Blount College was founded two years before the state of Tennessee in what is now downtown Knoxville on September 10, 1794. The legislature of the Southwest Territory chartered the college during a meeting in the capital. Blount College, named after territorial Governor William Blount, operated in a frame house near the site of the present-day Tennessee Theatre on Gay Street. Although the school had to survive on tuition and fees and conferred only one degree, it was in operation for 13 years. Blount College was the first public university chartered west of the Appalachian Divide, one of the first coeducational colleges in America when five women were admitted in 1804, and may have been the first school in the country open to students of all religions when most colleges were affiliated with Christian denominations. The motivation of the founders is unknown, but a wave of college foundings followed the American Revolution. Nineteen new colleges were founded between 1782 and 1802, including the University of Georgia and the University of North Carolina.

Before Blount College opened, Presbyterian minister Rev. Samuel Carrick spent two years educating students using a classical curriculum at a seminary in his home. He had been educated at Liberty Hall Academy in Virginia. In 1794, Carrick became the only president (UT’s first president) and the sole faculty member of Blount College for an unknown number of students. He continued to serve when the name changed to East Tennessee College in 1807. Carrick was the first preacher in Knoxville and served as pastor of First Presbyterian Church concurrently with his presidency of Blount College. Records show Carrick’s salary as president in 1808 as $450 a year. Carrick died suddenly in 1809 at the age of 49 after he stayed up all night to finish a sermon. He was buried in the graveyard across the street from East Tennessee College, which closed for a decade. At his death, Carrick was owed a salary of $87.82 which his heirs received 12 years later with interest of $59.61. A former president’s residence, which is no longer standing, was named in Carrick’s honor, as well as two residence halls.

Five women—Jenny Armstrong, Barbara Blount (daughter of territorial Governor William Blount), Mattie Kain, Kitty Kain, and Polly McClung—were among Blount College’s admitted students in 1804, making it one of the first coeducational colleges in America. Women were not regularly admitted to the University of Tennessee until 1893.

When Blount College was renamed East Tennessee College in 1807 during Samuel Carrick’s presidency, student conduct prohibited blasphemy, wearing women’s clothing, and fornication, among other rules. Gifts and tuition of $8 per semester were insufficient to sustain the college very long. It closed for a decade after Carrick’s sudden death in 1809.

A lottery to raise money for East Tennessee College was canceled in 1812, despite letters asking President James Madison and former President Thomas Jefferson to participate. Jefferson’s response letter in 1810 praising the state of Tennessee’s effort but declining to personally participate in a lottery is archived in the Jefferson Papers in the Library of Congress. In that letter, Jefferson suggested that the college spread out a little to become “an academic village.” Sixteen years later in 1826, the college trustees purchased the land now called the Hill and moved campus there.

When East Tennessee College reopened in 1820, its new president (UT’s second president) was David Sherman, formerly principal of Hampden-Sydney Academy (a struggling Knoxville preparatory school which now merged with East Tennessee College). Sherman was a New Englander and a graduate of Yale College. Strict laws concerning church attendance, absences, damages, and misdemeanors and crimes were adopted during his administration. Sherman, whose salary was $900, resigned in 1825 due to poor health although he later became president of Jackson College in Columbia, Tennessee. Sherman’s departure would have left East Tennessee College without a library, but the school’s trustees purchased his books for $161.63. Sherman had allowed the students to use his own volumes during his presidency.

The first references to graduate education came on October 11, 1821, in the minutes from an East Tennessee College Board of Trustees meeting. Sixty-four students were awarded post-baccalaureate degrees before the graduate department was formally established in 1879, at the same time our institution was renamed the University of Tennessee.

