V.

Education and Cultural Institutions

A.

Education

The present educational system dates from a school law enacted in 1873. The Tennessee legislature provided for tax-supported secondary schools in 1893, and provisions for the establishment of county high schools were enacted six years later. Interest in the upgrading of education increased markedly during the late 19th century and early 20th century, and by 1913 a third of the state’s income was set aside for educational purposes. Education in Tennessee is now compulsory for children between the ages of 6 and 17. Of the children in the state, 10 percent are enrolled in private schools.

In the 2002–2003 school year Tennessee spent $6,962 on each student’s education, compared to a national average of $9,299. There were 15.7 students for every teacher (the national average was 15.9 students per teacher). Of those older than 25 years of age in the state, 80.9 percent had a high school diploma in 2006, while the country as a whole averaged 84.1 percent.

A.1.

Higher Education

The first two colleges in Tennessee, Greeneville College (now Tusculum College) and Blount College (now the University of Tennessee, Knoxville), were chartered in 1794. In 2004–2005 Tennessee had 22 public and 75 private institutions of higher education. Leading schools included the University of Tennessee, the state’s land-grant university with campuses in several cities; Vanderbilt University, Fisk University, Tennessee State University, and Meharry Medical College, in Nashville; Carson-Newman College, in Jefferson City; University of the South, in Sewanee; Lincoln Memorial University, in Harrogate; Austin Peay State University, in Clarksville; University of Memphis; and Middle Tennessee State University, in Murfreesboro. Vanderbilt University includes the noted George Peabody College for Teachers, and Fisk University is one of the leading institutions of higher education for blacks in the country.

B.

Libraries

Public libraries are found in most Tennessee cities and towns, with the largest in Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, and Chattanooga. In all, 184 tax-supported library systems serve the state. The public libraries annually circulate an average of 4 books for each state resident, one of the lowest circulation rates in the country. The State Library and Archives is located at Nashville. Major college and university libraries in the state include the Jean and Alexander Heard Library at Vanderbilt University; the libraries of the University of Tennessee; and the Eskind Biomedical Library at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Special collections of books by and about blacks are housed at Le Moyne-Owen College, in Memphis, and Fisk University, in Nashville; Lincoln Memorial University, in Harrogate, has collections on the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln.

C.

Museums

Fine arts museums in Tennessee include the Hunter Museum of American Art, in Chattanooga; the Knoxville Museum of Art; the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, and the Dixon Gallery and Gardens, in Memphis; and Cheekwood-Tennessee Botanical Gardens and Museum of Art, and the Carl Van Vechten Gallery at Fisk University, in Nashville. Other museums of note include the Pink Palace Museum which features a planetarium and an IMAX theater, and the Mississippi River Museum at Mud Island, in Memphis; the Parthenon, Cumberland Science Museum, Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, and Tennessee State Museum, in Nashville; the Frank H. McClung Museum on the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville; the Museum of Appalachia, in Norris, near Knoxville; and the American Museum of Science and Energy, in Oak Ridge.

D.

Communications

There were 23 daily newspapers published in Tennessee in 2002. The first newspaper published was the Knoxville Gazette, printed at Rogersville in 1791 and moved to Knoxville the following year. The oldest newspaper still published in the state is the daily Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle, which was founded in 1808. The Nashville Tennessean, one of the larger of the Tennessee dailies, was founded four years later. Other major Tennessee dailies include the Memphis Commercial Appeal, the Knoxville News-Sentinel, and the Chattanooga Times-Free Press. The Times was published after 1878 by Adolph S. Ochs, who later owned and developed the New York Times.

Tennessee’s first radio station was WKN, at Memphis, licensed in 1922. The first television station, also located in Memphis, was WMCT, which began operating in 1948. In 2002 Tennessee had 133 AM and 138 FM radio stations and 26 television stations.

E.

Music and Theater

The folk culture of Tennessee has played an important part in the development of the state’s music. Bluegrass music originated in Bristol, Tennessee, and blues music was developed among blacks living along the famous Beale Street in downtown Memphis. Both black and white spirituals are popular, and there is also a considerable body of “work” songs. The Grand Ole Opry has helped spread country-and-western music through many nationally broadcast radio performances from Nashville.

Concerts were inaugurated in Tennessee in about 1816. Theodore Thomas introduced symphonic music in the 1870s and subsequently directed the Memphis Festival Concerts of 1884. Opera has been popular in Tennessee since the late 19th century.