Results by title
80 books match the query 'Tennessee' and 26 start with t
Teller Tales
HistoriesJo Carson
Ohio University Press, 2007
“All my work fits in my mouth,” Jo Carson says. “I write performance material no matter what else the pieces get called, and whether they are for my voice or other characters’ voices … they are first to be spoken aloud.” Following an oral tradition that has strong roots in her native Tennessee, the author of Teller Tales invites the reader to participate in events in a way that no conventional history book can.
Both stories in this book are set in East Tennessee in the mid-eighteenth century and share certain characters. The first narrative, “What Sweet Lips Can Do,” recounts the story of the Overmountain Men and the battle of King’s Mountain, a tide-turning battle in the American Revolution. “Men of Their Time” is an exploration of white-Cherokee relationships from early contact through the time of the Revolution.
Although not well known to the outside world, the stories recounted in Teller Tales are cornerstones in the heritage of the Appalachian region and of American history. In ways that will appeal to young and old alike, Jo Carson’s irreverent telling will broaden the audience and the understanding for the stories of native Americans, settlers, explorers, and revolutionaries of early America.
TennCare, One State's Experiment with Medicaid Expansion
Christina Juris Bennett
Vanderbilt University Press, 2014
While many states cut back on their Medicaid enrollments from 1993 to 2001, TennCare grew from 750,000 to 1.47 million enrollees. The state was less successful in controlling costs, however. Each major stakeholder group (the state, the managed care organizations, the providers, and the enrollees and their advocates) pushed back against parts of the state's strategy that adversely affected their interests, and they eventually dismantled the mechanisms of cost constraint.
The author lays out the four stakeholder perspectives for each period in the history of TennCare and provides a link to difficult-to-access primary documents.
Tennesseans at War, 1812–1815
Andrew Jackson, the Creek War, and the Battle of New OrleansTom Kanon
University of Alabama Press, 2014
Although frequently discussed as separate military conflicts, the War of 1812 against Great Britain and the Creek War against Native Americans in the territory that would become Alabama were part of the same forceful projection of growing American power. Success in both wars won for America security against attack from abroad and vast tracks of new land in “the Old Southwest.” In Tennesseans at War, 1812–1815, Tom Kanon explains the role Tennesseans played in these changes and how they remade the south.
Because it was a landlocked frontier state, Tennessee’s economy and security depended heavily upon the river systems that traversed the region; some, like the Tennessee River, flowed south out of the state and into Native American lands. Tennesseans of the period perceived that gaining mastery of these waterways formed an urgent part of their economic survival and stability.
The culmination of fifteen years’ research, Kanon’s work draws on state archives, primary sources, and eyewitness accounts, bringing the information in these materials together for first time. Not only does he narrate the military campaigns at the heart of the young nation’s expansion, but he also deftly recalls the economic and social pressures and opportunities that encouraged large numbers of Tennesseans to leave home and fight. He expertly weaves these themes into a cohesive narrative that culminates in the vivid military victories of the War of 1812, the Creek War, and the legendary Battle of New Orleans—the victory that catapulted Tennessee’s citizen-soldier Andrew Jackson to the presidency.
Expounding on the social roles and conditions of women, slaves, minorities, and Native Americans in Tennessee, Kanon also brings into focus the key idea of the “home front” in the minds of Tennesseans doing battle in Alabama and beyond. Kanon shows how the goal of creating, strengthening, and maintaining an ordered society permeated the choices and actions of the American elites on the frontiers of the young nation.
Much more than a history of Tennesseans or the battles they fought in Alabama, Tennesseans at War, 1812–1815, is the gripping story of a pivotal turning point in the history of the young American republic.
