State government operations are administered by the Tennessee Department of Education.[1] The state Board of Education has 11 members: one from each Congressional district, a student member, and the executive director of the Tennessee Higher Education Commission (THEC), who serves as ex-officio nonvoting member.[2]
History
Black schools
Protestant activists created the Western Freedmen's Aid Commission in Cincinnati in January 1863. Its goal was to set up schools for freed slaves in Union-controlled districts in the western states. It was most active in Tennessee, where, in 1865, its 123 white teachers provided manual and domestic training as well as academic instruction. There were 1949 students in Memphis and over 300 in Clarksville. Starting in 1865 the government's Freemen's Bureau provided the school buildings and the Commission provided the teachers, typically young women from the New England diaspora.[3][4]
Public and private schools
Public primary and secondary education systems are operated by county, city, or special school districts to provide education at the local level, and operate under the direction of the Tennessee Department of Education.[1] The state also has many private schools.[5]
The state enrolls approximately 1 million K–12 students in 137 districts.[6] In 2021, the four-year high school graduation rate was 88.7%, a decrease of 1.2% from the previous year.[7] According to the most recent data, Tennessee spends $9,544 per student, the 8th lowest in the nation.[8]
In January 1952, the University of Tennessee was the first major southern university to admit blacks.[12]
In 2014, the Tennessee General Assembly created the Tennessee Promise, which allows in-state high school graduates to enroll in two-year post-secondary education programs such as associate degrees and certificates at community colleges and trade schools in Tennessee tuition-free, funded by the state lottery, if they meet certain requirements.[13] The Tennessee Promise was created as part of then-governor Bill Haslam's "Drive to 55" program, which set a goal of increasing the number of college-educated residents to at least 55% of the state's population.[13] The program has also received national attention, with multiple states having since created similar programs modeled on the Tennessee Promise.[14]
Tennessee has 107 private institutions.[15]Vanderbilt University in Nashville is consistently ranked as one of the nation's leading research institutions.[16] Nashville is often called the "Athens of the South" due to its many colleges and universities.[17] Tennessee is also home to six historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).[18]
↑ Kreyling, Christine M; Paine, Wesley; Warterfield, Charles W; Wiltshire, Susan Ford (1996). Classical Nashville: Athens of the South. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. ISBN0-585-13200-3.
Baker, A. Paige, and Dengke Xu. "The Measure of Education: A Review of the Tennessee Value Added Assessment System." (1995) online in ERIC.
Doak, H. M. "The Development of Education in Tennessee." The American Historical Magazine and Tennessee Historical Society Quarterly 8.1 (1903): 64-90; coverage to 1880. online
Goldhaber, Dan, and Karen Callahan. "Impact of the Basic Education Program on educational spending and equity in Tennessee." Journal of Education Finance 26.4 (2001): 415-435. [Goldhaber, Dan, and Karen Callahan. "Impact of the Basic Education Program on educational spending and equity in Tennessee." Journal of Education Finance 26.4 (2001): 415-435. online]
Israel, Charles Alan. Before scopes: evangelicalism, education, and evolution in Tennessee, 1870-1925 (University of Georgia Press, 2004) online.
Merriam, Lucius Salisbury. Higher education in Tennessee (US Government Printing Office, 1893) online.
Rolle, Anthony, and Keke Liu. "An empirical analysis of horizontal and vertical equity in the public schools of Tennessee, 1994-2003." Journal of Education Finance (2007): 328-351. online
SAMPLES, RALPH EDWARD. "THE DEVELOPMENT OF PUBLIC EDUCATION IN TENNESSEE DURING THE BOURBON ERA, 1870-1900" (PhD dissertation, University of Tennessee; ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1965. 6608205).
Williams, Frank B. “John Eaton, Jr., Editor, Politician, and School Administrator, 1865-1870.” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 10#4 (1951), pp. 291–319. online
Race
Fleming, Cynthia Griggs. "The development of Black Education in Tennessee, 1865-1920" (PhD dissertation, Duke University, 1977) online.
Fraser, Walter J. "John Eaton, Jr., Radical Republican: Champion of the Negro and Federal Aid to Education." Tennessee Historical Quarterly 25.3 (1966): 239+ online
Hodgson, Frank McGuire. "Northern Missionary Aid Societies, the Freedmen's Bureau, and Their Effects on Education in Montgomery County, Tennessee" West Tennessee Historical Society Papers 43 (1989): 28-43.
