People

Horace G. Hill, grocery man, real estate entrepreneur, banker, and philanthropist, was born in Hickory Valley in White County in 1873. He opened the first H. G. Hill Grocery Store at age twenty-three and became a pioneer in such grocery…

The merchant prince of Memphis, Napoleon Hill was born in 1830, the second of eleven children of Duncan and Olivia L. Bills Hill. Hill's physician father died in 1844, leaving his widow an estate valued at more than forty thousand…

Lewis Hine was an established documentary photographer when Arthur E. Morgan, first chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), approached him to document life in the region. Recognized as a socially concerned photographer, Hine had earlier documented the abusive conditions…

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…

Alexander Hollaender, director of the Biology Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and professor of radiation biology at the University of Tennessee, was born in Germany in 1898. He immigrated to the United States, where he studied physical chemistry at the…

Josephine Groves Holloway became the first African American professional worker at the Cumberland Valley Girl Scout Council (CVGSC) in Nashville in 1944. She began her interest in girl scouting in 1923, when, as a recent graduate of Fisk University, she…

Silena Moore Holman served as president of the Tennessee chapter of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union during the period of its greatest influence on state politics. During her tenure as state president, the organization grew from 200 to over 4,000…

Educator and president of the University of Tennessee Andrew D. Holt was born in Milan, Tennessee, on December 4, 1904. In 1927 Holt earned his bachelor's degree from Emory University in Atlanta and went on to receive his master's and…

John Bell Hood, commanding general of the Army of Tennessee, was born June 1, 1831, at Owingsville, Kentucky. The son of a physician-planter, Hood grew up in the comfortable life his family's position offered. After private schooling, Hood's congressman uncle…

Benjamin L. Hooks, civil rights attorney, minister, judge, and executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was born in Memphis, the son of Robert B. and Bessie Hooks and the grandson of Julia Britton…

Julia Britton Hooks, an African American clubwoman known as the "Angel of Beale Street," was born free in 1852 in Frankfort, Kentucky. Her parents, Henry Britton, a carpenter, and Laura Marshall Britton, encouraged her training in classical music. In 1869…

Governor Ben W. Hooper was born Bennie Walter Wade in Newport, Cocke County, on October 13, 1870, the illegitimate son of Sarah Wade and Dr. Lemuel Washington Hooper. The child and his mother moved to Dandridge, Mossy Creek (now Jefferson…

John Hope, educator and university president noted for his ability to impart encouragement and stimulation to his students, began his distinguished academic career in Tennessee during the racially turbulent 1890s. John Hope was born in Augusta, Georgia, in 1868, into…

Thomas Hope, one of Tennessee's earliest and finest master carpenters and cabinetmakers, was born in England circa 1757. By 1788 Hope was in Charleston, South Carolina, where his reputation spread to the part of the western North Carolina frontier that…

Stanley F. Horn, historian, businessman, and editor, was born at Neeley's Bend in Davidson County on a farm that had been in his family since the eighteenth century. Horn's mother instilled in him an interest in history as she read…

Henry Horton was elected governor of Tennessee with the support of Luke Lea, head of a powerful faction of the Democratic Party, and was little more than a front man for the Lea political machine. When Lea's political and financial…

Myles F. Horton, a founder and director of both the Highlander Folk School and the Highlander Research and Education Center, was a progressive educator whose programs not only contributed significantly to the labor and Civil Rights movements, but also made…

Zilphia J. Horton, activist and artist, was born in Paris, Arkansas, as Zilphia Mae Johnson. A graduate of the College of the Ozarks, she grew up determined to use her musical and dramatic talents on behalf of the southern working…

Leonidas C. Houk, congressman and judge, was born near Boyds Creek, Sevier County. The death of his father in 1839 left him and his mother impoverished. His formal education consisted of only a few months at a country school; thereafter,…

Tennessee governor and Texas hero Sam Houston was born to Samuel and Elizabeth Houston in 1793 near Lexington, Virginia, and raised with five brothers and three sisters. His father, a militia colonel, died in 1806. The following year, his mother…