Tennessee Government and Politics
Democracy in the Volunteer StateJohn R. Vile
Vanderbilt University Press, 1998
The African-American History of Nashville, Tennessee, 1780-1930
Elites and DilemmasBobby L. Lovett
University of Arkansas Press, 1999
Since its founding, Nashville has been a center of black urban culture in the Upper South. Blacks—slave and free—made up 20 percent of Fort Nashborough’s settlers in 1779. From these early years through the Civil War, a growing black community in Nashville, led by a small group of black elites, quietly built the foundations of a future society, developing schools, churches, and businesses. The Civil War brought new freedoms and challenges as the black population of Nashville increased and as black elites found themselves able—even obliged—to act more openly. To establish a more stable and prosperous African-American community, the elites found that they had to work within a system bound to the interests of whites. But the aims of this elite did not always coincide with those of the black community at large. By 1930, younger blacks, in particular, were moving towards protest and confrontation. As democratization and higher education spread, the lines distinguishing Nashville’s black elite became blurred.
Bobby L. Lovett presents a complex analysis of black experience in Nashville during the years between 1780 and 1930, exploring the impact of civil rights, education, politics, religion, business, and neighborhood development on a particular African-American community. This study of black Nashville examines lives lived within a web of shifting alliances and interests—the choices made, the difficulties overcome.
Fifteen years in the making, illustrated with maps and photographs, this work is the first detailed study of any of Tennessee’s major urban black communities. Lovett here collects, organizes, and interprets a large, rich body of data, making this material newly accessible to all interested in the black urban experience.
The Apostle of Tennessee
The Indefatigable Life and Ministry of Father Aloysius OrengoJoe Pagetta
Vanderbilt University Press, 2026
When Nashville became a Catholic diocese in 1837, it was mostly an aspirational exercise. The few Catholics scattered throughout the state were ministered to only occasionally by missionary priests who traveled by horseback from Kentucky. It is believed that Hugh Rogan, who arrived in Middle Tennessee in 1780 after working as a surveyor for the Continental Army, did not see a priest for fifty years.
That all changed when the Italian-born Father Aloysius “Luigi” Orengo arrived in Nashville in 1848. He traveled all over the state, sleeping in the woods, using his saddle for a pillow, and eating cheese and crackers. He’s credited with building churches in Franklin, Columbia, Pulaski, East Nashville, Tracy City, Gallatin, Humboldt, Brownsville, Grand Junction, Covington, Jackson, and McEwen.
But as influential as he was, Father Orengo’s story remained untold—until now.
The Belcourt Theatre
Nashville's Oldest Neighborhood CinemaT. Minton
Vanderbilt University Press, 2026
Since opening in 1925 as the Hillsboro Theatre, the Belcourt has stood at the center of Nashville’s changing cultural life. Over the course of a century, it has been a neighborhood movie house, a stage for live performance, a home for community theater, an art-house cinema, a music venue, and a nonprofit film center. Its story is also the story of a city shaped by shifting technologies, urban change, grassroots activism, and evolving ideas about what cultural institutions are for.
The Belcourt Theatre offers the first full history of this enduring landmark, tracing how one cultural center adapted again and again to serve new audiences while remaining a vital place for public gathering, artistic exchange, and shared experience.
The Cherokees of Tuckaleechee Cove
Jon Marcoux
University of Michigan Press, 2012
The Chickamauga Campaign
Edited by Steven E. Woodworth
Southern Illinois University Press, 2010
From mid-August to mid-September 1863, Union major general William S. Rosecrans’s Army of the Cumberland maneuvered from Tennessee to north Georgia in a bid to rout Confederate general Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee and blaze the way for further Union advances. Meanwhile, Confederate reinforcements bolstered the numbers of the Army of Tennessee, and by the time the two armies met at the Battle of Chickamauga, in northern Georgia, the Confederates had gained numerical superiority.
Although the Confederacy won its only major victory west of the Appalachians, it failed to achieve the truly decisive results many high-ranking Confederates expected. In The Chickamauga Campaign,Steven E. Woodworth assembles eight thought-provoking new essays from an impressive group of authors to offer new insight into the complex reasons for this substantial, yet ultimately barren, Confederate victory.
