Was a Knoxvillian one of the first black elected representatives in the nation? By Jack Neely   When we talk about Knoxville history, we’re modest about our presumptions. When we think about the first time something progressive happened here in […]

Police killing of unarmed suspects has a deep history in Knoxville, as nearly everything does. It’s impossible to say how many times it has happened. But one case stands out. It got more public attention than most. Will Lenoir was […]

Knoxville’s first Earth Day started out with a bang, 50 years ago today — even if not many of us noticed it. UT had just unveiled its Graduate School of Ecology, with well-known zoologist Jim Tanner leading it. Tanner was […]

One hard disappointment of the spring is word that the Farmers’ Market won’t come to Market Square soon, or for the foreseeable future. Of course it’s just a 10-minute walk away, on Mary Costa Plaza. But it will, at least […]

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 […]