Culture

The Pink Palace is both a house and a museum. In 1922 Clarence Saunders, the father of self-service grocery shopping and founder of Piggly Wiggly, began building a mansion. Memphians called his 36,500-square-foot house, faced with pink Georgia marble, his…

The largest Middle Woodland Period (ca. 200 B.C.-A.D. 400) archaeological site in the Southeast, Pinson Mounds is located about ten miles south of Jackson on the South Fork of the Forked Deer River. Within an area of approximately four hundred…

More than seven thousand deep caves have been recorded throughout Tennessee. Concentrated in the limestone uplands of Middle and East Tennessee, these karsts extend from the Mammoth Cave area of central Kentucky through Tennessee into northern Alabama, and they represent…

J. G. M. Ramsey made an indelible mark on the political, economic, and social development of antebellum East Tennessee. He was a physician, public official, religious leader, banker, railroad advocate, scholar, and staunch secessionist, one of the most accomplished East…

Lee Roy Reeves, designer of the Tennessee State Flag, was born in Johnson City in June 1876, the son of Elbert Clay and Alice D. Robeson Reeves. After graduating from the local high school and normal school, Reeves taught in…

Bob Riley was one of the earliest and most successful raft pilots in the Upper Cumberland logging industry of the late 1800s, becoming a popular tall-tale figure in Tennessee folklore. Born in 1855 in the Clay County community of Fox…

Rocky Mount, the home of William Cobb, served as the first capitol of the Southwest Territory. William Blount, the governor of the Territory of the United States South of the River Ohio, presided over the newly formed territory from 1790-92.…

The area along the Kentucky-Tennessee border including Clay County, Tennessee, and Monroe County, Kentucky, maintains a remarkable marble-playing tradition focused on a game known locally as "rolley hole," "three holes," or simply "marbles." In this region, rolley hole is played…

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Ruby Falls is one of Chattanooga's major tourist attractions. Its entrance is situated in a medieval-style stone edifice, Cavern Castle, located on the side of Lookout Mountain along Scenic Highway, from whence…

The Rural African American Church Project seeks to identify and document historic African American churches located in rural areas throughout Tennessee. Administered by the Center for Historic Preservation at Middle Tennessee State University, the program began in 1997 as a…

Built as the Union Gospel Tabernacle between 1888 and 1892, Nashville's Ryman Auditorium gained international renown from 1943 to 1974 as home to the Grand Ole Opry, the premier live country music radio broadcast of Nashville station WSM. It is…

Shape-note singing, a predominantly rural, Protestant, Anglo-American music tradition, involves singing from hymnals or "tunebooks" having shaped notes (aka "character notes," "buckwheat notes," or "patent notes") as opposed to the standard "round notes." Shape-note singing is rooted in the Singing…

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…

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…

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…

The year 1996 marked Tennessee's bicentennial. In honor of the occasion, the general assembly created Tennessee 200, Inc., and charged it with developing bicentennial programs. Local and traveling programs were developed to bring the celebration to all areas of the…

Chartered by the general assembly in 1957, the Tennessee Agricultural Museum is located at Ellington Agricultural Center in south Nashville. The museum is housed in a former horse barn which was once part of the Brentwood Hall estate of financier…

In 1965 the Tennessee House of Representatives created a Commission on the Performing Arts to document and study artistic facilities in the state. Two years later, the study recommended the establishment of the Tennessee Arts Commission. Since its creation, the…

The cable television industry in Tennessee, represented by several different networks, has increased the visibility of the state and positioned it as a culturally relevant and important part of the American media landscape. These networks have often focused on values…

The Tennessee Centennial Exposition, held in Nashville in 1897 to celebrate Tennessee's one-hundredth anniversary of statehood, was one of the largest and grandest of a series of industrial expositions that became hallmarks of the New South era. Modeled in particular…