Politics

A planter-soldier for whom Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is named, William Lauderdale was born in Virginia between 1780 and 1785, the son of a prominent Sumner County family. Lauderdale first served as a lieutenant under Andrew Jackson in the Tennessee Volunteers…

Albert Miller Lea, a prominent chief engineer of the State of Tennessee, was born in Knoxville in 1805. Lea learned his engineering skills in the army. He entered West Point and graduated fifth in a class of thirty-three in 1831.…

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,…

This organization formed prior to the ratification of the Suffrage Amendment when thirty-five of the required thirty-six states had ratified the amendment. Tennessee suffragists attended the last national suffrage convention in February 1920 and returned home to Tennessee to organize…

Known on the streets of early twentieth-century Memphis as "Lieutenant Lee," both for his army service as a lieutenant in World War I and as the lieutenant for the powerful African American capitalist and Republican Party leader Robert Church Sr.,…

John R. Lewis, now a congressman from Atlanta, was one of the early student leaders in the Civil Rights movement in Tennessee. Lewis was born on February 21, 1940, in Troy, Alabama, to Eddie and Willie Mae Carter Lewis. One…

An associate and advisor of Andrew Jackson, William B. Lewis was born in Virginia, but moved to Nashville in 1809. Little else is known of his earliest years except that he received a good education and developed a strong friendship…

Nashville councilman, judge, and civil rights activist, Robert E. Lillard was born March 23, 1907, in Nashville, to John W. and Virginia Allen Lillard. He received his education at Immaculate Mother's Academy and in local public schools before attending Beggins…

The Lincoln League was a Republican Party organization founded by Robert R. Church Jr. on February 12, 1916, in Memphis and named for Republican President Abraham Lincoln. Church, whose father had been one of the first black millionaires in the…

Lotteries appeared in Tennessee before statehood in 1796, were prohibited by constitutional amendment in 1835 and 1870, and continue to generate public debate today. By definition, a lottery is any contest that involves three factors: the payment of money, for…

One of many expressions of violence directed mostly towards African Americans following Reconstruction and lasting well into the twentieth century was lynching. According to one set of statistics, lynch mobs in the old Confederate states, including Tennessee, killed 2,805 people,…

Major Ridge, whose Cherokee name meant "walking-the-mountain-tops," is best known as one of the men who signed the 1835 Treaty of New Echota authorizing the removal of the Cherokee Indians. Once in Oklahoma, his political enemies assassinated him as a…

Attorney and Civil War soldier, Tennessee Governor Albert S. Marks was born at Owensboro, Kentucky, on October 16, 1836, the son of Elisha S. Marks. He grew up on his father's farm in Daviess County. After the death of his…

Congressman, diplomat, and postmaster general, Horace Maynard was born on August 30, 1814, in Westboro, Massachusetts. After graduating from Amherst College in 1838, Maynard moved to Knoxville, where he worked as a tutor in the preparatory department of East Tennessee…

William Gibbs McAdoo, a leading figure in American politics in the early twentieth century, began his political career in Chattanooga in the 1880s. He was born in Marietta, Georgia, in 1863, but later moved with his family to Knoxville, where…

Governor and attorney Hill McAlister began his political career as the city attorney for Nashville. He served several terms in the state Senate, and the general assembly elected him to four terms as state treasurer. He lost close races for…

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…

One of the state's most influential African American men of the 1880s, Samuel A. McElwee had to struggle to achieve a college education and law degree, but nonetheless served his race for three terms in the Tennessee General Assembly (1882-88),…

Civil War Unionist Hetty Montgomery Kennedy McEwen was born in Nashville. Her husband, Robert McEwen, a veteran of the battle of Kings Mountain, served as superintendent of Nashville's schools. As the Civil War approached, the McEwens remained strong Unionists and…