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PANDEMIC: THE SPANISH FLU: HOW 1918 WAS THE SAME, BUT VERY DIFFERENT by Jack Neely These are strange days. You don’t need me to tell you that. What we’re going through now may be “unprecedented” in some ways, as dozens […]

This bit of relevant literature appeared in the Knoxville Journal & Tribune, in mid-October of 1918, during the worst of Knoxville’s experience with the “Spanish Flu” pandemic. The poet is a local black man of whom we know little except […]

In 2020, a confessed Socialist running for president strikes some folks as a novelty, and something that surely would have shocked our grandparents. But maybe not as much as we might assume. On an unseasonably warm Thursday evening late in […]

You’ve seen the posters all around downtown this winter, a happy, round-faced, exuberant-looking fellow in a black beret. That face might be a nice touch for any city. But Beauford Delaney, the actual person, is the perfect antidote to Knoxville […]

Earlier this month we enjoyed a summer evening in Burlington. The East Tennessee Community Design Center invited us to an educational soiree among the tall trees and historic downtown-style buildings clustered around the eastern end of the avenue we know […]

PART ONE When they hear we’re working on a book about Bearden, some wags picture its strip malls, and have some fun with the idea that Bearden can have anything to dignify with the word “history.” They may not grasp […]

  For decades I’d heard rumors and fond and unbelievable memories of Gordon’s Town House. It opened at the corner of Cumberland and 17th Street in the 1950s. It had a big dining room with a dance floor, like those […]

In late October, 1935, well after midnight, a mysterious man was running across old East Church Avenue near Mulvaney Street carrying a dead chicken. A college boy, driving his car back to campus after a night on the town, collided […]

Jack recently helped local writer, Chelsey Mae Johnson, research the history of the steamed sandwich here in Knoxville. Click on the link below for the full story! Steamed Sandwich Odyssey: They Like That Soft Bread