In 1826, the trustees of East Tennessee College decided to move from a building in what is now downtown Knoxville (on the corner of Gay Street and Clinch Avenue) to a new location they purchased west of town, known as the Hill. The trustees were of the opinion that, “The shape of the Hill, the commanding view from it and to it in every direction, the excellence of the water, its distance from the town, being near and yet secluded, its position between the river and main western road ... together with its unquestionable healthfulness, render it a scite [sic] as eligible, almost, as the imagination can conceive.” The Hill is sometimes thought to be the one nicknamed “Barbara Hill,” a reference to the daughter of territorial Governor William Blount, Barbara Blount, who was admitted to Blount College in 1804. The Hill was the principal home of campus buildings from 1826 until the 1920s. During the Civil War, the Union took control of Knoxville and the Union Army built a fortification called Fort Byington on the Hill. After the war, the entrenchments were taken down, campus buildings were repaired as best they could be, and the Hill was re-landscaped. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Hill’s well-known buildings included: Science Hall on the southeastern slope, and on the summit South College (built in 1872), as well as Old College (which had a distinctive cupola), West College, and East College. To make way for Ayres Hall, completed in 1921 and now the most recognized academic building on campus, Old College, West College, and East College were demolished. Science Hall was demolished in 1967. South College is still in use as the oldest building on campus.

In 1826, the East Tennessee College trustees tendered the (third UT) presidency to Charles Coffin, president of Greeneville College (Tusculum) and a Presbyterian minister with a doctor of divinity degree from Williams College. A native of Massachusetts and graduate of Harvard, Coffin had come to Tennessee in 1800 to join the faculty of Greeneville College. Ten years later, he assumed its presidency and also the pastorship of the local Presbyterian church. As a special enticement to get him to come to Knoxville, the trustees offered a $1,500 annual salary, generous for that time, and a president’s home, purchased when an additional 74 acres including a spacious residence were added to the original tract. Coffin remained as the president of East Tennessee College for five years, teaching full-time in addition to performing administrative work. During his tenure, fierce public opposition was expressed over the expenditure of $13,OOO on the college’s first building (Old College, which was razed in 1919 to build Ayres Hall) located on the Hill. Additional criticism was directed at the college for being primarily a school for the wealthy. This opposition was partly a factor in Coffin’s resignation. He told the trustees that the public feeling of East Tennesseans was not sufficient to support a college. Although Coffin was 57 when he left the presidency, he thought a “younger man, of unfailing health” should be selected to lead the institution.

When he was selected as president of East Tennessee College (UT’s fourth president) in 1833, James Hays Piper had been president of Columbia College (formerly Woodward Academy) in Columbia, Tennessee, for two years and a professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at East Tennessee College for three years. The 33-year-old native of Rockbridge County, Virginia, received a bachelor’s degree from Washington College (later Washington and Lee) in 1819 and a master of arts degree from East Tennessee College in 1830, the latter apparently as a reward for his joining the faculty. After serving only one year as president, Piper resigned and returned to his home state of Virginia, where he became a surveyor, engineer, and turnpike builder. He also served in the Virginia state senate from 1840 to 1846 and for a short time in the administration of US President James K. Polk as principal clerk of public lands in the General Land Office.

Joseph Estabrook, whose habits included a “prodigious use of snuff” and who was also known for wearing “elegant ruffles and fine boots,” was selected as president of East Tennessee College (UT’s fifth president) in 1834 when he was 42. A native of New Hampshire, Estabrook graduated from Dartmouth in 1815 and began preparing for the ministry at Princeton Theological Seminary when throat trouble interrupted his studies and ended his ministerial career. He had been principal of academies in Massachusetts, Virginia, and Knoxville when East Tennessee College came calling. “Old Joe,” as students called him, relaxed discipline, employed scholarly professors for the faculty, and oversaw the building program. Courses of instruction became more organized, catalogs were published for the first time, an alumni association was formed, and the first literary societies were established during his tenure. It was also during Estabrook’s presidency that the school assumed its military character. He was instrumental in persuading the legislature to change the institution’s name to East Tennessee University in 1840. Estabrook’s reforms were said to have raised the college “from almost total prostration to a respectable rank among the educational institutions of the country.” One indication of the effect of his reforms was the near doubling of the student body during his administration, from 95 to 169. During a trustees’ dispute over the religious affiliations of faculty members, Estabrook resigned in 1850.

