A-Z

Leap-year baby Fannie Rose Shore was the second daughter born to Russian Jewish immigrants Anna and Sol Shore on February 19, 1916, in Winchester. In 1923 the family moved to Nashville where they prospered. Poliomyelitis left Fannie Rose with a…

A noted feature of the Eastern Highland Rim landscape of Middle Tennessee is Short Mountain. Located in northeastern Cannon County, the mountain looms above adjacent portions of DeKalb and Warren Counties as well. Capped by Pennsylvanian sedimentary rocks that have…

Of all historical housing forms found in Tennessee, the shotgun house is perhaps the least understood and most burdened with confusion and misconceptions. The shotgun sometimes represented the worst evidence of the treatment of the impoverished and, therefore, was viewed…

A Nobel laureate who pioneered neutron diffraction research at Oak Ridge, Clifford Shull was born at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1915. He attended Carnegie Institute of Technology and New York University, where he earned his Ph.D. in nuclear physics in 1941.…

After the Civil War, industrialization greatly reduced the need to produce handmade goods because factories and machines could produce store-bought items more quickly, more cheaply, and in larger quantities than they could be made in the home. Nevertheless, the Dougherty…

For a short time in the antebellum period, many Tennessee farmers pursued what they thought would be a promising commercial opportunity in the production of silk. Fueling their optimism were discoveries in the 1830s that silkworms thrived on the native…

For many years it was assumed that there were few silversmiths in Tennessee because of its rural character and remoteness. However, early newspapers and available censuses reveal the existence of at least 535 silversmiths and allied craftsmen who worked in…

Benjamin "Pap" Singleton called himself the "father of the Black Exodus." Singleton and other grassroots black leaders developed the idea that former slaves should migrate to Kansas and other western homesteading sites, rather than remain in the South to suffer…

On February 1, 1960, four black freshmen from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College in Greensboro, North Carolina, entered the Woolworth's store in downtown Greensboro, seated themselves at the store's lunch counter, and requested service. As they expected, they were…

In 1958, following the formation of the Nashville Christian Leadership Conference (NCLC) by the Reverend Kelly Miller Smith Sr. and others, African American leaders and students launched an attack on Jim Crow segregation. The NCLC utilized the concept of Christian…

In the 1760s Anglo-American frontiersmen, determined to settle the land, planted slavery firmly within the borders of what would become Tennessee. Over time, East Tennessee, hilly and dominated by small farms, retained the fewest number of slaves. Middle Tennessee, where…

Created by the Tennessee General Assembly on October 26, 1799, Smith County was named in honor of General Daniel Smith. Carved out of Sumner County, the new county covered a large territory of 314 square miles. Immigrants of Scots-Irish, English,…

Kelly Miller Smith was the influential pastor of Nashville's First Baptist Church, Capitol Hill, from 1951 until his death in 1984. He was also assistant dean of the Vanderbilt Divinity School from 1969 to 1984. As president of the Nashville…

Acclaimed blues singer Bessie Smith was born in Chattanooga and lived in a section of the city called Blue Goose Hollow at the foot of Cameron Hill. Her father, William Smith, a part-time Baptist minister, died when Smith was very…

Daniel Smith, pioneer, surveyor, treaty negotiator, secretary of the Southwest Territory, and U.S. senator, was a native of Stafford County, Virginia, who became infatuated with the trans-Appalachian West while a surveyor on the Virginia frontier. During the early years of…

Edmund Kirby Smith, a native of St. Augustine, Florida, was one of the most despised Civil War commanders in East Tennessee. Smith graduated from West Point in 1845, saw action in the Mexican War, served on the frontier, and taught…

Frederick W. Smith was born on August 11, 1944, in Marks, Mississippi, to Frederic C. and Sally (Wallace) Smith. He earned a B.A. in economics from Yale University in 1966 and earned a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, and two…

Haywood County African American leader Hardin Smith was a slave and Baptist preacher who lived and taught the principle that freedom was acquired through education. He founded churches and schools for freed slaves, and his legacy includes a rich musical…

Influential chemistry professor and dean of the University of Tennessee Graduate School, Hilton A. Smith was born September 4, 1908, in Plymouth, New York, and reared in North Adams, Massachusetts. After earning a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Harvard in…

Executive secretary of the Memphis NAACP for over forty years, Maxine Smith was born in Memphis on October 31, 1929. She graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in Memphis at the age of fifteen, received her A.B. degree in…