This broad collection covers every angle of the campaign, from its prelude to its denouement, from the points of view of key players of all ranks on both sides. In addition to analyzing the actions taken by Union leaders Thomas L. Crittenden, Alexander McCook, and James S. Negley, and Confederate commanders Braxton Bragg, Patrick Cleburne, Daniel Harvey Hill, Thomas C. Hindman, James Longstreet, and Alexander P. Stewart, the book probes the campaign’s impact on morale in the North and South, and concludes with an essay on the campaign’s place in Civil War memory. The final essay pays particular attention to Union veteran Henry Van Ness Boynton, the founder and developer of Chickamauga and Chattanooga State Military Park, whose achievements helped shape how the campaign would be remembered.
This second volume in the Civil War Campaigns in the Heartland seriesprovides a profound understanding of the campaign’s details as well as its significance to Civil War history.
Contributors:
John R. Lundberg
Alexander Mendoza
David Powell
Ethan S. Rafuse
William G. Robertson
Timothy B. Smith
Lee White
Steven E. Woodworth
The Come Apart
A NovelSusannah Felts
Northwestern University Press, 2026
An authentic rock band story from Chicago to Nashville and, just maybe, back again
On the cusp of turning thirty, Chicago indie musician Maggie Corbin has hustled for a decade, set on making her rock and roll dreams come true. Her band, Spinning Birds, fronted by Maggie and her romantic partner Matt Turkish, releases a debut record to critical acclaim, hits the road, and begins working on a follow-up. From the outside, her path looks like success—but as streaming deconstructs the industry and Maggie’s relationships shift and slip, the question remains: Can you live for art alone?
When a sudden move back to the South forces Maggie to reframe her dreams and reckon with familial rifts and her past—while still fighting to reimagine what her future could be—a natural disaster in Nashville and a surprise encounter with a character from her childhood shift her perspective on healing, community, and the ties that bind. Drifting in and out of songwriting sessions, cozy kitchens, and moments of bearing witness to the curious power of the natural world, The Come Apart celebrates the times when we must come fully undone in order to put ourselves back together.
The Grit and the Grind
Building High-Performing Education Systems in an Era of PolarizationJoshua L. Glazer, Cori Egan, William R. Berry, and Amar Fattal
University of Chicago Press, 2026
Offers a much-needed perspective on the connections between community, policymaking, and the improvement of underperforming schools.
School reform remains a fraught issue in the United States as educators, policymakers, and communities strive to improve outcomes for all students. In The Grit and the Grind, Joshua L. Glazer, Cori Egan, William R. Berry, and Amar Fattal examine two ambitious efforts to improve the lowest-performing schools in Memphis, Tennessee. The book offers a rare inside look at the political, organizational, and educational challenges of improving schools at scale.
The two initiatives, the Achievement School District (ASD) and the Shelby County Innovation Zone (iZone), shared a common goal but pursued it through fundamentally different approaches. The ASD was a state-run turnaround district that removed schools from local control and placed them under the management of charter organizations. By contrast, the iZone operated through existing district institutions, relying on local educators and leaders to drive improvement. Despite common goals and substantial resources, the reforms developed in strikingly different ways. Drawing on years of research in Memphis, the authors move beyond familiar debates about charter schools and district reform to explore a deeper question: What does it take to improve schools in complex, pluralistic, and contested democratic societies? Their analysis reveals that educational improvement is simultaneously professional, organizational, and political. Efforts to enhance educational opportunities depend not only on curriculum, leadership, and expertise, but also on the legitimacy, trust, and community support that allow educational systems to learn from experience and sustain improvement.
At once a study of reform, organizations, and politics, The Grit and the Grind challenges simple explanations of success and failure, showing that meaningful improvement is forged through the slow, uncertain work of building systems capable of earning community trust while continuously strengthening teaching and learning.
The Juan Pardo Expeditions
Exploration of the Carolinas and Tennessee, 1566-1568Charles Hudson. Afterword by David G. Moore, Robin A. Beck Jr., and Christopher B. Rodning
University of Alabama Press, 2005
The Lost Cause and the Great War
Progressive Reform and Patriotism in the American SouthRobert E. Hunt
University of Alabama Press, 2025
How Tennessee reformers reconciled Southern heritage with rising nationalism, weaving the Lost Cause into the fabric of American progress and identity.
