Robert J. Booker

African American educator Charles W. Cansler was born in Maryville, one of several children of Hugh Lawson and Laura Ann Scott Cansler. Cansler's mother had become Knoxville's first African American teacher in 1864, when she obtained permission from General Ambrose…

Entrepreneur and philanthropist Cal Johnson was born to Cupid and Harriet Johnson in Knoxville on October 14, 1844. The Johnson family, slaves of Colonel Pless McClung, lived on the site of the old Farragut Hotel Building at the corner of…