Encyclopedia

On April 5, 1972, the same day that the state Senate ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, the Tennessee General Assembly created the Tennessee Commission on the Status of Women (TCSW). It was to study and highlight women's issues and to…

To conserve game animals for hunting, local sportsmen organized clubs in Tennessee as early as 1865, beginning with the McRae Club of Chattanooga. The first statewide organization, the Tennessee Federation of Sportsmen, was formed in 1934 to marshal local clubs…

The Tennessee State Constitution provides for three constitutional officers: the secretary of state, the comptroller of the treasury, and the treasurer. All three are elected by a joint session of the general assembly; the secretary of state serves a four-year…

For Tennessee's first hundred years, justices of the peace were the foundation of the state's legal system. These men, often without legal training, served the citizens in their counties by resolving minor disputes, performing marriages, and serving on the quarterly…

In the 1880s George Eastman (1854-1932) founded Kodak, a camera and photographic film manufacturer based in Rochester, New York. His Eastman Kodak Company was a multinational corporation that soon dominated the film market and led the way in the mass…

The Tennessee Environmental Council (TEC) was chartered in December 1970 as an umbrella organization for groups concerned with environmental issues and as an information clearinghouse and think tank for environmental policy. Its founding leaders included Lucius Burch Jr., Lester Dudney,…

Throughout the twentieth century, the Tennessee Farm Bureau Federation has made a significant contribution to the economy and way of life of rural Tennessee. The Tennessee Farm Bureau grew out of the County Councils of Agriculture, first established in Blount…

In 1926 delegates and representatives from seventeen of the state's thirty-four garden clubs met at the Read House in Chattanooga and organized the Tennessee Federation of Garden Clubs (TFGC). Mrs. E. Y. Chapin of the Garden Club of Signal Mountain…

Organized in 1896, the Tennessee Federation of Women's Clubs was designed to bring together women's clubs from across the state into one organization that would provide communication among its members. A decade after the founding of the first women's clubs…

The Tennessee Folklore Society is a statewide organization of academics, nonprofit activists, and interested citizens who are concerned with the preservation, celebration, and study of the traditional expressive culture of the state. Such culture ranges from the classic forms of…

The executive power of the state is vested in the office of the governor, the elected official responsible for the enforcement of the laws, collection of taxes, and well-being of the state and its citizens. The recognized state leader of…

A joint resolution of the general assembly established the Tennessee Historical Commission on January 23, 1919. The resolution defined the duties of the committee to collect, compile, index, and arrange all data and information relating to the participation of Tennessee…

Early histories of the Tennessee Historical Society (THS) place its origins in the Tennessee Antiquarian Society organized in Nashville in 1820. The purpose of the society, chaired by John Haywood, was the collection and preservation of important events in the…

The lower house of Tennessee's bicameral legislature is called the House of Representatives. Made up of representatives from the ninety-nine districts of the state, the members are elected for two-year terms, and all representatives stand for election simultaneously. To qualify…

Chartered in 1974, the Tennessee Humanities Council exists to bring the study of the humanities into public awareness, thus fulfilling the mission of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) at the state level. In the beginning, many associated with…

The hillbilly Tennessee depicted in Hollywood films is akin to the romanticized mythographic West of cowboys and Indians. Though there may be a grain of truth imbedded somewhere in the stereotypical image, it is far from representative of the state…

Representative of the many textile mills that opened in Middle Tennessee in the early twentieth century, Tennessee Knitting Mills began operations in Columbia, Tennessee, in June 1931 as Massachusetts Knitting Mills. In that year, a group of Bostonians led by…