The Lost Cause and the Great War tells the stories of central Tennessee Progressive-era reformers to illustrate the fascinating broader issue of how Southerners steeped in Lost Cause Civil War mythologies simultaneously developed patriotic American fervor. Focusing on Luke Lea, a prominent politician and American army officer who attempted to capture Kaiser Wilhelm II during World War I, the book reveals the intricate interplay between three competing ideas: attachment to the memory of the Confederacy, intense American nationalism, and advocacy for progressive reforms.
Hunt shows that Lea and his contemporaries sought either to harmonize these competing loyalties or to compartmentalize them to use when needed. Through insightful accounts of Tennessee’s 1928 presidential campaign, the American Legion’s response to cuts to veteran benefits in 1933, and the redefinition of America’s global role post–World War II, Hunt shows how these reformers achieved a balance that held until the Civil Rights movement disrupted this delicate consensus.
Hunt’s rich account reveals how Lea and others like him wove national patriotism and Southern collective memory into a cohesive narrative that supported their broader Progressive goals. The book offers much to readers interested in Southern history, the Gilded Age, Prohibition, World War I, World War II, and the beginnings of the Civil Rights movement. It provides vivid examples of how collective memory and narratives shape social and political movements. General readers will discover how white Southerners who remained devoted to vindicating the Confederacy nonetheless became fervent supporters of America's growing nationalism in the early twentieth century.
The Mistakes of Yesterday, the Hopes of Tomorrow
The Story of the PrisonairesJohn Dougan
University of Massachusetts Press, 2012
Early in the morning on June 1, 1953, five African American men boarded a van to make the 200-mile trip from Nashville to Memphis for a daylong recording session at the legendary Sun Studios, to be overseen by Sun founder Sam Phillips. One of the two tracks cut that day, “Just Walkin' in the Rain,” would go on to become a regional R&B hit, Sun Records' biggest record of the pre-Elvis era. It would, however, be the group's only hit. They were the Prisonaires, a vocal quintet who had honed their skills while inmates at the Tennessee State Penitentiary in Nashville.
In this book, John Dougan tells the story of the Prisonaires, their hit single, and the afterlife of this one remarkable song. The group and the song itself represent a compelling concept: imprisoned men using music as a means of cultural and personal survival. The song was re-recorded by white singer Johnnie Ray, who made it a huge hit in 1956. Over the years, other singers and groups would move the song further away from its origins, recasting the deep emotions that came from creating music in a hostile, controlled environment.
The story of the Prisonaires, for all of its triumphs, reflects the disappointment of men caught in a paradoxical search for personal independence while fully cognizant of a future consigned to prison. Their brief career and the unusual circumstances under which it flourished sheds light on the harsh realities of race relations in the pre–Civil Rights South. The book also provides a portrait of Nashville just as it was gaining traction as a nationally recognized music center.
The New Negro in the Old South
Briggs, Gabriel A
Rutgers University Press, 2015
In this groundbreaking historical study, Gabriel A. Briggs makes the compelling case that the New Negro first emerged long before the Great Migration to the North. The New Negro in the Old South reconstructs the vibrant black community that developed in Nashville after the Civil War, demonstrating how it played a pivotal role in shaping the economic, intellectual, social, and political lives of African Americans in subsequent decades. Drawing from extensive archival research, Briggs investigates what made Nashville so unique and reveals how it served as a formative environment for major black intellectuals like Sutton Griggs and W.E.B. Du Bois.
The New Negro in the Old South makes the past come alive as it vividly recounts little-remembered episodes in black history, from the migration of Colored Infantry veterans in the late 1860s to the Fisk University protests of 1925. Along the way, it gives readers a new appreciation for the sophistication, determination, and bravery of African Americans in the decades between the Civil War and the Harlem Renaissance.
The People’s Plaza
Sixty-Two Days of Nonviolent ResistanceJustin Jones
Vanderbilt University Press, 2022
Central to the occupation was Justin Jones, a student of Fisk University and Vanderbilt Divinity School whose place at the forefront of the protests brought him and the occupation to the attention of the Tennessee state troopers, state and US senators, and Governor Bill Lee. The result was two months of solidarity in the face of rampant abuse, community in the face of state-sponsored terror, and standoff after standoff at the doorsteps of the people's house with those who claimed to represent them. In this, his first book, Jones describes those two revolutionary months of nonviolent resistance against a police state that sought to dehumanize its citizens.
