Institution

This grassroots agrarian cooperative movement was founded in 1886 by sixteen African American farmers in Houston County, Texas, and spread rapidly across the South. Similar to the white Farmers' Alliance, the Colored Alliance advocated a program of uplift that promoted…

In 1921 the Tennessee General Assembly enacted a law "to provide for those colored men who served as servants and cooks in the Confederate Army." Senator Edgar Jones Graham of Hickman County proposed the bill, which entitled former slaves to…

The Commonwealth Fund has played an important part in the development of public health and medical education in Tennessee since the 1920s. Anna Richardson Harkness created the Commonwealth Fund in 1918 as a philanthropic outlet for the fortune amassed by…

Tennessee's system of community colleges traces its origins to the 1955-57 study Public Higher Education in Tennessee undertaken by the legislative council of the Tennessee General Assembly and directed by Truman Pierce and A. D. Albright. The study outlined fundamental…

In January 1889 the Frank Cheatham Bivouac of the Association of Confederate Soldiers forwarded a bill to the Tennessee General Assembly to establish a home for indigent and disabled Confederate veterans on the grounds of the Hermitage. The general assembly…

Nashville-based Confederate Veteran magazine was founded in 1893 by Sumner Archibald Cunningham, who also edited it. The monthly magazine commemorating the Confederate soldier was originally designed to inform patrons on the status of the Jefferson Davis monument fund spearheaded by…

The Country Music Association (CMA) is one of Tennessee’s most important musical trade associations. The CMA is dedicated to guiding and enhancing country music’s development and demonstrating its viability to advertisers, consumers, and media throughout the world. During the late…

The Country Music Foundation (CMF) is a tax-exempt, not-for-profit organization dedicated to collecting and preserving artifacts and disseminating information about country music’s development as an art and a business. The State of Tennessee chartered the CMF in 1964. In 1967,…

One of the most-visited popular-arts museums in the United States, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is now located in a $37 million facility of 135,000 square feet in downtown Nashville, next to the Sommet Center. The new…

The Cumberland Presbyterian Church grew out of the revivals on the Tennessee-Kentucky frontier in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The formation of the independent Cumberland Presbytery on February 4, 1810, at Dickson, Tennessee, by ministers Finis Ewing, Samuel…

Established as Cumberland College at Lebanon in 1842 under the patronage of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, Cumberland University received a charter as a university in 1843. Except for the period from 1962 to 1982, when the name was officially Cumberland…

The "Lebanon Law School" opened its first term in October 1847 as the first school of law in the Old Southwest. Professor Abraham Caruthers was soon joined by state Supreme Court Justice Nathan Green Sr., his son Nathan Jr., and…

For more than fifty years, dance companies have encouraged and supported the development of a high quality of dance throughout Tennessee. Through professional, civic, and educational affiliations, these ballet, jazz, tap, modern, and contemporary dance companies provide excellent opportunities for…

Hoping for relief from economic hardship, tobacco growers in western Kentucky and northern Middle Tennessee formed the Dark Tobacco District Planters' Protective Association of Kentucky and Tennessee (PPA) on September 24, 1904. A steady decline in dark-fired tobacco prices since…

Dell Computers became an important corporate employer in Middle Tennessee when it announced in May 1999 that it would expand operations from its central Texas base to the Nashville area. In August 1999 the company opened its Eastgate manufacturing facility,…

Development districts are regional planning and economic organizations owned and operated by the cities and counties of Tennessee. The nine development districts were established by the general assembly under the Tennessee Development District Act of 1965. The act was intended…

The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) came into being in 1832 in Lexington, Kentucky, with the union of Barton Stone's Christians and Alexander Campbell's reformers. The uniting groups shared the catholic vision of restoring unity based on the authority of…

Constructed between 1915 and 1927, the Dixie Highway was part of the new road system built in response to the growing number of motorists in the early decades of the twentieth century. When completed, the highway extended from Ontario, Canada,…

At the turn of the century, Chattanooga emerged as a textile manufacturing center, particularly for cotton hosiery. The 1913 introduction of the process of mercerizing, which gives yarn a fine silk finish, enhanced local industry and generated a new corporation,…

The Dixon Gallery and Gardens, with paintings by Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists such as Renoir, Degas, Cezanne, and Monet, its collection of eighteenth-century porcelain, and its stunning gardens, has long been one of Memphis's key attractions. With the recent acquisition…