Journalism

Elias Boudinot, Cherokee publisher and signer of the removal treaty, was born around 1802 in what is now North Georgia and given the name Buck Oo-watie Galagina, or Stag. In 1818 he went to mission school in Cornwall, Connecticut, where…

Henry Allen Boyd, founder of the Nashville Globe, was the son of Richard Henry Boyd, founder and manager of the National Baptist Publishing Board. As the son of one of Nashville's most prominent black businessmen and public figures, Boyd learned…

Richard Henry Boyd, a founder of both the National Baptist Convention and the National Baptist Publishing Board, was born in Texas late in the antebellum era. After receiving an education at Bishop College, an institution for black Baptist men supported…

Carson Brewer, journalist and conservationist, was born in Hancock County, the son of a rural postmaster. Brewer attended Maryville College (1939-41) before entering military service during World War II. He served in the European Theater and returned to college at…

Parson Brownlow, minister, journalist, and governor, was one of those unique individuals who influenced Tennessee culture, politics, and government during the middle half of the nineteenth century. Born in Wythe County, Virginia, orphaned at age eleven and possessing limited formal…

Edward Ward Carmack, a powerful figure in turn-of-the-century Tennessee politics and a leader in the state's temperance movement, was born in Sumner County. His father, a Christian Church minister, died during Carmack's infancy, leaving the child to be raised amid…

The city's leading African American newspaper in the late 1800s, the Chattanooga Blade was recognized for its rare quality as a publication edited and produced by African Americans. The Blade was published weekly by Randolph Miller, one of the few…

In a lavishly paneled executive board room on the fourteenth floor of the New York Times Building on West Forty-third Street in Manhattan, the home of the nation's most influential daily newspaper, stands a bust of Adolph S. Ochs, the…

Roy McDonald was the founder and longtime publisher of the Chattanooga Times Free Press. Originally a grocer, McDonald began the Free Press in 1933 as a small flyer to promote his chain of Home Stores. It proved popular and quickly…

Among the many accomplishments of the Cherokees was the publication of the first Native American newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, from 1828 to 1834. Soon after the adoption of the Cherokee Constitution in 1828, the National Council provided for the establishment…

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…

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…

Duncan Cooper, journalist, publisher, and leading figure in Tennessee's Democratic Party in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was born in Maury County. Cooper served in the Confederate army during the Civil War and was captured at Fort Donelson.…

Sumner A. Cunningham was the founder and editor of the Nashville publication Confederate Veteran. The magazine was one of the New South's most influential monthlies and made Cunningham a central figure in the "Lost Cause" movement of the late nineteenth…

Louise Littleton Davis, historian and journalist, was born in Paris, Tennessee, one of five children of LaRue Lucetta Littleton, a musician, and Grover C. Davis, a career U.S. Army officer. Davis's scholarly bent took her first to Murray State College…

Sarah Barnwell Elliott, novelist, short story writer, and advocate of women's rights, was born in Savannah, Georgia, the daughter of Stephen Elliott, a bishop of the Episcopal Church who was a leader in the founding of the University of the…

An early voice in Tennessee for abolition, Elihu Embree was the son of a Quaker minister who moved from Pennsylvania in 1790 to the northeast corner of what would become the new state of Tennessee. Elihu and his brother Elijah…

Silliman Evans Sr. was owner and publisher of the Nashville Tennessean from 1937 until his death in 1955. During his years as publisher he also held directorships at American Airlines and Maryland Casualty and key positions in the state and…

Elmer Hinton, columnist for the Nashville Tennessean, was born April 26, 1905, on a farm near Mitchellville. Hinton's first foray into journalism came in 1925, when he married Lucille Woods. They established the weekly Upper Sumner Press in Portland, publishing…

The first newspaper in Tennessee was the Knoxville Gazette, printed initially at Rogersville, Hawkins County, on November 5, 1791. Its editor, printer, and publisher was George Roulstone (1767-1804), who stayed in Rogersville for eleven months before moving the newspaper permanently…