Hoffschwelle, Mary. "The Federal Connection: Impact Aid and Black Public Education in Milan, 1874–1975." Tennessee Historical Quarterly 75.1 (2016): 28-63. online
Kickler, Troy Lee, "Black Children and Northern Missionaries, Freedmen's Bureau Agents, and Southern Whites in Reconstruction Tennessee, 1865 -1869. " PhD dissertation, University of Tennessee, 2005) online
McGehee, C. Stuart. "E. 0. Tade, Freedmen's Education, and the Failure of Reconstruction in Tennessee." Tennessee Historical Quarterly 43 (1984): 378-380. online
Phillips, Paul David. "Education of Blacks in Tennessee During Reconstruction, 1865-1870." Tennessee Historical Quarterly 46.2 (1987): 98-109. online
Raffel, Jeffrey. Historical dictionary of school segregation and desegregation: The American experience (Greenwood, 1998) online
Ramsey, Sonya Yvette. "More than the three R's: The educational economic, and cultural experiences of African American female public school teachers in Nashville, Tennessee, 1869 to 1983" (PhD dissertation, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2000) online.
Savage, Carter Julian. "Cultural capital and African American agency: The economic struggle for effective education for African Americans in Franklin, Tennessee, 1890-1967." Journal of African American History 87.2 (2002): 206-235. online
Savage, Carter Julian. " 'Because We Did More With Less': The Agency of African American Teachers in Franklin, Tennessee: 1890-1967." Peabody Journal of Education 76.2 (2001): 170-203. online
Taylor, Alrutheus Ambush. The Negro in Tennessee, 1865-1880 (1941)
Smithwick, Brannon Marie. "Educating Generations: The Legacy and Future of the Allen-White School Campus, a Rosenwald School in Whiteville, Tennessee" (PhD dissertation, University of Southern California, 2023) online.
STITELY, THOMAS BEANE. "BRIDGING THE GAP: A HISTORY OF THE ROSENWALD FUND IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF RURAL NEGRO SCHOOLS IN TENNESSEE 1912-1932." (PhD dissertation, Peabody College for Teachers of Vanderbilt University) ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1975. 7522292).
Whipple, Lorena B., "African American Oral Histories of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Public Schools During the Early Days of Desegregation, 1955 – 1967. " (PhD dissertation, University of Tennessee, 2013) online
Primary sources
Eaton, John. First Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State of Tennessee, Ending Thursday, October 7th, 1869 (1869) online.
Graf, Leroy P. "Education in East Tennessee, 1867-1869, Selections from the John Eaton, Jr. Papers." East Tennessee Historical Society's Publications 23 (1951).
Swint, Henry Lee, ed. "Reports from Educational Agents of the Freedmen's Bureau in Tennessee, 1865- 1870." Tennessee Historical Quarterly 1#1 (1942): 52-80, 152-170.
Tennessee, officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina to the east, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi to the south, Arkansas to the southwest, and Missouri to the northwest. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. Tennessee's population as of the 2020 United States census is approximately 6.9 million.
Fisk University is a private historically black liberal arts college in Nashville, Tennessee. It was founded in 1866 and its 40-acre (16 ha) campus is a historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are institutions of higher education in the United States that were established before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the intention of primarily serving African Americans. Most of these institutions were founded during the Reconstruction era after the Civil War and are concentrated in the Southern United States. They were primarily founded by Protestant religious groups, until the Second Morill Act of 1890 required educationally segregated states to provide African American, public higher-education schools in order to receive the Act's benefits.
The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually referred to as simply the Freedmen's Bureau, was a U.S. government agency of early post American Civil War Reconstruction, assisting freedmen in the South. It was established on March 3, 1865, and operated briefly as a federal agency after the War, from 1865 to November 1872, to direct provisions, clothing, and fuel for the immediate and temporary shelter and supply of destitute and suffering refugees and freedmen and their wives and children.
Vanderbilt Peabody College of Education and Human Development is the education school of Vanderbilt University, a private research university in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1875, Peabody had a long history as an independent institution before merging with Vanderbilt University in 1979. The school is located on the Peabody Campus of Vanderbilt University in Nashville. The academic and administrative buildings surround the Peabody Esplanade and are southeast of Vanderbilt's main campus.
