Social

The Benwood Foundation is a charitable Chattanooga foundation created in 1944 by Coca-Cola bottling magnate George Thomas Hunter in memory of his uncle and aunt, pioneer bottler Benjamin Franklin Thomas and Anne Taylor Jones Thomas. The name Benwood was taken…

Bethlehem House is an example of early interracial cooperation among southern women. It opened in October 1913 at the corner of Tenth and Cedar Streets as a joint effort of the Methodist Training School, Fisk University, and the Woman's Missionary…

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…

During the Civil War many of Tennessee's 275,000 slaves abandoned farms and towns in anticipation of the approach of the Union army. In the summer of 1862, as the army of General Ulysses S. Grant entered the heavily slaveholding territory…

A rural resettlement community established during the Great Depression, Cumberland Homesteads is located in Cumberland County. This homestead community currently encompasses approximately 10,250 acres, less than half of the original total of 27,802 acres held by the cooperative association in…

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…

Even before the Civil War ended, President Abraham Lincoln and Congress realized that the government must offer assistance to newly emancipated slaves. The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, commonly known as the Freedmen's Bureau, attempted this task and…

One of the premier philanthropic foundations of the twentieth century, the General Education Board (GEB) invested heavily in Tennessee education. John D. Rockefeller Sr. created the GEB in 1902 in response to son John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s enthusiastic report of…

The Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) was the preeminent national organization for Union veterans. Founded in Springfield, Illinois, by physician Benjamin F. Stephenson in the spring of 1866, the GAR quickly organized posts within ten states and the District…

Josephine Groves Holloway became the first African American professional worker at the Cumberland Valley Girl Scout Council (CVGSC) in Nashville in 1944. She began her interest in girl scouting in 1923, when, as a recent graduate of Fisk University, she…

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…

Before the Civil War, voluntary associations of women existed in Knoxville, Memphis, and Nashville, as well as in some rural areas. Most groups organized through local religious institutions to provide charitable services to the needy. With the establishment of these…

A leader of the first generation of southern feminists and social activists, Lide Smith Meriwether was president of the Tennessee Woman's Christian Temperance Union, serving from 1884 until 1897, and then as honorary president for life. Having organized the first…

Confederate spy and, later, Memphis philanthropist, Virginia Bethel Moon was a student at an Ohio girls' school when the Civil War began. After initial resistance, school officials finally acquiesced to her demands and allowed her to leave school and join…

Nashoba was a short-lived, but internationally famous, utopian community on the present-day site of Germantown in Shelby County. Nashoba was founded in 1826 by Frances Wright, who dreamed of demonstrating a practical and effective alternative to the South's slave-based agricultural…

At the urging of Elise Massey Selden, a group of elite white women assembled at the Gayoso Hotel in May 1890 and founded what was soon to become the largest and most influential women's club in Memphis. Its stated objectives…

The first women's club in Knoxville and in Tennessee and the first club in the South to join the General Federation of Women's Clubs, Ossoli Circle was organized on November 20, 1885, when Lizzie Crozier French called twelve other women…

A group of black women, wives of prominent black leaders in Nashville's church, business, and professional arenas, organized the Phillis Wheatley Club in 1895. The club, established its headquarters at the AME Publishing House on the public square in Nashville,…

Founder of the Tennessee Vocational School for Colored Girls, J. Frankie Pierce was born during or shortly after the Civil War to Nellie Seay, the house slave of a Smith County legislator. Frankie Pierce received her education at the McKee…

Pittman Center was founded by Dr. John S. Burnett, a Methodist minister and educator who had long dreamed of establishing an educational and medical facility in one of the most isolated sections of East Tennessee. In 1921 funding for this…