The People's Plaza is a rumination on the abuse of power, and a vision of a more just, equitable, anti-racist Nashville—a vision that kept Jones and those with him posted on the plaza through intense heat, unprovoked arrests, vandalism, theft, and violent suppression. It is a first-person account of hope, a statement of intent, and a blueprint for nonviolent resistance in the American South and elsewhere.
The Realms of Oblivion
An Excavation of the Davies Manor Historic Site's Omitted StoriesAndrew C. Ross
Vanderbilt University Press, 2024
Winner of the Tennessee History Book Award (Tennessee Historical Society and Tennessee Historical Commission), 2024
The Realms of Oblivion explores the complexities involved in reconciling competing versions of history, channeled through Davies Manor, a historic site near Memphis that once centered a wealthy slave-owning family’s sprawling cotton plantation. Interrogating the forces of memorialization that often go unquestioned in the stories we believe about ourselves and our communities, this book simultaneously tells an informative and engrossing bottom-up history—of the Davies family, of the Black families they enslaved and exploited across generations, and of Memphis and Shelby County—while challenging readers to consider just what upholds the survival of that history into the present day.
Written in an engaging and critical style, The Realms of Oblivion is grounded in a rich source base, ranging from nineteenth-century legal records to the personal papers of the Davies family to twentieth-century African American oral histories. Author Andrew C. Ross uses these sources to unearth the stark contrast between the version of Davies Manor’s history that was built out of nostalgia, and the version that records have proven to actually be true. As a result, Ross illuminates the ongoing need for a deep and honest reckoning with the history of the South and of the United States, on the part of both individuals and community institutions such as local historic sites and small museums.
The Secrets of the Hopewell Box
Stolen Elections, Southern Politics, and a City's Coming of AgeJames D. Squires
Vanderbilt University Press, 1996
—Kirkus Reviews
"His richly textured narrative charts the Nashville machine's rupture with the state's top political boss, Edward Crump of Memphis, and traces the sweeping reforms that shattered rural white control of the state legislature. Squires dramatically reenacts the downfall of Nashville lawyer Tommy Osborn, convicted of jury tampering in 1964 after defending Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa. He follows Nashville's transformation into a crucible of the civil rights movement in this stirring chronicle of the South's coming-of-age."
—Publishers Weekly
The Shiloh Campaign
Edited by Steven E. Woodworth
Southern Illinois University Press, 2009
Some 100,000 soldiers fought in the April 1862 battle of Shiloh, and nearly 20,000 men were killed or wounded; more Americans died on that Tennessee battlefield than had died in all the nation’s previous wars combined. In the first book in his new series, Steven E. Woodworth has brought together a group of superb historians to reassess this significant battleandprovide in-depth analyses of key aspects of the campaign and its aftermath.
The eight talented contributors dissect the campaign’s fundamental events, many of which have not received adequate attention before now. John R. Lundberg examines the role of Albert Sidney Johnston, the prized Confederate commander who recovered impressively after a less-than-stellar performance at forts Henry and Donelson only to die at Shiloh; Alexander Mendoza analyzes the crucial, and perhaps decisive, struggle to defend the Union’s left; Timothy B. Smith investigates the persistent legend that the Hornet’s Nest was the spot of the hottest fighting at Shiloh; Steven E. Woodworth follows Lew Wallace’s controversial march to the battlefield and shows why Ulysses S. Grant never forgave him; Gary D. Joiner provides the deepest analysis available of action by the Union gunboats; Grady McWhineydescribes P. G. T. Beauregard’s decision to stop the first day’s attack and takes issue with his claim of victory; and Charles D. Grear shows the battle’s impact on Confederate soldiers, many of whom did not consider the battle a defeat for their side. In the final chapter, Brooks D. Simpson analyzes how command relationships—specifically the interactions among Grant, Henry Halleck, William T. Sherman, and Abraham Lincoln—affected the campaign and debunks commonly held beliefs about Grant’s reactions to Shiloh’s aftermath.