John Eaton, Jr. was an American educator who served as the U.S. Commissioner of Education and a Union Army colonel during the American Civil War. On March 12, 1866, the United States Senate confirmed his January 13, 1866, nomination for appointment to the grade of brevet brigadier general of volunteers to rank from March 13, 1865.
The American Missionary Association (AMA) was a Protestant-based abolitionist group founded on September 3, 1846 in Albany, New York. The main purpose of the organization was abolition of slavery, education of African Americans, promotion of racial equality, and spreading Christian values. Its members and leaders were of both races; the Association was chiefly sponsored by the Congregationalist churches in New England. The main goals were to abolish slavery, provide education to African Americans, and promote racial equality for free Blacks. The AMA played a significant role in several key historical events and movements, including the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights Movement.
University of Nashville was a private university in Nashville, Tennessee. It was established in 1806 as Cumberland College. It existed as a distinct entity until 1909; operating at various times a medical school, a four-year military college, a literary arts college, and a boys preparatory school. Educational institutions in operation today that can trace their roots to the University of Nashville include Montgomery Bell Academy, an all-male preparatory school; the Vanderbilt University Medical School; Peabody College at Vanderbilt University; and the University School of Nashville, a co-educational preparatory school.
Tennessee is one of the 50 states of the United States. What is now Tennessee was initially part of North Carolina, and later part of the Southwest Territory. It was admitted to the Union on June 1, 1796, as the 16th state. Tennessee earned the nickname "The Volunteer State" during the War of 1812, when many Tennesseans helped with the war effort, especially during the Americans victory at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. The nickname became even more applicable during the Mexican–American War in 1846, after the Secretary of War asked the state for 2,800 soldiers, and Tennessee sent over 30,000 volunteers.
Walter Lynwood Fleming (1874–1932) was an American historian of the South and Reconstruction. He was a leader of the Dunning School of scholars in the early 20th century, who addressed Reconstruction era history using historiographical technique. He was a professor at Vanderbilt University from 1917 through his career, also serving as Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, and Director of the Graduate School. A prolific writer, he published ten books and 166 articles and reviews. The son of a plantation owner who had slaves, Fleming was sympathetic to White supremacist arguments and Democratic Party positions of his era while critical of Republicans and Reconstruction.
This is a selected bibliography of the main scholarly books and articles of Reconstruction, the period after the American Civil War, 1863–1877.
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Bennett Harvie Branscomb was an American theologian and academic administrator. He served as the fourth chancellor of Vanderbilt University, a private university in Nashville, Tennessee, from 1946 to 1963. Prior to his appointment at Vanderbilt, he was the director of the Duke University Libraries and dean of the Duke Divinity School. Additionally, he served as a professor of Christian theology at Southern Methodist University. He was the author of several books about New Testament theology.
This bibliography of Andrew Johnson is a list of major works about Andrew Johnson, the 17th president of the United States.
African Americans are the second largest census "race" category in the state of Tennessee after whites, making up 17% of the state's population in 2010. African Americans arrived in the region prior to statehood. They lived both as slaves and as free citizens with restricted rights up to the Civil War.
William Harold Payne (1836–1907) was an American educator and translator. As professor of the Science and Art of Teaching at the University of Michigan in 1879, he was the first university professor of pedagogy in the United States. He served as the chancellor of the University of Nashville and the president of Peabody College from 1887 to 1901.
African Americans have played an essential role in the history of Arkansas, but their role has often been marginalized as they confronted a society and polity controlled by white supremacists. As slaves in the United States, they were considered property and were subjected to the harsh conditions of forced labor. After the Civil War and the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Reconstruction Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, African Americans gained their freedom and the right to vote. However, the rise of Jim Crow laws in the 1890s and early 1900s led to a period of segregation and discrimination that lasted into the 1960s. Most were farmers, working their own property or poor sharecroppers on white-owned land, or very poor day laborers. By World War I, there was steady emigration from farms to nearby cities such as Little Rock and Memphis, as well as to St. Louis and Chicago.
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The History of African-American education deals with the public and private schools at all levels used by African Americans in the United States and for the related policies and debates. Black schools, also referred to as "Negro schools" and "colored schools", were racially segregated schools in the United States that originated in the Reconstruction era after the American Civil War. They were created in Southern states under biracial Republican governments as free public schools for the formerly enslaved. All their students were blacks. After 1877, conservative whites took control across the South. They continued the black schools, but at a much lower funding rate than white schools.
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