A redesignation as East Tennessee University in 1840 by the state legislature during the presidency of Joseph Estabrook did not improve the institution’s economic fortunes. The faculty was small. It was difficult to secure competent teachers at salaries ranging from $500 to $1,000 a year. Even when good instructors were found, it was difficult to keep any of them for very long. The president received little more than the rest of the faculty, with his salary sometimes being supplemented by a percentage of the tuition receipts.

The first recorded attendance of an international student at East Tennessee University appears in the 1841 catalogue which lists Stamos S. Trikaliotes, of Athens, Greece as a senior. He received the A.B. degree the same year. Trikaliotes also earned a master’s degree from the university in 1844, becoming both the first international student to earn an undergraduate degree and the first to earn a graduate degree.

A native Tennessean, William Reese was a prominent Knoxville lawyer and jurist who had attended Blount and Greeneville Colleges and, after reading law, was admitted to the bar in 1817. He served as chancellor of the eastern division of Tennessee and had finished a 12-year term on Tennessee’s Supreme Court before becoming president of East Tennessee University (UT’s sixth president) in 1850. Financial difficulties continued to plague the university during Reese’s brief administration. The trustees had adopted a plan under which the president and faculty would not receive fixed salaries: the president would earn $350 per year and each professor $250 yearly, and both would receive a percentage of the tuition receipts, providing that their salaries did not exceed $1,500 and $1,000, respectively. Five professors were invited to join the faculty; two immediately rejected their appointments. A third professor accepted on the conditions that his salary “certainly not be less than before” and that there be no “sectarian wrangling” about his selection. His terms were apparently not met, because he did not join the faculty. Eventually, five professors were hired, but enrollment declined and the institution remained in poor fiscal shape. Reese remained only three years as president, resigning in frustration in 1853.

George Cooke, a New Hampshire native and 1832 graduate of Dartmouth College, had served as pastor of Second Presbyterian Church on his arrival in Knoxville in 1852 from a church pastorship in Andover, Massachusetts. Cooke was also serving as principal of a Knoxville female academy when asked to be president of East Tennessee University (UT’s seventh president). The energetic Cooke set about with “almost unprecedented zeal…to recuperate the languishing university.” Salaries were reduced, tuition was increased, and laboratory fees for chemistry were charged for the first time. A plan of studies used at the University of Virginia was adopted which allowed students to be grouped by the academic fields where their talents lay. Students were also allowed to pursue degrees by examination, irrespective of the length of their attendance at the university. The alumni association, now formally organized, was encouraged to be more active in securing popular support for the institution. Unfortunately, such support was undermined by the slavery controversy. Local pro-slavery newspapers complained about the inappropriateness of a northerner presiding over a southern school. Although little is known about the political climate surrounding the university itself, sectional strife could hardly have failed to affect the increasingly frail institution. The resignation of Cooke in January 1857 and two other faculty members a month later resulted in the suspension of operations at the school for less than a year.

Although there was talk of closing East Tennessee University permanently, William Carnes accepted the offer to be president (UT’s eighth president) in 1858. A South Carolinian, Carnes had entered the ministry at age 19 and he became a student at East Tennessee University in 1839, when he was already a married man in his 30s with a family. He graduated in 1842 and was immediately made principal of the preparatory department, a position which he held until 1848. He later served as principal of Lafayette Academy in Bledsoe County and as president of Burritt College in Spencer, Tennessee. One of Carnes’s first proposals for East Tennessee University was the construction of a university gymnasium, an innovative idea in higher education since most colleges had no such facilities at this time. A military department was also authorized while Carnes was president. This was partly the result of a legislative act which provided arms and equipment for that purpose. Carnes was also an innovator in his attempts to obtain additional funds for the school; he appeared personally before the legislature in Nashville to appeal for more money. Personal tragedies—the almost fatal illness of his youngest son and the death of his wife—probably hastened Carnes’s resignation in May 1860.

