The strange career of Jim Crow : the early civil rights movement in Tennessee, 1935-1950 -- We are not afraid! : Brown and Jim Crow schools in Tennessee -- Hell no, we won't integrate : continuing school desegregation in Tennessee -- Keep Memphis down in Dixie : sit-in demonstrations and desegregation of public facilities -- Let nobody turn me around : sit-ins and public demonstrations continue to spread -- The King God didn't save : the movement turns violent in Tennessee -- The Black Republicans : civil rights and politics in Tennessee -- The Black Democrats : civil rights and politics in Tennessee -- The frustrated fellowship : civil rights and African American politics in Tennessee -- Make Tennessee state equivalent to UT for white students : desegregation of higher education -- After Geier and the merger : desegregation of higher education in Tennessee continues -- Don't you wish you were white? : the conclusion.
This volume presents a variety of fresh perspectives on the peoples, periods, and major events of Tennessee history. Featuring contributions by both established historians and rising young scholars, the twenty essays contained here explore new avenues of research and interpretation while considering the forces that have shaped society and culture in the Volunteer State over the past two hundred years. As editor Carroll Van West points out, four major themes link the chapters in this collection. First, this is a "people's history" in which the contributions and interactions of the state's diverse groups--from Native Americans to Civil War generals, from women to African Americans, from rural reformers to the three presidents who began their careers in Tennessee--create a shared narrative. A second major theme concerns the ways in which economic change, both in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, has affected Tennessee politics. The interplay among reform, race, and class, especially in such twentieth-century movements as Progressivism and civil rights, forms a third theme among the essays. Finally, there is the theme of war and its social impact: this volume considers not only the momentous effects of the Civil War but those of the Second World War, particularly on the homefront. Drawn from the pages of the Tennessee Historical Quarterly, these essays offer a well-balanced look at the state's vibrant past. The book will prove an invaluable resource for teachers, students, researchers, and general readers. The Editor: Carroll Van West, who teaches at Middle Tennessee State University, is senior editor of the Tennessee Historical Quarterly and editor-in-chief of the forthcoming Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture. He is the author, most recently, of Tennessee's Historic Landscapes. The Contributors: Elizabeth Fortson Arroyo, Jonathan M. Atkins, Fred Arthur Bailey, Paul K. Conkin, Wayne Cutler, W. Calvin Dickinson, John R. Finger, Cynthia G. Fleming, Kenneth W. Goings, Dewey W. Grantham, Caneta S. Hankins, Paul Harvey, Mary S. Hoffschwelle, Patricia Blake Howard, Connie L. Lester, James L. McDonough, Paul V. Murphy, Robert Tracy McKenzie, Patrick D. Reagan, Gerald L. Smith, Margaret Ripley Wolfe, and Kathleen R. Zebley.
"The authors introduce readers to famous personalities such as Andrew Jackson and Austin Peay, but they also tell stories of ordinary people and their lives to show how they are an integral part of the state's history. Sidebars throughout the book highlight events and people of particular interest, and reading lists at the end of chapters provide readers with avenues for further exploration."--BOOK JACKET.
This book reviews the history of the Highlander Folk School (Summerfield, Tennessee) and describes school programs that were developed to support Black and White southerners involved in social change. The Highlander Folk School was a small, residential adult education institution founded in 1932. The first section of the book provides background information on Myles Horton, the founder of the school, and on circumstances that led him to establish the school. Horton's experience growing up in the South, as well as his educational experience as a sociology and theology student, served to strengthen his dedication to democratic social change through education. The next four sections of the book describe the programs developed during the school's 30-year history, including educational programs for the unemployed and impoverished residents of Cumberland Mountain during the Great Depression; for new leaders in the southern industrial union movement during its critical period; for groups of small farmers when the National Farmers Union sought to organize in the South; and for adult and student leadership in the emerging civil rights movement. Horton's pragmatic leadership allowed educational programs to evolve in order to meet community needs. For example, Highlander's civil rights programs began with a workshop on school desegregation and evolved more broadly to prepare volunteers from civil rights groups to teach "citizenship schools," where Blacks could learn basic literacy skills needed to pass voter registration tests. Beginning in 1958, and until the school's charter was revoked and its property confiscated by the State of Tennessee in 1961, the school was under mounting attacks by highly-placed government leaders and others because of its support of the growing civil rights movement. Contains 270 references, chapter notes, and an index. (LP)
Middle Tennessee State University was founded in 1911 as a two-year training school for teachers and has since evolved through myriad changes--in name, in size, in administration, and in academic and athletic resources. Change has also swept through the campus with the ebb and tide of the American climate during some of the twentieth century's most turbulent eras, including World Wars I and II, the New Deal period, and the Civil Rights Movement. What has remained steadfast through the years at this revered Tennessee institution is a commitment to excellence, and a faculty, staff, and student body in constant pursuit of the rewards of higher education. Located on a 500-acre campus in Murfreesboro, Middle Tennessee State University boasts a wide array of opportunities for a student population of nearly 20,000. Courses in everything from agriscience to aerospace, from criminal justice to the recording industry offer budding scholars a chance to explore a wide variety of disciplines, while they also enjoy participating in team sports, academic societies, and social organizations. Within these pages, students, alumni, and friends of the university will travel down memory lane through a unique photographic tribute to the Blue Raiders. Images of dormitories in the 1920s, World War II campus drills, the first Greek organizations, General MacArthur's visit, homecoming floats, band performances, and early sports teams illuminate the school's colorful history.
The extraordinary true story of Ruby Bridges, the first Black child to integrate a New Orleans school -- now with simple text for young readers! In 1960, six-year-old Ruby Bridges walked through an angry crowd and into a school, changing history. This is the true story of an extraordinary little girl who became the first Black person to attend an all-white elementary school in New Orleans. With simple text and historical photographs, this easy reader explores an amazing moment in history and celebrates the courage of a young girl who stayed strong in the face of racism.
The 1925 Tennessee v. John Scopes case--the Scopes Monkey Trial--is one of America's most famous courtroom battles. Until now, however, no one has considered at length why the sensational, divisive trial of a public high school science teacher indicted for teaching evolution took place where, and when, it did. This study ranges over the fifty years preceding the trial to examine intertwined attitudes toward schooling and faith held by Tennessee's politically dominant white evangelical Protestants. Those decades saw accelerating social and economic change in the South, writes Charles A. Israel. Education, long the province of family and community, grew ever more centralized, professionalized, and isolated from the local values that first underpinned it. As Israel tells how parents and church, civic, and political leaders at first opposed public education, then endorsed it, and finally fought to control it, he reveals their deep ambivalence about the intangible costs of progress. Lessons that Evangelicals took away from failed adult temperance campaigns also prompted them to reexert control over who and what influenced their children. Evangelicals rallied behind a 1915 bill requiring the Bible to be read daily in public schools. The 1925 Butler bill criminalized the teaching of evolution, which had come to symbolize all that was threatening about theological liberalism and materialistic science. The stage for the Scopes trial had been set. Delving deeply into the collective mind of a people in an age of uncertainty, Before Scopes sheds new light on religious belief, ideology, and expression.
