Knoxville Brewfest highlights new beers, but our brewing tradition goes way back. Beer became popular here with the immigration of German and Irish immigrants in the mid- 1800s. By 1869, Knoxville hosted two breweries, both on Second Creek. The Union […]
Nkechi Ajanaku died last week at age 60. She was best known as the longtime director of Kuumba, Knoxville’s biggest annual African-American festival since its inception. With the exception of Emancipation Day, Aug. 8, which was celebrated for decades and […]
Last week I wrote about the new Suttree Landing Park, and its surprising nod to a novel by Cormac McCarthy whose primary setting is a Knoxville underworld of riverside shantytowns and tavernboats. The south bank was the setting for some […]
June 5 is the 150th birthday of Pattie Boyd (1867-1947). Although a woman named Elizabeth Roulsone became publisher of the Knoxville Gazette after her husband’s death in 1804, and ran Tennessee’s first newspaper for four years, Boyd is remembered as […]
Suttree Landing Park looks nautical, with little pocket lookouts for picnics or contemplation almost like jetties. Stand at one of these promontories on a Saturday afternoon and you can hear beery-sounding laughter from half a mile away, across the river, […]
Some suburbanites who know Magnolia Avenue only from vice reports in the news pronounce it with a shiver. It’s a butt of complacent cocktail-party jokes. Newcomers to town, free of preconceptions, see Magnolia Avenue for the first time and say, […]
After years of confirmed rumors, Knox County is indeed trying to sell the 17-story Andrew Johnson Building. It’s open to proposals until July 13. It’s been an office building for 30 years. For half a century before that, it was […]
All mothers are historic, but here are a few memorable Moms. Mother’s Day started around 1908, when Anna Jarvis, of Grafton, W.V., proposed the holiday just after her own mother’s death. She intended it as a way to remember to […]
The author of one of the best and most enduringly beloved books about Knoxville history died on Thursday at age 93. His masterpiece, Divided Loyalties: Fort Sanders and the Civil War in East Tennessee has been a standard text since […]
Jack Neely is executive director of the Knoxville History Project. He has become one of Knoxville’s most popular writers and its unofficial historian. Jack is well known for his thoughtful, well-researched, and provocative pieces of long-form journalism, not to mention his books, speeches, and other public appearances...
123 S. Gay Street Ste. C
Knoxville, TN 37902
JACK NEELY
jack@knoxhistoryproject.org
(865) 337-7723
PAUL JAMES
Development Director
paul@knoxhistoryproject.org
(865) 300-4559
NICOLE STAHL
Administrative Coordinator
nicolestahl@knoxhistoryproject.org
(865) 360-8053
©2025 Knoxville History Project
Site by: Robin Easter Design