Rev. Joseph Ridley, a North Carolinian who was educated at the University of North Carolina, held pastorships in several Tennessee towns before becoming East Tennessee University president (UT’s ninth president) in 1860. He began his presidency buoyed by an increase in the student body to 110 (73 of whom were in the preparatory department), the largest enrollment in the previous 12 years. The increase permitted the trustees to enlarge the faculty and hire a janitor. According to that year’s catalog, Ridley would govern students “by the law of kindness and affection.” Students were also required to attend chapel each morning and evening and Sunday services at local churches “chosen at the pleasure of the parents.” Ridley described the university as “wholly unsectarian,” with Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Methodists represented on the faculty. One of Ridley’s first acts as president had been to ask the board of trustees to allow ministerial students of any denomination to receive free instruction. Ridley’s optimism was dashed by the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861 which began the Civil War. Nevertheless, East Tennessee University opened in the fall of 1861, although with a much-reduced student body and the same faculty, except for a pro-Union professor who had returned to Ohio after receiving threats on his life. The term lasted only one-fifth its normal time, however, and in January 1862, East Tennessee University buildings were taken over by the Confederates as a military hospital. Shortly afterward, Ridley, a pro-Confederate, resigned to return to North Carolina. He subsequently took up a pastorship in Milledgeville, Georgia.

The start of the Civil War in 1861 followed by Tennessee’s secession from the Union and the lodging of wounded Confederate soldiers on campus did not close East Tennessee University. By spring 1862 when the trustees finally suspended operations, the majority of students had joined the military, President Joseph Ridley had resigned, and two professors had left the university. Wounded Confederate soldiers were lodged at university buildings after the January 1862 Battle of Mill Springs in Kentucky, known as the Battle of Fishing Creek to the Confederacy. In the fall of 1863, Union troops forced the Confederates out of Knoxville. On the Hill, the Union Army enclosed the three university buildings with an earthen fortification they named Fort Byington in honor of an officer from Michigan who was killed in the defense of Knoxville. They used the buildings for their headquarters, barracks, and a hospital for Black troops. Despite a Confederate attempt to retake the city by siege—climaxed by a bloody, abortive attack on Fort Sanders on November 29, 1863—the Union held and occupied Knoxville for the rest of the war. During the battle, the Hill was hit with artillery fire from Confederate guns located in a trench at the site of UT’s present-day Sorority Village. Campus also sustained a great deal of damage caused by the Union Army. Troops denuded the grounds of trees, ruined the steward’s house, and destroyed the gymnasium with misdirected cannon fire aimed at Confederate troops across the river. After the Civil War ended in 1865 and the Union Army left campus, Thomas Humes was elected university president. The university reopened in 1866 and operated for six months downtown in the Deaf and Dumb Asylum while repairs began at the damaged campus. A petition to the federal war department for monetary compensation for campus damage done by the Union Army undoubtedly received more favorable consideration because of Humes’s known Union loyalty throughout the war. A Senate committee which considered the bill for damages also noted that East Tennessee University was “particularly deserving of the favorable consideration of Congress” because it was “the only educational institution of known loyalty…in any of the seceding states.” However in 1873, President Ulysses S. Grant vetoed the bill that would have provided $18,500 to the university because he felt it would set a bad precedent. The bill was redrafted specifying that the payment was compensation for aid East Tennessee University gave to the Union during the war. On June 22, 1874, President Grant signed the new bill and the trustees accepted the funds the same day with an agreement to release the government from all claims. (More than a century and a half later, a buried Union trench was located in 2019 on the north side of the present-day McClung Museum with the use of ground-penetrating radar.)

