African American

Sammye Wynn, educator and children's advocate, was the first black female educator to work in the Educational Opportunities Planning Center founded by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in 1966. It trained teachers from four southern states in ways to desegregate…

William F. Yardley, an influential and powerful advocate for the legal rights of blacks, was the first African American to run for governor of Tennessee. Yardley was born in 1844, the child of a white mother and a black father…

Zion College, later known as Chattanooga City College, was founded in the white Highland Park Baptist Church in Chattanooga in 1947 as a Bible institute for training African American ministers and church workers. There was no black college close to…