Tennessee View Establishments by Tennessee Cities
Tennessee: Crossroads of the Upper South
From 1938–1963, the Green Book steered African American motorists to 226 travel-related resources in Tennessee. The vast majority—80 percent—were located in the state’s four largest cities: Chattanooga, Knoxville, Memphis, and Nashville. The remaining resources were located in small towns scattered across the state. These resources were linked to a national network of early interstate highways such as the Dixie Highway, Lee Highway, Bankhead Highway, and Andrew Jackson Highway, which brought travelers to Tennessee from throughout the U.S.
In Tennessee, The Green Book sent motorists to some of the region’s liveliest Black entertainment districts along Vine Street in Knoxville, East Ninth Street in Chattanooga, Jefferson Street in Nashville, and Beale Street in Memphis. These urban districts included theaters and nightclubs where blues singers and musicians, such Bessie Smith and B.B. King, performed. The Theater Owners Booking Association, a national network in Chattanooga, secured films and live performers for venues catering to Black audiences.
The urban districts also provided access to services often unavailable in small towns, such as beauty shops, pharmacies, and dry cleaners. Tennessee’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities—among them Fisk University in Nashville, Lane College in Jackson, Lemoyne College in Memphis, and Knoxville College—attracted campus visitors with music and theater performances and cultural offerings in auditoriums, chapels, and libraries.
Almost all of the Green Book resources in Tennessee were owned and operated by African Americans; however, a few businesses, such as a motel in Humboldt and a tourist home in Memphis, were owned by white residents. These places provide rare examples of local resistance to segregation and social norms in the South.
In Tennessee, many of the Green Book resources were destroyed between the 1950s and the 1970s by government-sponsored urban renewal, housing, and highway projects, especially in Knoxville and Nashville. Notable exceptions include Chattanooga, where the East Ninth Street corridor—since renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard—is listed in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP), and Memphis, where Beale Street has been designated a National Historic Landmark.
In addition, the NRHP-listed Lorraine Motel, site of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is preserved as part of the National Civil Rights Museum. In Nashville, Brown’s Hotel & Dinner Club was an anchor on Jefferson Street, the city’s Black business and entertainment district. Located near Fisk University, the two-story brick building owned by Dr. Jackson Hicks Brown housed an elite hotel, pharmacy, and elegant dinner club. Hotel guests, performers, and patrons included Nat King Cole, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Little Richard, Louis Armstrong, Jimi Hendrix, Ray Charles, B.B. King, Sarah Vaughan, Ruth Brown, and Martin Luther King Jr. Brown’s Hotel was demolished in the early 1970s; the site was recently redeveloped as a public park. Dr. Brown’s second establishment on Jefferson Street, Club Baron, built in 1955, is now an Elks Lodge.
Only a handful of resources still stand in Tennessee’s small towns. These resources include the Mrs. Ephraim B. Gaylor Tourist Home in Franklin’s NRHP-listed Historic Natchez Street District and the Margaret C. Brown Tourist Home in Bristol, on the Tennessee-Virginia state line.
Robbie D. Jones, Richard Grubb & Associates, Nashville
Dr. Susan W. Knowles, Center for Historic Preservation, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro
Melanie York, University of Virginia
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Figure Caption: T.E. Scales Service Station on U.S. Highway 31A/41A in Kirkland. The filling station and store of Mr. and Mrs. T. E. Scales circa 1938. At the time the photo was taken, Mr. Scales had been a distributor for Standard Oil for 51 years.
Courtesy W7thCo Vintage Photo Gallery, Columbia, Tennessee.
