University of Tennessee

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History

The University of Tennessee was chartered on September 10, 1794 as Blount College, by an act of the legislature of the Southwest Territory meeting in the territorial capital, Knoxville. The college was small at its inception and struggled for the next 13 years with a small student body and an even smaller faculty. In 1807, the school was renamed East Tennessee College; however, when its first president and only faculty member died in 1809, the school was temporarily closed. It reopened in 1820, and in 1840 was elevated to East Tennessee University.

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September 10 - 1794 - 1807 - 1809 - 1820 - 1840

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The Civil War virtually destroyed the college, as students and faculty left to join both the Union and Confederate forces, their divided loyalties reflecting those of East Tennessee itself. The college buildings were occupied by troops from both sides and were sometimes used as hospitals. Shelling significantly damaged the grounds. The president who took the college's reins in 1865 was a Union sympathizer, and he managed to secure some $18,500 in restitution funds from the federal government.

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Civil War - 1865

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Following the Civil War, the State of Tennessee made the University the beneficiary of the Morrill Act of 1862 which allocated federal land or its monetary value to the various states for the teaching of "agricultural and mechanical" subjects and to provide military training to students. Thus, the University of Tennessee (its designation after 1879) became a land-grant institution. In 1893, the university admitted women regularly for the first time.

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Morrill Act - 1862 - 1879 - Land-grant institution - 1893

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The first African Americans were admitted to the graduate and law schools by order of a federal district court in 1952. The first master's degree was awarded to an African American in 1954, and the first doctoral degree (Ed.D.) in 1959. Black undergraduates were not admitted until 1961; the first black faculty member was appointed in 1964. Integration went fairly smoothly; African-American students had more difficulty gaining entry to eating establishments and places of entertainment off campus than they did attending class on campus. Overall, Knoxville and the University had fewer racial troubles in the 1950s and 1960s than did other southern universities.

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1952 - 1954 - 1959 - 1961 - 1964 - 1950s - 1960s

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In 1968, the university underwent an administrative reorganization which left the Knoxville campus as the flagship and headquarters of its new "university system," comprising the UT Health Science Center at Memphis, a four-year college at Martin, the former private University of Chattanooga (added a year later), the UT Space Institute at Tullahoma, and the Knoxville-based College of Veterinary Medicine, Agriculture Institute, and Public Service Institute. An additional primary campus in Nashville had a brief existence from 1971 to 1979 before it was ordered closed and merged with Tennessee State University.

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1968 - UT Health Science Center - Memphis - Four-year college - Martin - University of Chattanooga - UT Space Institute - Tullahoma - Nashville - 1971 - 1979 - Tennessee State University

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