What’s Cherokee about Cherokee Boulevard?
November is National Native American Heritage Month, and visitors often ask about Native American culture and history in Knoxville and the surrounding…
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Category: History
The Power of One - How Tennessee Helped Ratify the 19th Amendment
The suffragists must have felt the whole world was against them. When they arrived in Knoxville in late 1917, the band of courageous women were met with hostility. Nearly 70 years into the struggle for woman suffrage, the prize was in sight but still very far out of reach. More than a decade after…
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A Return of the '50s?
In these days when many people are picking up groceries from sidewalk pickups, and meals from restaurant take-out windows, some even attending church services in their cars, some older folks may experience a sense of deju vu. They may remember similar scenes in their youth--if not with the same…
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Irish Town
Knoxville once had a whole neighborhood where it was St. Patrick’s Day every day. It was populated mostly by Irish immigrants, refugees from the famine at home. They settled all over America, but hundreds, mostly young men, came to Knoxville in the 1850s as unskilled laborers, helping build the…
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Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin: Through the Unusual Door
“We’ve been working on it and talking about it for so long, I can’t believe that Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin: Through the Unusual Door is finally happening.” David Butler, KMA Executive Director Building a significant collection of works by Knoxville native Beauford Delaney has been a…
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1920 in 2020
In 2020, you’ll hear a lot about centennials, especially the centennial of Suffrage, the shorthand term for the 19th Amendment, which guaranteed women the right to vote. Some women already had the right to vote. Tennessee had passed suffrage the previous year, and in Knoxville, women voted in…
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Veteransville?
The Union Soldier’s Monument by Shawn Poynter Veterans Day, which we once knew as Armistice Day, is…
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Our Most Literary Ghost
It's a chilling scene that comes out of nowhere. A young mother named Mary, whose husband, Jay, has…
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Summer Springs
Chilhowee Expo Postcard courtesy of Knoxville History Project Knoxville’s association with summer is…
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A History of Pride
This weekend is Pridefest, a celebration of tolerance for lesbians, gays, and transsexuals, and others who have felt excluded from mainstream society…
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