Although East Tennessee University trustees named Episcopal rector Rev. Thomas W. Humes president (UT’s 10th president) in 1865, the effects of the Civil War delayed the university’s opening for a year. Even then, campus was in such disrepair that classes for the 20 students were held downtown for six months in the Knoxville Deaf and Dumb Asylum. Humes was a Knoxville native and an 1830 graduate at age 15 from East Tennessee College. He had studied for the ministry at Princeton Theological Seminary but had been unwilling to subscribe to the Presbyterian Westminster Confession of Faith and was not ordained. He had been the much-respected rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Knoxville for 17 years when asked to be university president, and he continued additionally in this capacity for another four years. The major task facing Humes was the rebuilding of the university. During the Reconstruction era following the war, this task was made easier by the fact that Humes had been a staunch Union supporter. Although it took nine years, the school was able eventually to collect $18,500 from the federal government as compensation for the damages incurred while occupied by Union troops. Also, in 1869, East Tennessee University was designated the recipient of the federal land-grant funds provided by the Morrill Act of 1862. During Humes’s administration, great strides were taken to reorganize and rehabilitate the once war-torn campus, including the erection of several new buildings, the addition of new faculty, increased enrollments reaching a high of 315 in 1874, the addition of medical and dental departments in Nashville, the establishment of an agricultural experiment station, and the redesignation of the institution by the legislature in 1879 as the University of Tennessee. But much of the Humes’s period was taken up by bitter contention between those who wanted to shift the university’s curricular emphasis from the classics to the agricultural and mechanical arts and those who wanted to retain the traditional academic framework. Humes stood with the traditionalists, and this led to his downfall. The trustees asked for his resignation, and on August 24, 1883, Humes complied.

In 1869, the Tennessee Legislature designated East Tennessee University as the recipient of federal land-grant funds provided by the Morrill Act of 1862. After the Civil War, the legislation was extended to former Confederate states including Tennessee. The Morrill Act helped meet the demands of our industrializing nation by establishing land-grant institutions that provided instruction in agriculture, mechanical arts, and military tactics along with classical curriculums. The Herbert College of Agriculture was also founded in 1869. UT is one of two land-grant institutions in Tennessee. The other is Tennessee State University in Nashville, designated with 18 other historically Black colleges under the Morrill Act of 1890.

East Tennessee University’s band began in 1869 as a corps of cadets. The members primarily played cornets and were often headed by a cadet leader. By 1899, the University of Tennessee band had 16 members who practiced daily and performed in a weekly dress parade at Wait Field, UT’s first on-campus football field. In the 1930s, the 85-member band sometimes performed halftime shows at football games, and after 1940 membership increased to nearly 100. The band became known as the Pride of the Southland Band in 1949, supposedly at a suggestion from Knoxville Journal columnist Ed Harris. Band director W J Julian, hired in 1961, made the Pride of the Southland Band nationally recognized for the circle drill and the formation for the football team to run through the T. Julian also introduced the first performance of “Rocky Top” during halftime of the Tennessee vs. Alabama football game in 1972.

The designation as Tennessee’s land-grant institution in 1869 required the university to offer courses in military science. In 1870, the university instituted compulsory military training for all students. A military commandant, assigned by the US Army, and his staff had full control of student conduct. Students were required to wear uniforms beginning in 1873, and two years later UT adopted a code of military regulations similar to those in use at West Point. After Charles Dabney became president of UT, he proposed that the military system of government and instruction apply only to freshmen and sophomores. Following trustee approval the new system of student government began in 1890, and the dean of the university took charge of student discipline.

A student-published semi-monthly newspaper called the University Times-Prospectus included “literature, science, news, wit, humor and whatever else may be of interest in connection with the Institution.” A student newspaper has published continuously at UT since 1906.

South College, the oldest building on campus, was built in 1872 as a dormitory and campus armory for what was then East Tennessee University. It housed 96 students in 24 rooms, with four to a room. In 1875, gaslights replaced the fireplaces and oil lamps. Telephones were installed in 1883. South College was converted from a dormitory into classrooms and meeting halls in 1890. The building got electricity and steam heating in 1908. South College was spared at least three times following demolition proposals. Although little remains of the original interior, the facade was restored in 1989 to resemble the Grecian style designed by architect A.C. Bruce. Over the course of its existence, South College has been home to the president’s office, the Summer School of the South, the Law Department, the German Department, the Public Relations Department, the Psychology Department, the University Extension, the UT bookstore, the post office, the first campus radio station, the Science Alliance, and research space for graduate students.

