Institution

The International Printing Pressmen and Assistants' Union of North America (IPPAU-NA), was organized in 1889, when disgruntled pressmen and press feeders left the International Typographical Union (ITU) and, with the combined membership of thirteen locals, formed a new pressmen's union.…

Organized in Nashville in 1897, the Interstate Cotton Seed Crushers' Association operated from 1897 to 1929. It was the second cottonseed trade association, the first having been disbanded in 1887 after the American Cotton Oil Trust absorbed most of the…

The Iroquois Steeplechase, a rite of spring for horse enthusiasts, has been held every second Saturday in May since 1941. The amateur horse races take place at a three-mile course of wood, water, and brush jumps at Nashville's Percy and…

The first Nashville firm to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, J. C. Bradford and Company was founded in 1927 by James Cowdon Bradford Sr. Bradford was born in Nashville to Alexander and Leonora Bradford on November…

The oldest registered distillery in the nation, Jack Daniel Distillery is located in Lynchburg in Moore County. Established by Jasper "Jack" Daniel in 1866, the distillery produces sour mash whiskey. Daniel located the distillery near his birthplace, recognizing that what…

The Johnson Bible College was founded as the "School of the Evangelists" in 1893 by Ashley S. Johnson at Kimberlin Heights (approximately twelve miles southeast of Knoxville). Johnson, a Knox County native and successful evangelist, author, and educator, transformed his…

Sears, Roebuck and Company magnate Julius Rosenwald created the Julius Rosenwald Fund (JRF) in 1917 to coordinate his contributions for African American education. Guided by Booker T. Washington, Rosenwald supported the expansion of public education for rural southern blacks within…

The Holston Presbytery founded King College in 1867 in Bristol and named the school for James King, an eighteenth-century settler in the region. Both the acreage and physical plant of the college have more than doubled in 130 years. The…

Founded in 1869 by a group of Philadelphia tailors, the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor grew slowly as a secret organization under the leadership of Uriah Stephens. In 1879, when Terence V. Powderly, a machinist and…

Immediately after the Civil War, scores of northern missionaries traveled south to educate the newly freed slaves. These missionary efforts resulted in the establishment of a number of black colleges and universities. One of these schools was Knoxville College, a…

The first newspaper in Tennessee was the Knoxville Gazette, printed initially at Rogersville, Hawkins County, on November 5, 1791. Its editor, printer, and publisher was George Roulstone (1767-1804), who stayed in Rogersville for eleven months before moving the newspaper permanently…

When the Knoxville Journal ceased operation in 1991, a Knoxville institution died. Although the paper's exact ancestry was sometimes in dispute, the Journal itself liked to claim that it was the descendant of the irascible William G. "Parson" Brownlow's feisty…

Opened in 1961 as the Dulin Gallery of Art, the Knoxville Museum of Art was originally housed in an early twentieth-century neighborhood mansion designed by noted American architect John Russell Pope. As the museum grew, however, the limitations of the…

Currently the only daily newspaper in Knoxville, the News-Sentinel began in December 1886 as the evening Sentinel published by John Travis Hearn, a native of Shelbyville, Kentucky. The first four-page edition of the Sentinel was printed on a steam-operated flatbed…

This Chattanooga-based hamburger chain was founded in 1932 by Rodolph B. Davenport Jr. and J. Glenn Sherrill. Loosely patterned after the successful midwestern White Castle hamburger chain which had begun in 1921 in Wichita, Kansas, Krystal capitalized on the economic…

The infamous Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was organized in May or early June of 1866 in a law office in Pulaski by six bored Confederate veterans (the "immortal six"). The Ku Klux Klan was, in its inception, a social club…

The Ladies' Hermitage Association was organized in 1889 to honor President Andrew Jackson by preserving his home, the Hermitage. Mrs. Andrew Jackson III and Mary C. Dorris suggested a women's association similar to The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association after Dorris…

On December 2, 1843, the Memphis Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church received a charter from the Tennessee General Assembly authorizing the establishment of a young women's preparatory school and college to be named the Memphis Conference Female Institute (MCFI).…

In 1882 Lane College, then the "C.M.E. High School," was founded by the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church (now Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, CME) in America. Initially Bishop William Henry Miles, the first bishop of the CME Church, presided over the…

This organization formed prior to the ratification of the Suffrage Amendment when thirty-five of the required thirty-six states had ratified the amendment. Tennessee suffragists attended the last national suffrage convention in February 1920 and returned home to Tennessee to organize…