A-Z

Oprah Winfrey, one of the nation's most popular female entertainers, was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi, on January 29, 1954, to Vernita Lee and Vernon Winfrey. The racially segregated town offered few opportunities for African Americans, and the Winfreys migrated north,…

WLAC is a Nashville radio station established by the Life and Casualty Insurance Company in 1926; it shaped musical tastes in Nashville for over seventy years. Its most significant contribution to Tennessee cultural history came from the mid-1940s to the…

One of the ten oldest radio stations in the United States, WNOX in Knoxville played a significant role in showcasing major talents in the burgeoning hillbilly--or country--music field from the 1930s through the 1950s. The station went on the air…

Charles Keith Wolfe, English professor at Middle Tennessee State University, music scholar, and highly published author, was born on August 14, 1943, in Sedalia, Missouri. The eldest of two boys born to Orville and Dilla Wolfe, Charles grew up in…

Werner and Emmy Land Wolff played significant roles in the creation of the Chattanooga Opera and enhancing the popularity of opera in Chattanooga. Werner Wolff was born in Berlin on October 7, 1883. His father, Hermann Wolff, founded the Berlin…

Ernest O. Wollan, pioneer physicist in neutron diffraction, was born at Glenwood, Minnesota, in 1902. Wollan attended Concordia College and the University of Chicago, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1929 under Arthur Compton in studies of X-ray scattering. Early…

"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State on account of sex"--Nineteenth Amendment, U.S. Constitution. In August 1920 the Tennessee General Assembly ratified the Nineteenth…

Located in Knoxville, the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame opened in 1999. A project of the Knoxville Sports Corporation and headed by President and Chief Executive Officer Gloria Ray, the Hall of Fame is housed in a two-story, thirty-thousand-square-foot building…

After attending the first national convention of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), the nation's largest anti-alcohol association, in November 1874 in Cleveland, Ohio, Tennessean Elizabeth Fisher Johnson (1835-1883) returned home and organized a local chapter of the WCTU in…

The Women's Missionary Union (WMU) was formed in 1888 as an auxiliary of the Southern Baptist Convention for the purpose of religious evangelism. Part of a trend beginning in the early nineteenth century to establish women's missionary societies within many…

Two of Tennessee's best known prehistoric sites, Pinson Mounds in Madison County and the Old Stone Fort in Coffee County, date to the Woodland Period (300 B.C. to A.D. 900). Anthropologist Charles Hudson concluded that the Woodland tradition represented "probably…

John W. Work III, a significant composer and director of the Fisk Jubilee Singers in the mid-twentieth century, was born in Tullahoma. His parents were John W. Work II and Agnes Haynes Work. His father was a professor at Fisk,…

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was one of the most far-reaching and controversial programs initiated during the New Deal. Designed to put people to work, WPA received an initial Congressional appropriation of $5 billion. Between 1935 and its termination in…

During the interlude marked by the end of the depression of the 1890s and the entry of the United States into the First World War in 1917, Tennesseans as well as other Americans entered the twentieth century. Embracing reformism at…

World War II marks a watershed period for both the United States and for the history of Tennessee. As one of the victors and the sole possessor of the atomic bomb, America emerged as the modern world's superpower. But Tennessee…

This family-owned baseball and softball equipment company was founded by George Sharp Lannom Jr. in Tullahoma in 1912 as Lannom Manufacturing Company. It began as a producer of leather horse collars and harnesses. Recognizing the decline of animal-powered farming, Lannom…

Frances Wright was arguably the most radical utopian thinker and activist in antebellum America. She advocated the freedom and equality of women, African American slaves, and white working people and designed social experiments to bring the United States closer to…

Frances Fitzpatrick Wright, author of books for children and adolescents, was born Fannie Bell Fitzpatrick near Gallatin. She spent her childhood in Arizona, but when she was orphaned at fifteen, Fannie Bell returned to the home of her Fitzpatrick grandparents…

Home station of the Grand Ole Opry radio show, WSM was an early Nashville radio station, the marketing idea of Edwin Craig of the National Life and Accident Insurance Company. In the early 1920s Craig, son of National Life founding…