East Tennessee University’s first baseball club was organized in 1875.

The School of Mechanic Arts, Mining, and Engineering was first organized at East Tennessee University in 1877, offering courses in mechanical and mining engineering. Courses in surveying had begun in 1838 and civil engineering was first offered in 1840. The school was re-named the College of Engineering in 1905, and Charles Ferris became the first dean in 1907. The college was renamed the Tickle College of Engineering in 2016 to honor alumnus John D. Tickle.

In 1879, the state legislature redesignated East Tennessee University as the University of Tennessee while Thomas Humes was president. University trustees hoped the new name would inspire the state legislature to provide regular financial support, but that did not happen for another 25 years.

After their election in 1880, three Black representatives in the Tennessee Legislature as well as two white representatives wrote UT President Thomas Humes indicating their intention to appoint, for the 1881-82 session, Black students to receive state scholarships at UT. The legislative act of 1869 which granted the Morrill Act funds to UT required that “no citizen…otherwise qualified shall be excluded from the privileges of said university by reason of his race or color; provided, that it shall be the duty of the trustees ...to make such provision as may be necessary for the separate accommodation or instruction of any persons of color who may be entitled to admission.” In 1870, the Tennessee Constitution prohibited white and Black children to be received in the same school, but added that the provision “shall not prevent the legislature from carrying into effect any laws that have been passed in favor of the colleges, universities, or academies.” The UT trustees contracted with Fisk University in Nashville to enroll Black scholarship students, with UT paying Fisk tuition of $30 per session. In 1881-82, 10 Black students enrolled at Fisk. In 1884, the contract was changed from Fisk University to Knoxville College, with the 14 students already attending Fisk able to finish there if they chose. In 1890, a new contract was negotiated with Knoxville College because of federal passage of the second Morrill Act. This act provided an additional federal subsidy for land-grant colleges of $15,000, rising to $20,000 after five years, and contained a provision that no money would be paid to colleges in which “a distinction of race or color is made in the admission of students.” The new contract with Knoxville College created the “Industrial Department of the University of Tennessee” with Knoxville College providing the buildings and grounds, and UT providing teachers, apparatus, tools, machinery, and all other equipment necessary for an industrial college. Students felled the lumber, made the bricks, and erected the two-story Industrial Department building. The UT trustees agreed to provide an equitable share of the 1862 and 1890 federal land grant funds. Students in the Industrial Department received free tuition for subjects they took in the Knoxville College program, and regular Knoxville College students took classes for free in the Industrial Department. UT paid $2,800 a year for two professors, a foreman, student labor, and other sums periodically for equipment, with the funds required to be spent in the Industrial Department. UT paid Knoxville College $4,000 in 1901; $5,000 in 1902; and $6,000 in 1903. The arrangement continued and grew to incorporate agriculture and nursing. However, the president of Knoxville College and other Black leaders expressed dissatisfaction with the funding arrangement, argued in government for the creation of a separate Black agricultural and mechanical college as the only equitable solution, and raised money for the cause. Their demand was met in 1912 when the Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial Normal School for Negroes (now Tennessee State) opened in Nashville. The new school, designated as the second of Tennessee’s land-grant universities under the second Morrill Act, aimed to train Blacks in the agricultural and mechanical arts and for teaching positions in the public schools.

William Isaac Thomas earned UT’s first doctoral degree in 1886 for two years of graduate work in languages, following his bachelor’s degree. He was an instructor of modern languages and natural history at UT from 1886 to 1888. Thomas then became a professor of sociology who taught at the University of Chicago, where he had earned a second doctorate, the New School for Social Research, and at Harvard.

