennessee General Assembly and directed by Truman Pierce and A. D. Albright. The study outlined fundamental…

In January 1889 the Frank Cheatham Bivouac of the Association of Confederate Soldiers forwarded a bill to the Tennessee General Assembly to establish a home for indigent and disabled Confederate veterans on the grounds of the Hermitage. The general assembly…

Nashville-based Confederate Veteran magazine was founded in 1893 by Sumner Archibald Cunningham, who also edited it. The monthly magazine commemorating the Confederate soldier was originally designed to inform patrons on the status of the Jefferson Davis monument fund spearheaded by…

Sara Ward Conley, noted Nashville artist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was born on December 21, 1859, to Dr. William and Eliza Ward. Following an education at Nashville's Ward Seminary (a school for young women founded by…

After Reconstruction, the exploitation of Tennessee's natural wealth rose to a scale unknown before the Civil War. Northern and foreign investors bought and cut timberlands, set up land companies, financed railroads, and extracted the state's coal and iron. Logging in…

During the Civil War many of Tennessee's 275,000 slaves abandoned farms and towns in anticipation of the approach of the Union army. In the summer of 1862, as the army of General Ulysses S. Grant entered the heavily slaveholding territory…

From 1866 to 1896 Tennessee state government adopted the widely used convict lease system to make prisons self-supporting and provide revenue to fund the state debt. Under this system, the state leased prisoners to private companies and made them responsible…

Annie Cook, prostitute and nurse whose real name is unknown, was reportedly an attractive woman of German descent who grew up in Ohio. She worked for a family in Kentucky, where she was remembered for aiding impoverished smallpox victims. After…

Architect James B. Cook was born in England and studied at King's College and Putney College before becoming a supervising architect on the Crystal Palace for London's Great Exhibition of 1851. Cook immigrated to New York in 1855. Two years…

Located near the Leapwood community in northeast McNairy County, Coon Creek is known internationally to geologists and paleontologists for its exceptionally rich Cretaceous fossil beds. Located at the eastern edge of the Coastal Plain of West Tennessee, the area was…

Governor Prentice Cooper was born in Shelbyville to William Prentice and Argentine S. Cooper. He was educated in Bedford County schools, including Hannah's School at Shelbyville, Butler's Creek Elementary School, and the Webb School at Bell Buckle. He attended Vanderbilt…

An important ruling on the concept of self-defense resulted from one of the most famous murder trials in Tennessee history. On November 9, 1908, Robin Cooper shot and killed Edward W. Carmack in downtown Nashville. Cooper was the son of…