Tennessee Women: Their Lives and Times, Volume 1

by Sarah Wilkerson Freeman (Editor), Beverly Greene Bond (Editor), Laura Helper-Ferris (Editor), Aram Goudsouzian (Contribution by), Betty Huehls (Contribution by)

Overview

Including suffragists, civil rights activists, and movers and shakers in politics and in the music industries of Nashville and Memphis, as well as many other notables, this collective portrait of Tennessee women offers new perspectives and insights into their dreams, their struggles, and their times. As rich, diverse, and wide-ranging as the topography of the state, this book will interest scholars, general readers, and students of southern history, women's history, and Tennessee history.

Tennessee Women: Their Lives and Times shifts the historical lens from the more traditional view of men's roles to place women and their experiences at center stage in the historical drama. The eighteen biographical essays, written by leading historians of women, illuminate the lives of familiar figures like reformer Frances Wright, blueswoman Alberta Hunter, and the Grand Ole Opry's Minnie Pearl (Sarah Colley Cannon) and less-well-known characters like the Cherokee Beloved Woman Nan-ye-hi (Nancy Ward), antebellum free black woman Milly Swan Price, and environmentalist Doris Bradshaw.

Told against the backdrop of their times, these are the life stories of women who shaped Tennessee's history from the eighteenth-century challenges of western expansion through the nineteenth- and twentieth-century struggles against racial and gender oppression to the twenty-first-century battles with community degradation. Taken as a whole, this collection of women's stories illuminates previously unrevealed historical dimensions that give readers a greater understanding of Tennessee's place within environmental and human rights movements and its role as a generator of phenomenal cultural life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780820329499
Publisher:	University of Georgia Press
Publication date:	02/15/2009
Series:	Southern Women: Their Lives and Times Series , #2
Edition description:	Volume 1
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

BEVERLY GREENE BOND is a professor of history at the University of Memphis. She is the coeditor, with Sarah Wilkerson Freeman, of Tennessee Women: Their Lives and Times, volumes 1 and 2 (both Georgia) and coeditor of Images of America: Beale Street, and codirector of the Memphis Massacre Project, a public commemoration of Reconstruction.

CHERISSE JONES-BRANCH is professor of history at Arkansas State University. She is the author of Crossing the Line: Women’s Interracial Activism in South Carolina during and after World War II and is currently writing a book on rural black women’s activism in Arkansas.

CONNIE L. LESTER is an assistant professor of history at the University of Central Florida and editor of the Florida Historical Quarterly.

Table of Contents

Preface Sarah Wilkerson Freeman ix

Nan-ye-hi (Nancy Ward): Diplomatic Mother Cynthia Cumfer 1

Fanny Wright: Battle against Slavery Celia Morris 23

Milly Swan Price: Freedom, Kinship, and Property Beverly Greene Bond 44

Mary Church Terrell: Revisiting the Politics of Race, Class, and Gender Cherisse Jones-Branch 68

Alberta Hunter: "She Had the World in a Jug, with the Stopper in Her Hand" Michelle R. Scott 93

Phoebe Fairgrave Omlie: Wing Walker, Parachute Jumper, Air Racer Janann Sherman 119

Sue Shelton White: Lady Warrior Betty Sparks Huehls Beverly Greene Bond 140

Charl Ormond Williams: Feminist Politics and Education for Equality Sarah Wilkerson Freeman 164

Lucille Thornburgh: "I Had to Be Right Pushy" Connie L. Lester 191

Martha Ragland: The Evolution of a Political Feminist Carole Bucy 214

Wilma Dykeman: The Hearth and the Map Melissa Walker 243

Sarah Colley Cannon (Minnie Pearl): Gossiping about Grinder's Switch-The Grand Ole Opry and the Modernization of Tennessee Kristine M. Mccusker 261

Diane Judith Nash: A Mission for Equality, Justice, and Social Change Linda T. Wynn 281

Wilma Rudolph: Running for Freedom Aram Goudsouzian 305

Jo Walker-Meador: The Country Music Association Diane Pecknold 333

Bettye Berger: Transforming the Mainstream Laura Helper-Ferris 359

Jocelyn Dan Wurzburg: Feminist and Race Woman Gail S. Murray 381

Doris Bradshaw: Battling Environmental Racism Melissa Checker 403

Selected Bibliography 425

List of Contributors 433

Index 437

Editorial Reviews

By focusing on the lives of individual women, known and unknown, over many years, this volume is an important addition to the history of Tennessee and the evolving history of southern women.

W.K.Boyd Professor Emerita, Duke University - Anne Firor Scott

The richness and variety of the voices represented in these essays will be useful in many ways. The breadth of the women’s experiences and the broad span of time their lives touched will ensure the work’s appeal to a wide audience.

author of In the Shadow of Selma: The Continuing Struggle for Civil Rights in the Rural South - Cynthia Griggs Fleming

The richness and variety of the voices represented in these essays will be useful in many ways. The breadth of the women’s experiences and the broad span of time their lives touched will ensure the work’s appeal to a wide audience.

author of In the Shadow of Selma: The Continuing Struggle for Civil Rights in the Rural South - Cynthia Griggs Fleming

The authors of these well-researched and gracefully written biographical studies admirably capture the complexities of multitextured lives of diverse women who were often heroines on their own terms. Sarah Wilkerson Freeman and Beverly Greene Bond have edited an outstanding work, one that makes a major contribution to American women's history, southern history, and especially to the history of Tennessee.

editor, Black Women in America - Darlene Clark Hine

This book makes a major contribution to American women’s history, southern history, and especially to the history of the Volunteer State.

The Courier

Tennessee Women provides a fascinating look at the lives of women who played public roles as activists, artists, athletes, and executives.

Tennessee Historical Quarterly - LeeAnn G. Reynolds