UT received its first direct appropriation of funds from the Tennessee legislature during the administration of its 11th president, Charles W. Dabney, from 1887 to 1904. As the first president with an earned PhD—in chemistry from the University of Göttingen in Germany—Dabney directed significant changes to the course of study from the previous classical curriculum. Dabney insisted that university schooling must prepare young people for an active, not a contemplative, life. He criticized UT⁠—as he found it, and all the other old universities⁠—as places in which knowledge was imparted to the students. In the new university of Dabney’s imagination, students would engage actively in learning and would prepare not to be “country gentlemen” but functioning citizens. Dabney did not discard the classics, he included them in his scientific-utilitarian curriculum. Dabney moved quickly upon assuming the presidency to put his ideas into effect. Convinced that UT had fallen under the control of an “old-fogy” classical-bound faculty, he replaced virtually all of them. Their replacements included a prominent agricultural specialist from Massachusetts, two Cornell graduates, one from Maine, and one each from the Universities of Virginia and North Carolina. Tennessee’s governor complained about the large number of “foreigners” appointed to the faculty, but Dabney stuck to his guns. Dabney’s next priority was curricular reorganization. All undergraduate academic offerings were subsumed under a College of Agriculture, Mechanical Arts and Sciences. The terms classical and liberal arts were dropped, although classical courses were still offered. The new emphasis, however, was on the sciences and engineering. During his administration, the faculty almost doubled in size; the student body was enlarged almost threefold; and library holdings increased from 8,000 to nearly 20,000 volumes. The military regimen that had prevailed on the campus for 20 years was ended. Women were admitted; a dean of women was appointed; a law school was created; so was the Summer School of the South, which turned out to be both a pioneering effort and the largest such institution for the training of teachers in the entire South. The Preparatory Department, which had enrolled more than half the students on the campus, diminished the institution’s image, and diverted its energies to secondary school education, was abolished. Enrollment increased from about 400 students in 1887 to 729 in 1904. By the end of Dabney’s administration, there were 16 buildings on campus, a faculty and staff of more than 50, and a student body of nearly 500, as well as medical and dental departments in Nashville. Dabney Hall is named for President Dabney.

Former Tennessee Supreme Court Judge Thomas J. Freeman founded the School of Law in 1890 with nine students. Twenty-one years later, it became the College of Law in 1911.

When Woodrow Wilson spoke to faculty and students the night before UT commencement in 1890, he was about to become a professor of jurisprudence at Princeton. Invited to UT by an English professor and former University of Virginia classmate, Wilson delivered a speech with a fitting title, “Leaders of Men.” He served as US president 23 years later, from 1913 to 1921.

Although UT’s football debut is dated November 21, 1891, when 46 players went by train to Chattanooga for a Saturday afternoon game against Sewanee (a 24-0 loss), Knoxvillians first saw university students on the gridiron a few days later. On Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 1891, a combination of 11 young men from the Knoxville Football Club and UT played a team from nearby Harriman, Tennessee, and lost 14-4. For two weeks prior to the game, the Knoxville Journal ran articles on football, its importance as a sport, and plans and preparations for the upcoming game. The team played their earliest games off campus at Baldwin Park and Chilhowee Park. Games began on campus in 1908 at UT’s first athletic field, Wait Field, located near Cumberland Avenue and Phillip Fulmer Way. In 1921, the Vols began playing at UT’s first regulation football field, Shields-Watkins Field, which is the field in Neyland Stadium.

Women were admitted to UT on an equal footing with men beginning in 1893, after the board of trustees approved co-education. Women had been admitted on an experimental basis in 1892, and when our institution was Blount College five women were among its admitted students in 1804. The Tennessee Legislature Education Committee recommended in 1895 that UT limit women’s enrollment because the university’s primary purpose was to teach agricultural and mechanical arts, presumably not appropriate for women. However, UT faculty considered domestic science courses for women to be practical training that would appeal to coeds.

