People

As Hollywood produced some of its best films and secured its place internationally as the mecca of movie-making, the Memphis Board of Censors gained nationwide notoriety for its draconian brand of censorship. Founded in 1911 by Mayor E. H. Crump,…

Adolpho A. Birch, a pioneering African American jurist, became the first black man to hold several judicial posts in Nashville and the first to assume the chief justice position of the Tennessee Supreme Court. Birch was born in Washington, D.C.,…

Gideon Blackburn, Presbyterian minister, college president, and missionary to the Cherokees, was born in Augusta County, Virginia, on August 27, 1772. As a young boy, Blackburn moved with his parents to what is now East Tennessee.  In 1787,  he became…

Ray Blanton, three-term congressman and one-term governor, was born in April 1930, in Hardin County and grew up on a farm close to the small town of Adamsville in McNairy County. His "dirt-poor" upbringing in the cotton fields of West…

Anthony Bledsoe, pioneer, surveyor, and early settler of the Cumberland region, was born in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, and became a product of the rolling frontier of his day. He was a justice of the peace for Augusta County in 1769,…

Isaac Bledsoe was born in Culpepper County, Virginia, but as a young man settled with his brother Anthony on the Holston River a few miles west of Bristol. After serving with British colonial troops in Lord Dunmore's War, he hunted…

Territorial Governor and U.S. Senator William Blount was born on Easter Sunday (March 26) 1749, the eldest child of Jacob and Barbara Gray Blount of Bertie County, North Carolina. As a lad, Blount received informal training in commerce at the…

Governor Willie Blount was born in Bertie County, North Carolina, to Jacob Blount and his second wife, Hannah (Salter) Baker Blount. He was half-brother to Tennessee's territorial governor William Blount. Willie (pronounced Wiley) Blount studied law at Princeton and Columbia…

James Lafayette Bomar Jr., a lawyer from Bedford County, Tennessee, served his state as a congressman, senator, and lieutenant governor; he then extended his commitment to service to the global community through his involvement in Rotary International. Bomar was a…

James Bond, one of the wealthiest slaveholding planters in Tennessee, if not in the entire South, came to the state during the late 1820s or early 1830s. Bond and two brothers moved from Bertie County, North Carolina, to the Forked…

Samuel Bond, cotton planter, physician, and Tennessee legislator, was born in Knox County on December 10, 1804. Bond's family moved to northern Alabama before locating in Shelby County in 1831. After a brief period of economic struggle, the family prospered,…

Harlem Renaissance writer and Fisk University librarian Arnaud W. Bontemps was born in Louisiana in 1902 but grew up in Los Angeles after his family moved to California when he was three. In 1923 Bontemps graduated from Pacific Union College;…

Daniel Boone is perhaps the best known of the early "long hunters" who ventured across the Appalachian Mountains to hunt and explore in the area of present-day Tennessee and Kentucky. Born on November 2, 1734, in Oley, Berks County, Pennsylvania,…

Former Tennessee State University track star and medalist in the 1960, 1964, and 1968 Olympic games, Ralph Boston was born in Laurel, Mississippi, on May 9, 1939. Boston attended Tennessee State University, where in 1960 he won the national collegiate…

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…

George T. Bowen was the first prominent scientist recruited to teach in a Tennessee college. A Rhode Island native, he was admitted to Yale in 1819 with sophomore standing. He graduated in 1822, then went to the University of Pennsylvania,…

Cumberland pioneer William Bowen was born in 1742 in Fincastle County, Virginia, and migrated to the Cumberland Valley in 1784. He and his family first lived at Mansker's Station, and next they lived in a log house nearby the station.…

Duke C. Bowers was a Memphis businessman, philanthropist, and fervent opponent of the death penalty. Bowers was born in 1874 in Mobile, Alabama; his family moved to Kentucky when he was a young child. After a failed attempt in the…

African American business leader in cosmetology and civil rights activist Eva Lowery Bowman was born to William and Alice Lowery in Nashville on April 25, 1899. She attended Pearl High School, Walden University, and Tennessee A&I State Normal College. Her…

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…