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]</ref>[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
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.
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. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by 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 geographically, culturally, and legally divided into three Grand Divisions of East, Middle, and West Tennessee. Nashville is the state's capital and largest city, and anchors its largest metropolitan area. Other major cities include Memphis, Knoxville, Chattanooga, and Clarksville. 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.
Tennessee State University is a public historically black land-grant university in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1912, it is the only state-funded historically black university in Tennessee. It is a member-school of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. Tennessee State University offers 41 bachelor's degrees, 23 master's degrees, and eight doctoral degrees. It is classified as "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity".
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. During the period of racial segregation in the United States, the majority of American institutions of higher education served predominantly white students, and disqualified or limited black American enrollment. Later on some universities, either after expanding their inclusion of black people and African Americans into their institutions or gaining the status of minority-serving institution, became Predominantly Black Institutions (PBIs).
The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually referred to as simply the Freedmen's Bureau, was an agency of early Reconstruction, assisting freedmen in the South. It was established on March 3, 1865, and operated briefly as a U.S. government agency, from 1865 to 1872, after the American Civil War, 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".
Clark Atlanta University is a private, Methodist, historically black research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Clark Atlanta is the first Historically Black College or University (HBCU) in the Southern United States. Founded on September19, 1865 as Atlanta University, it consolidated with Clark College to form Clark Atlanta University in 1988. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity".
The University of Tennessee system is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is one of two public university systems, the other being the Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR). It consists of four primary campuses in Knoxville, Chattanooga, Pulaski and Martin; a health sciences campus in Memphis; a research institute in Tullahoma; and various extensions throughout the state.
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.
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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.
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The history of Memphis, Tennessee and its area began many thousands of years ago with succeeding cultures of indigenous peoples. In the first millennium, it was settled by the Mississippian culture. The Chickasaw Indian tribe emerged about the 17th century, or migrated into the area. The earliest European exploration may have encountered remnants of the Mississippian culture by Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto. Later French explorers led by René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle likely encountered the Chickasaw. The European-American city of Memphis was not founded until 1819. The city was named after the ancient capital of Egypt on the Nile River in North Africa.
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Edward Parmelee Smith (1827–1876) was a Congregational minister in Massachusetts before becoming Field Secretary for the United States Christian Commission during the American Civil War. In official positions with the American Missionary Association (AMA), he was a co-founder of Fisk University and other historically black colleges established in the South for the education of freedmen. Beginning in 1873, he served as commissioner of Indian Affairs under President Ulysses S. Grant. In 1875, he was selected president of Howard University, but died on a trip in Africa in 1876 before taking office.
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This bibliography of Andrew Johnson is a list of major works about Andrew Johnson, the 17th president of the United States.
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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. During the slavery era to 1865, 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 Reconstuction 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.
Freedmen's Schools were educational institutions created soon after the abolition of slavery in the United States to educate freedmen. Due to the remaining opposition to equality between blacks and whites, it was difficult for the formerly enslaved to receive a proper education, among a myriad of other things. Schools were made especially for blacks but were open to anyone regardless of race. These schools were far from perfect; however, they did give African Americans hope and opportunity for their future.
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