The Shiloh Campaign will enhance readers’ understanding of a pivotal battle that helped unlock the western theater to Union conquest. It is sure to inspire further study of and debate about one of the American Civil War’s momentous campaigns.
The Tennessee Campaign of 1864
Edited by Steven E. Woodworth and Charles D. Grear
Southern Illinois University Press, 2016
Contributors explore the campaign’s battlefield action, including how Major General Andrew J. Smith’s three aggressive divisions of the Army of Tennessee became the most successful Federal unit at Nashville, how vastly outnumbered Union troops held the Allatoona Pass, why Hood failed at Spring Hill and how the event has been perceived, and why so many of the Army of Tennessee’s officer corps died at the Battle of Franklin, where the Confederacy suffered a disastrous blow. An exciting inclusion is the diary of Confederate major general Patrick R. Cleburne, which covers the first phase of the campaign. Essays on the strained relationship between Ulysses S. Grant and George H. Thomas and on Thomas’s approach to warfare reveal much about the personalities involved, and chapters about civilians in the campaign’s path and those miles away show how the war affected people not involved in the fighting. An innovative case study of the fighting at Franklin investigates the emotional and psychological impact of killing on the battlefield, and other implications of the campaign include how the courageous actions of the U.S. Colored Troops at Nashville made a lasting impact on the African American community and how preservation efforts met with differing results at Franklin and Nashville.
Canvassing both military and social history, this well-researched volume offers new, illuminating perspectives while furthering long-running debates on more familiar topics. These in-depth essays provide an expert appraisal of one of the most brutal and notorious campaigns in Civil War history.
The Tennessee, Green, and Lower Ohio Rivers Expeditions of Clarence Bloomfield Moore
Clarence Bloomfield Moore, edited and introduced by Richard R. Polhemus
University of Alabama Press, 2002
This richly illustrated book is the eighth of nine Classics in Southeastern Archaeology volumes based on Moore's investigations along the waterways of eastern North America.
This oversized reprint volume presents original materials from Moore's northernmost expeditions conducted in the early 1900s as he surveyed areas of potential archaeological interest in the southeastern United States. Some of the sites he found were later targeted for major excavations during the days of the WPA/CCC. Many National Register Historic Sites are today located along the rivers he explored in this work. In many cases, however, Moore's report documents sites since destroyed by river action or by lake impoundments behind hydroelectric dams or by looters.
As with all of Moore's other investigations, his thorough documentation and collaboration with other scholars advanced understanding of aboriginal peoples and fueled debate among the experts. For instance, more than 296 burials were recovered from Indian Knoll on the Green River in Kentucky. Some graves included ceremonially "killed" artifacts, dogs buried with both adults and children, and exotic materials leading to speculations concerning origins, usage, and trade networks. Stone box graves were widespread and somewhat exclusive to this area, giving rise to early assumptions regarding kinship between scattered modern Indian tribes.
Richard Polhemus has compiled a comprehensive inventory of Moore's work in Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky and written a concise introduction to place the work in context. In so doing, he has made available to contemporary scholars of history, archaeology, and anthropology a trove of resource material on one of the most archaeologically rich and artifact-diverse regions in the nation.
They Came to Nashville
Marshall Chapman
Vanderbilt University Press, 2010
In They Came to Nashville, Chapman records the personal stories of musicians shaping the modern history of music in Nashville, from the mouths of the musicians themselves. The trials, tribulations, and evolution of Music City are on display, as she sits down with influential figures like Kris Kristofferson, Emmylou Harris, and Miranda Lambert, and a dozen other top names, to record what brought each of them to Nashville and what inspired them to persevere. The book culminates in a hilarious and heroic attempt to find enough free time with Willie Nelson to get a proper interview. Instead, she's brought along on his raucous 2008 tour and winds up onstage in Beaumont, Texas singing "Good-Hearted Woman" with Willie.
They Came to Nashville reveals the daily struggle facing newcomers to the music business, and the promise awaiting those willing to fight for the dream.
