Event

Until recently, Tennessee followed the doctrines of "contributory negligence." Under contributory negligence, a person harmed by a defendant's negligent act may be unable to recover anything in damages if that person contributed, even in a small way, to the harm.…

On May 1-2, 1866, Memphis suffered its worst race riot in history. Some forty-six African Americans and two whites died during the riot. A Joint Congressional Committee reported seventy-five persons injured, one hundred persons robbed, five women raped, ninety-one homes…

When African American sanitation workers in Memphis began a strike on February 12, 1968, few then suspected the walkout would escalate into one of the climactic struggles of the civil rights and labor movements of the 1960s. By the time…

In 1846 the United States went to war with Mexico as a result of a boundary dispute fueled by an American expansionist desire to control the entire North American continent. With an army of fewer than 9,000, a number wholly…

In 1882 a group of Tennessee Sunday school workers organized an assembly patterned after that in Chautauqua, New York, which had been founded in 1873 to train Sunday School teachers during the summer. That fall, a site selection committee accepted…

The engagement at Mossy Creek resulted from a Federal advance of over six thousand soldiers from Strawberry Plains on December 18, 1863, to pressure the Confederate army of Lieut. Gen. James Longstreet following its repulse at Knoxville. On December 22,…

The press called her Murderous Mary, but Mary actually was a five-ton circus elephant lynched from a one-hundred-ton railroad crane car in Erwin on September 13, 1916. She had killed her trainer the day before in Kingsport. Because of East…

After U.S. Brigadier General James Negley’s June 7-8 attacks on the Confederate forces at Chattanooga, U.S. Major General Don Carlos Buell moved his Army of the Ohio from Corinth, Mississippi, toward Chattanooga to reinforce Negley. The Confederate response was to…

On June 3, 1850, delegates from nine southern states met at McKendree Methodist Church in Nashville to discuss common grievances in the great sectional crisis that had developed with the territorial acquisitions following the Mexican War. The South demanded equality…

The battle of Nashville, fought December 15-16, 1864, continued the destruction of the Confederate Army of Tennessee that had begun when it suffered devastating casualties at Franklin. After that engagement, army commander John Bell Hood faced limited options. A withdrawal…

For more than 100 years, owners have brought together the top pointing dogs in the country to compete in a premier stake known as the National Field Trial Championship. Most championship competitions have been held at Ames Plantation, located near…

What began as a small gathering of Appalachian storytellers has evolved over a generation into one of the nation's premier gatherings of storytellers. The National Storytelling Festival, held every October in Jonesborough, is the most prestigious storytelling festival in the…

Probably no event in the region's history, with the exception of the Civil War, polarized the population of Obion County as did the Night Rider episodes of 1908. Nearly a century later, public opinion still varies greatly in regard to…

On December 1, 1566, the third Spanish expedition into Tennessee commenced when Juan Pardo left Santa Elena on the South Carolina coast with 125 soldiers. Sent into the interior to further Spain's colonial ambitions and to relieve the food shortage…

In the immediate aftermath of Confederate defeat, northerners and southerners alike widely recognized two clear-cut consequences of the Federal victory in the Civil War. First, the Union had been preserved and the right of secession as a legitimate expression of…

Before the steamboat, Tennesseans navigated the Mississippi, Cumberland, and Tennessee Rivers and their tributaries in canoes, keelboats, flatboats, and rafts. The original Tennessee rivermen were Cherokees, Shawnees, and other Indians paddling their sleek wooden dugout canoes and cruder "bullboats" (made…

The area along the Kentucky-Tennessee border including Clay County, Tennessee, and Monroe County, Kentucky, maintains a remarkable marble-playing tradition focused on a game known locally as "rolley hole," "three holes," or simply "marbles." In this region, rolley hole is played…

Rowing, sometimes called crew, was America's first professional sport. Even today, the single largest sporting event in America is a rowing race. It is no wonder, with Tennessee's network of rivers and lakes, that crew is a popular pastime. Tennessee…

In the autumn of 1942, the War Department decided to resume field maneuvers in Middle Tennessee. Large-scale war games had been conducted in an area around Camp Forrest, near Tullahoma, the previous summer, and General George S. Patton had perfected…

In February 1862 a Union army-navy offensive succeeded in capturing Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, located respectively on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, near the Tennessee-Kentucky border, and the fall of the two forts initiated a series of Union triumphs…