Journalism

When the Knoxville Journal ceased operation in 1991, a Knoxville institution died. Although the paper's exact ancestry was sometimes in dispute, the Journal itself liked to claim that it was the descendant of the irascible William G. "Parson" Brownlow's feisty…

Currently the only daily newspaper in Knoxville, the News-Sentinel began in December 1886 as the evening Sentinel published by John Travis Hearn, a native of Shelbyville, Kentucky. The first four-page edition of the Sentinel was printed on a steam-operated flatbed…

Laura Carter Holloway Langford was born in Nashville in 1843. Her birth date is often given as 1848, but census records from 1860, 1870, and 1910, as well as various genealogical databases, confirm the earlier date. Laura was one of fourteen children of…

This Nashville native rose to the navy's top ranks and received national honor after six years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, during which time he wrote "Oh Tennessee, My Tennessee," the official state poem. Lawrence excelled at…

A key figure in the reform and prohibition movements and a major player in the early twentieth-century Democratic Party, Luke Lea was prominent in Tennessee history during the early twentieth century. A descendant of the pioneer Overton and Cocke families,…

Benjamin Lundy, pioneering abolitionist, was born in New Jersey on January 4, 1789, to Quaker parents, Joseph and Eliza Lundy. In 1808 Lundy moved to Wheeling, Virginia, to pursue a career in saddle-making. There Lundy experienced his first contact with…

The Emancipator, published in 1820 in Jonesborough, Tennessee, by Elihu Embree, was the first newspaper in the United States devoted entirely to the abolitionist cause. It was an outgrowth of Embree’s first newspaper, the Manumission Intelligencer, published the year before.…

Governor, progressive agricultural reformer, publisher, and public official Jim Nance McCord was born in Unionville, Bedford County, in 1879. His parents, Thomas N. and Iva Stelle McCord, were farmers and the young McCord learned the value of hard work on…

John H. McDowell, newspaper editor and leader in the Agricultural Wheel and Farmers' Alliance, was born December 12, 1844, near Trenton in Gibson County, the son of John Davis and Nancy H. Irwin McDowell. Young McDowell attended St. Andrews College…

Influential mid-twentieth-century journalist and newspaper editor Edward J. Meeman was born in Evansville, Indiana, to German-born, Catholic, working-class parents. His father was a cigar maker and a local union official. Meeman received his education in Evansville public schools, graduating from…

Although the title Commercial Appeal dates from 1894, the roots of this newspaper reach back to the early decades of Memphis's history. One ancestor, the Weekly (later Daily) Appeal, began in 1841 under Henry Van Pelt. A strongly sectional and…

Founded in 1888 by the Reverend Taylor Nightingale, the Memphis Free Speech was published on the grounds of Nightingale's church, the First (Beale Street) Baptist Church. The name of the paper changed to Free Speech and Headlight when J. L.…

Founded in 1917 and edited by owner and publisher Jake Cohen (1877-1945), this weekly newspaper served as the official organ of the Memphis Trades and Labor Council, an American Federation of Labor affiliate. Prior to his journalistic efforts, the Russian-born…

The history of the Memphis Press-Scimitar is shorter, though no less convoluted, than that of its main rival, the Commercial Appeal. In 1880 George P.M. Turner (1839-1900), owner-editor of papers in Mississippi and Arkansas, leader of Texas troops under Nathan…

Launched in 1931 by the Southern Newspaper Syndicate as a tri-weekly under the editorial direction of Lewis O. Swingler (1906-1962), the World later claimed to be the "South's Oldest and Leading Colored Semi-Weekly Newspaper." Though the World emphasized racial pride,…

A leader of the first generation of southern feminists and social activists, Lide Smith Meriwether was president of the Tennessee Woman's Christian Temperance Union, serving from 1884 until 1897, and then as honorary president for life. Having organized the first…

Randolph Miller, former slave and newspaper editor, was emancipated with hundreds of other African Americans on June 9, 1864, in Newton County, Georgia, as General William T. Sherman's army swept through the region. Miller came to Chattanooga in October of…

George F. Milton, Chattanooga newspaper publisher and Democratic political activist, was born in Macon, Georgia, and educated in Chattanooga. After attending the University of the South at Sewanee, Milton entered the banking business in Chattanooga. He left banking to become…

The Nashville Banner published its first edition on April 10, 1876. William E. Eastman, one of the founding partners, served as its first president; Thomas Achison, another partner, was its first editor. Other partners included two local newsmen, John J.…

Founded in 1906, the Nashville Globe promoted self-reliance and racial solidarity as the best means for Nashville's African American community to succeed and prosper within the confines of the Jim Crow South. After an editorial run that lasted more than…