Tennessee Women: Their Lives and Times

Sarah Wilkerson Freeman, Beverly Bond

University of Georgia Press, Oct 1, 2010 - History - 480 pages

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.

Contents

• Diplomatic Mother: 1
• Battle against Slavery: 23
• Freedom Kinship and Property: 44
• Revisiting the Politics of Race Class and Gender: 68
• She Had the World in a Jug with the Stopper in Her Hand: 93
• Wing Walker Parachute Jumper Air Racer: 119
• Lady Warrior: 140
• Feminist Politics and Education for Equality: 164
• I Had to Be Right Pushy: 191
• The Evolution of a Political Feminist: 214
• The Hearth and the Map: 243
• Gossiping about Grinders SwitchThe Grand Ole Opry and the Modernization of Tennessee: 261
• A Mission for Equality Justice and Social Change: 281
• Running for Freedom: 305
• The Country Music Association: 333
• Transforming the Mainstream: 359
• Feminist and Race Woman: 381
• Battling Environmental Racism: 403
• Selected Bibliography: 425
• List of Contributors: 433
• Index: 437

About the author

Sarah Wilkerson Freeman is an associate professor of history at Arkansas State University. She is a contributor to Southern Women at the Millennium and Mississippi Women: Their Histories, Their Lives and numerous journals. Beverly Greene Bond is an associate professor of history and director of African and African American Studies at the University of Memphis. She is the coauthor of Memphis in Black and White and Images of America: Beale Street.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Tennessee Women: Their Lives and Times; Volume 1 of Southern Women: Their Lives and Times Series
• Editors: Sarah Wilkerson Freeman, Beverly Bond
• Publisher: University of Georgia Press, 2010
• ISBN: 0820339016, 9780820339016
• Length: 480 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Women; History / United States / State & Local / South (AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, VA, WV); Social Science / Women's Studies