Encyclopedia

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…

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…

Overlooking the sulfur springs at Bledsoe's Lick in the Castalian Springs community, the sprawling log inn Wynnewood was built in 1828 for travelers passing between Knoxville and Nashville. The builders, Alfred R. Wynne, Stephen Roberts, and William Cage, located it…

The unassuming building at Oak Ridge numbered X-10 housed the Graphite Reactor, the oldest nuclear reactor in the world. The Graphite Reactor was the world's first powerful nuclear reactor which transformed uranium 238 into plutonium 239. The X-10 facilities also…

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…

Epidemic diseases caused great concern for nineteenth-century Tennesseans. Subject to outbreaks of cholera, smallpox, and dysentery, people lived with the stark reality of disease-induced death, especially in the growing urban areas where sanitation was often poor. For residents of West…

Henderson Yoakum was a Jacksonian stalwart in Middle Tennessee during the tumultuous political battles of the 1830s and 1840s. This native Tennessean later became an important personal and political confidant of Texas Governor Sam Houston and wrote the first comprehensive…