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The Soloman Federal Building in Chattanooga exhibits the style known as "modernized" or "starved" classicism that became increasingly identified with American public architecture in the 1930s. The building, planned in 1931, built in 1932, and embellished with a courtroom mural…

This important African American business institution in Memphis was founded in 1906 by Robert R. Church Sr., who had become the wealthiest African American in Tennessee through real estate and other interests. The bank was located on Beale Street across…

The common term for sorghum syrup in Tennessee is "molasses" or "sorghum molasses," though educated agriculturists have unsuccessfully campaigned against the use of these vernacular synonyms. Molasses is a by-product of sugar making and may derive from sugar cane or…

An expedition led by Hernando de Soto conducted the earliest exploration of Tennessee by non-Native Americans in May, June, and July of 1540. The expedition of some seven hundred Spaniards and their slaves had landed at Tampa Bay the previous…

The South Cumberland State Recreation Area (SCRA) is a unique park within the Tennessee park system as it combines separate natural areas, trails, state forests, and small wild areas within one management unit. Its headquarters and visitor center are on…

After its founding as Graysville Academy in 1892, this educational institution evolved and expanded, changed its name twice, and moved in 1916 to what later became the town of Collegedale in Hamilton County. On its new one-thousand-acre campus the school,…

Southern Baptists in Tennessee represent a tradition born in Amsterdam and London in the early seventeenth century, transported to the American colonies in the 1630s, and carried south and west with frontier migrations. These Christians affirm the authority of Scripture,…

When a group of ministers met in Augusta, Georgia, in 1845 to establish the Southern Baptist Convention, they simultaneously created two separate boards to oversee the domestic and foreign missionary work of the convention. The Board of Domestic Missions, headquartered…

The short-lived Southern Citizen was a pro-slavery newspaper in the heart of antislavery East Tennessee; its editor, an Irish nationalist hero of 1848, worked in the midst of anti-immigrant Know Nothings. In October 1857 Knoxville mayor William Swan cofounded the…

Located in Memphis, the Southern College of Optometry has educated over six thousand optometrists in its sixty-nine years of existence. It is one of only seventeen schools of optometry in the United States and has contracts with several states to…

In 1884 two mechanics in Jackson established the Southern Engine and Boiler Works to build a line of small engines and boilers. In 1895 the mechanics sold their shop to local stockholders, who constructed a new complex on North Royal…

Under the leadership of E. J. Owens, Southern Potteries, Inc., began operations in Erwin in Unicoi County in 1916-17 using skilled labor brought from Ohio and local unskilled workers. Its product was known as Clinchfield ware, and the company's letterhead…

The first record Elvis Presley released in 1954 shows the inspired ways Tennesseans merged musical traditions into something new and exciting called rock music. The A side was "That's All Right," a blues song by Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, and…

The Territory of the United States South of the River Ohio, often called the Southwest Territory, was created by an act of Congress on May 26, 1790. The State of North Carolina had ceded the lands and waterways encompassed by…

Soybeans have become one of the most important cash crops in post-World War II Tennessee, ranking as the third highest cash crop in the state in 1999. The first record of soybeans in the United States dates to 1804, but…

The Spanish Conspiracy of the mid-1780s arose in the aftermath of the American Revolution when the leaders of the Cumberland settlements, which were then still part of North Carolina, courted a possible relationship with the Spanish government in New Orleans.…

Tennesseans participated in virtually every aspect of the Spanish-American War of 1898. Commander Washburn Maynard (a Knoxville native) of the gunboat Nashville is credited with firing the first shot of the war on April 22. The same vessel was assigned…

Three miles east of Sparta along U.S. Highway 70 is the Sparta Rock House, built initially as a toll house and stage stop along a busy antebellum turnpike between Sparta and Crossville. It is considered a significant and rare artifact…

How Tennesseans talk expresses their regional identity and often draws comment by people from elsewhere. Whether they call it a "Tennessee twang" or an "East Tennessee brogue," Tennesseans and others often consider it distinctive. It is quite difficult, however, to…

Thomas S. Spencer is usually regarded as the first white settler in Middle Tennessee. On a long hunt to the area from 1776 to the spring of 1779, he staked out land, planted it, and built cabins on it, and…