Co-published with the Country Music Foundation Press
Thirteen Tennessee Ghosts and Jeffrey
Commemorative EditionKathryn Tucker Windham
University of Alabama Press, 2016
A deluxe, commemorative edition of famed southern author and folklorist Kathryn Tucker Windham’s introduction to the Volunteer State’s most enduring ghost stories.
In Thirteen Tennessee Ghosts and Jeffrey, beloved and best-selling folklorist Kathryn Tucker Windham presents a spine-tingling collection of Tennessee’s eeriest ghost tales. Accompanied by her faithful companion, Jeffrey, a friendly spirit who resided in her home, Windham traveled from the mysterious muds of Memphis to the haunted hollow’s of east Tennessee to collect the spookiest collection of Volunteer State revenants ever written.
In these perennial favorites, Windham captures the gentle folk humor of native Tennesseans as well as fascinating facts about the state’s rich history. In “The Dark Legend,” Windham recounts the story of explorer Merriwether Lewis, who met an untimely end on the Natchez Trace 1809 and whose spirit, it is said, still treads through Tennessee’s forests. Windham also visits central Tennessee’s Chapel Hill, where people who know the town say those who stand on the train tracks on dark, lonely nights can often see a disembodied light floating along the tracks. Neighbors say it’s the ghost of a headless flagman who returns to cavort with night-time guests.
High in Tennessee’s Appalachian mountains, Windham encounters Martin, the phantom fiddler of Johnson County. Legend has it that in life Martin’s musical skills so mesmerized the snakes of the Stone Mountains that they would slither from their dens to listen tamely to his fiddling. Intrepid visitors to the rocky tops of northeast Tennessee’s mountains say you can still hear Martin’s ghost fiddling in the hollows.
This handsome, new commemorative hardback edition returns Windham’s suspenseful classic to its original keepsake quality and includes a new afterword by the author’s children.
This Is Our Land
Grassroots Environmentalism in the Late Twentieth CenturyFerguson, Cody
Rutgers University Press, 2015
To Care for the Sick and Bury the Dead
African American Lodges and Cemeteries in TennesseeLeigh Ann Gardner
Vanderbilt University Press, 2022
These Black cemeteries dot the Tennessee landscape, but few know their history or the societies of care they represent. To Care for the Sick and Bury the Dead is the first book-length look at these cemeteries and the lodges that fostered them.
This book is a must-have for genealogists, historians, and family members of the people buried in these cemeteries.
Tried Men and True, or Union Life in Dixie
Thomas J. Cypert, edited and with an introduction by Margaret M. Storey
University of Alabama Press, 2011
A gripping firsthand account of loyalty, resistance, and survival in Confederate Tennessee, this memoir reveals the untold story of Unionist courage behind enemy lines.
Tried Men and True, or Union Life in Dixie is the memoir of a Union supporter in south-central Tennessee. In it, he chronicles in vivid and emotional detail the local tensions between Unionists and Confederates during the Civil War South and offers a rare first-person account of the guerrilla war that devastated Western Tennessee.
Thomas Jefferson Cypert (1827-1918) was a staunch Union man of Wayne County, Tennessee. In 1863, he helped organize the Second Tennessee Mounted Infantry, a regiment of loyalist Southerners enlisted to combat Confederate cavalry in West Tennessee and Northern Alabama. Tried Men and True is Cypert’s memoir of his time as Captain of Company A, including his capture by Confederate cavalry and subsequent daring escape, in which he was aided by local Union sympathizers and slaves.
After the Civil War, Cypert served two terms in the Tennessee State Senate, one of them during the heated first years of Reconstruction, when Tennessee disenfranchised former rebels and attempted to establish Unionist Republican rule in the state. Cypert clearly wrote his memoir to defend Unionism, condemn secession and rebellion, and support loyalists’ claims for post-war power through an account of their wartime sacrifices. Never before published, the manuscript has been preserved in nearly perfect condition by Cypert’s descendants over the generations. This book is a remarkable and engagingly written account of resistance to the Confederacy by a group of southwestern Tennessee loyalists.