Rogersville is a town in, and the county seat of, Hawkins County, Tennessee, United States. It was settled in 1775 by the grandparents of Davy Crockett. It is named for its founder, Joseph Rogers. Tennessee's second oldest courthouse, the Hawkins County Courthouse, first newspaper The Knoxville Gazette, and first post office are all located in Rogersville. The Rogersville Historic District is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Meharry Medical College is a private historically black medical school affiliated with the United Methodist Church and located in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1876 as the Medical Department of Central Tennessee College, it was the first medical school for African Americans in the South. While the majority of African Americans lived in the South, they were excluded from many public and private racially segregated institutions of higher education, particularly after the end of Reconstruction.
Maryville College is a private liberal arts college in Maryville, Tennessee. It was founded in 1819 by Presbyterian minister Isaac L. Anderson for the purpose of furthering education and enlightenment into the West. The college is one of the 50 oldest colleges in the United States and the 12th-oldest institution in the South. It is associated with the Presbyterian Church (USA) and enrolls about 1,100 students. Its mascot is the Scots, and sports teams compete in NCAA Division III athletics in the Collegiate Conference of the South.
Wilson College is a private, Presbyterian-related college in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1869 by two Presbyterian ministers, it was named for its first major donor, Sarah Wilson of nearby St. Thomas Township, Pennsylvania, who gave $30,000 toward the purchase of the land and home of Alexander McClure.
Gideon Blackburn was an American Presbyterian clergyman, evangelist, educator and missionary to Cherokee and Creek nations, and college president. He raised funds for new colleges and founded numerous congregations and churches in areas of new western settlement in Tennessee and Kentucky.
Edwin Bancroft Henderson, was an American educator and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) pioneer. The "Father of Black Basketball", introduced basketball to African Americans in Washington, D.C., in 1904, and was Washington's first male African American physical education teacher. From 1926 until his retirement in 1954, Henderson served as director of health and physical education for Washington, D.C.'s black schools. An athlete and team player rather than a star, Henderson both taught physical education to African Americans and organized athletic activities in Washington, D.C., and Fairfax County, Virginia, where his grandmother lived and where he returned with his wife in 1910 to raise their family. A prolific letter writer both to newspapers in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area and Alabama, Henderson also helped organize the Fairfax County branch of the NAACP and twice served as President of the Virginia NAACP in the 1950s.
John Chavis was a free Black educator and Presbyterian minister in the American South during the early 19th century. Born in Oxford, North Carolina, he fought for the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. He was the first African American known to attend college in the U.S., though it is not clear if he graduated. He studied with John Witherspoon at the College of New Jersey and finished his studies at Liberty Hall Academy in Virginia, where he was licensed to preach. Later, while working in Raleigh, North Carolina, he established a private school that was highly regarded and attended by both white and Black students.
Cumberland College in Princeton, Kentucky, was founded in 1826 and operated until 1861. It was the first college affiliated with the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. In 1842, the Cumberland Presbyterian denomination withdrew its support from Cumberland College in favor of Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee. In doing so, the denomination intended to simply relocate the school from Princeton to Lebanon, but Cumberland College remained open without denominational support until the Civil War.
Wheat was a farming community in Roane County, Tennessee. The area is now in the city of Oak Ridge.
Lucy Craft Laney was an American educator who in 1883 founded the first school for black children in Augusta, Georgia. She was principal for 50 years of the Haines Institute for Industrial and Normal Education.
Price Public Elementary School, now known as Price Public Community Center and Swift Museum, is a former African-American school in Rogersville, Tennessee. It currently serves as a community center and home of the Swift Museum. The school was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.
John Gloucester was the first African American to become an ordained Presbyterian minister in the United States, and the founder of The First African Presbyterian Church at Girard Avenue and 42nd Street in Philadelphia, which had 123 members by 1811.
St. Marks Presbyterian Church is a historic African-American Presbyterian church in Rogersville, Tennessee. Its building was added to the list of National Register of Historic Places in March 10, 2006.
Charles Warner Cansler was an American educator, civil rights advocate, and author, active primarily in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA. A grandson of William Scott, a pioneering African-American publisher, and the son of Knoxville's first Black American teacher, Cansler was instrumental in establishing educational opportunities for Knoxville's Black American children in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His 1940 biography, Three Generations: The Story of a Colored Family in Eastern Tennessee, remains an important account of black life in 19th century East Tennessee.
William Bennett Scott Sr. was a pioneering newspaper founder and publisher, mayor, and civil rights campaigner who helped found Freedman’s Normal Institute in Maryville, Tennessee. He was the first African American to run a newspaper in Tennessee and had the only newspaper in Blount County, Tennessee for 10 years. A Republican, he switched his and his paper's allegiance to the Democrats in the late 1870s.
Freedmen's Normal Institute was a school in Maryville, Tennessee in Eastern Tennessee established to train African American teachers. The school was built in 1872 and opened in 1873. It was co-founded by newspaper publisher William Bennett Scott Sr., Thomas B. Lillard Sr., others, and support from Quakers. It closed in 1901.
George Washington LeVere was an African American pastor, educator, abolitionist, and civil rights activist. As president of the African Civilization Society, LeVere met with President Abraham Lincoln and discussed the educational needs of freedmen. LeVere was a chaplain with the United States Colored Troops and served as a delegate to two Colored National Conventions and numerous Tennessee Republican Conventions. He was also the National Grand Master of the Prince Hall Freemasons from 1877 to 1886.
William Grant High School was a public high school for African Americans in Covington, Kentucky. It also served African American students from surrounding areas who were not allowed to attend the whites-only schools in the county. The elementary and secondary schools that became known as Lincoln-Grant School were in a school built on 7th Street until they were relocated to a new building at 824 Greenup. The school closed after desegregation and its students transferred to Holmes High School, The elementary school continued on until 1976. The Northern Kentucky Community Center occupied the school after it clsoed. In 2017 it became the Lincoln Grant Scholar House housing single parents with low incomes. Joseph M. Walton's The Life and Legacy of Lincoln School, Covington, Kentucky, 1866-1976 was published in 2010. He graduated from the school with honors in 1958. The school was listed on the National Register of Historical Places in 2013. It is in the Emery-Price Historic District.
Nelson Merry College was an American private Baptist black K–12 school in operation from c. 1890 to 1965, and located in Mossy Creek in Tennessee, U.S.. It has a historical marker where it once stood, erected by Cultural Resource Analysts. The school went by many other names, including Nelson Merry Training College, Nelson Merry Academy, Nelson Mary College, and Nelson Merry High School.
Rev. William Henderson Franklin (1852–1935) was an American educator, minister, journalist, and school founder. Franklin dedicated his life to the education of Black children in rural Tennessee during the time of racial segregation. He founded Swift Memorial College in 1883, and served as the principal until 1926; and he first minister the congregation at St. Marks Presbyterian Church in Rogersville, Tennessee. He was also known as W.H. Franklin.
