Institution

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…

W. R. "Sawney" Webb, Confederate veteran and graduate of the University of North Carolina, arrived in Tennessee in 1870 to found a classical school modeled on Bingham's, his former school at Oaks, North Carolina, and similar Virginia schools. Three years…

Robert Webb, a "third generation school man," founded the Webb School of Knoxville in September 1955. From his grandfather and uncles, who established schools in Bell Buckle, Tennessee, and Claremont, California, Webb acquired a distinctive educational vision that emphasized academic…

The West Tennessee Historical Society is the successor of four other historical societies. Prior to September 28, 1950, the West Tennessee Historical Society (WTHS) was an unincorporated society whose origins can be traced to the antebellum period. Organized in 1857,…

Western State Mental Hospital, located near Bolivar, was the last state mental hospital to be constructed and habitually the one least funded. In December 1885 the site commissioners chose the farm of Paul T. Jones as the location for the…

Located in the rugged, isolated area at the juncture of Fentress, Overton, and Putnam Counties, the five communities of Wilder, Davidson, Twinton, Crawford, and Highland Junction comprised the Wilder-Davidson Coal Mining complex which flourished from 1903 until the mid-1930s. This…

Originally known as the Ashland Manufacturing Company, Wilson Sporting Goods was created in 1913 in Chicago as a subsidiary of the Swarzchild and Sulzberger meat packing concern. The company moved into the sporting goods trade by manufacturing gut strings for…

In 1951 Kemmons Wilson, his wife, and five children drove from Memphis to Washington, D.C., for a vacation. Appalled by the uncomfortable and cramped rooms with no air conditioning in the motels in which they were forced to stay, as…

WLAC is a Nashville radio station established by the Life and Casualty Insurance Company in 1926; it shaped musical tastes in Nashville for over seventy years. Its most significant contribution to Tennessee cultural history came from the mid-1940s to the…

One of the ten oldest radio stations in the United States, WNOX in Knoxville played a significant role in showcasing major talents in the burgeoning hillbilly--or country--music field from the 1930s through the 1950s. The station went on the air…

Located in Knoxville, the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame opened in 1999. A project of the Knoxville Sports Corporation and headed by President and Chief Executive Officer Gloria Ray, the Hall of Fame is housed in a two-story, thirty-thousand-square-foot building…

After attending the first national convention of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), the nation's largest anti-alcohol association, in November 1874 in Cleveland, Ohio, Tennessean Elizabeth Fisher Johnson (1835-1883) returned home and organized a local chapter of the WCTU in…

The Women's Missionary Union (WMU) was formed in 1888 as an auxiliary of the Southern Baptist Convention for the purpose of religious evangelism. Part of a trend beginning in the early nineteenth century to establish women's missionary societies within many…

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was one of the most far-reaching and controversial programs initiated during the New Deal. Designed to put people to work, WPA received an initial Congressional appropriation of $5 billion. Between 1935 and its termination in…

This family-owned baseball and softball equipment company was founded by George Sharp Lannom Jr. in Tullahoma in 1912 as Lannom Manufacturing Company. It began as a producer of leather horse collars and harnesses. Recognizing the decline of animal-powered farming, Lannom…

Home station of the Grand Ole Opry radio show, WSM was an early Nashville radio station, the marketing idea of Edwin Craig of the National Life and Accident Insurance Company. In the early 1920s Craig, son of National Life founding…

When Sergeant Alvin C. York returned to the United States in 1919 as the best-known hero of the World War, he devoted his attention to improving education in rural Tennessee. York's tenure in the military and service overseas made him…