UT Athletic Association President Charles Moore chose orange and white colors for UT’s first field day on April 12, 1889. Students again wore orange and white to the Sewanee football game in 1891. Then they endorsed the colors at a special meeting in 1892. However two years later in 1894, students were dissatisfied with the choice and voted to drop the colors. After a heated one-day debate, no other colors proved satisfactory, so the students returned to orange and white.

The first UT yearbook was called the Volunteer and published in 1897 despite a fire that destroyed the copy and printing plates in the print shop. The yearbook was “affectionately dedicated” to the students and professors who helped save it from the blaze. The publication of yearbooks continued until 2009, with the exception of 1918. The Publications Association decided not to issue the yearbook in 1918 due to “patriotism and expediency” since the editor and business manager had left for duty in World War I. The Volunteer was produced by students and published during the fall semester. Its editorial mission was to commemorate the academic year, the UT community, and campus organizations through pictures and articles.

When Florence Skeffington became UT’s dean of women in 1900, 37 women were enrolled as undergraduates and five had already received bachelor’s degrees. Angie Warren Perkins had previously served as acting dean of women, without pay, from 1898 to 1900.

The UT football team was called the Volunteers for the first time in 1902 when the Atlanta Constitution newspaper reported on a football game between UT and Georgia Tech. By the fall of 1905, both the Knoxville Sentinel and the Knoxville Journal and Tribune were using the Volunteer nickname. The state of Tennessee had become known as the Volunteer State when a large number of volunteers fought in the War of 1812. By the start of the Mexican-American War in 1846, 30,000 Tennessee volunteers responded to the secretary of war’s call for 2,800, clinching the state’s nickname.

UT alumnus and education department head Philander Priestly Claxton was known as “the crusader for public education in the South.” After beginning his career as an educator in North Carolina, Claxton returned to UT in 1902 as a professor of education. He soon became head of UT’s newly created School of Education as well as a tireless advocate for state appropriations to support the university, increased expenditures for Tennessee’s common schools, and improved training for teachers. He wrote thousands of letters; spoke to over 100,000 people; visited every county in Tennessee; and published articles in newspapers, pamphlets, and leaflets on behalf of public education. The results included the first state appropriation for UT in 1905, additional appropriations in 1907 and 1909, the establishment of four normal schools for the training of teachers, a doubling of the number of public high schools in Tennessee towns and villages, an increase in county high schools from one to 50, and a rise in per capita expenditures for common school education from $2.36 to $7.31. Claxton was also the organizer and superintendent of the Summer School of the South, a teacher training institute at UT that attracted 32,000 students during its 16-year existence. Claxton was so highly regarded that he was appointed US commissioner of education, serving from 1911 to 1921. The Summer School of the South was an independent institute until Claxton’s departure, then it was run by UT until it ended in 1918. When Claxton left Washington, he served as provost at the University of Alabama and as superintendent of schools in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In 1930, Claxton accepted his final position serving as president of what was then known as Austin Peay Normal School (now Austin Peay State University) in Clarksville, Tennessee until his retirement in 1946 at age 83. UT’s Claxton Education Building was named in his honor in 1957, less than a year after his death.

In 1903, women played their first intercollegiate basketball game at UT. Competitive team sports had become part of the UT women’s athletic program around 1900, despite reservations that they were too demanding for the “delicate female condition.” Basketball, sometimes played under distinctly different rules, became the first women’s varsity sport. Opponents included Maryville College, the University of Chattanooga, Carson-Newman, Martha Washington College, and the Tennessee School for the Deaf and Dumb.

UT’s most iconic building, Ayres Hall, is named for the 12th president of the university, Brown Ayres, who took the helm in 1904. Although he helped plan the building with UT’s first $1 million state appropriation, it was completed after Ayres’s unexpected death in 1919. During his administration—which included World War I—the College of Liberal Arts and the College of Business were founded. Ayres recruited Harcourt Morgan to UT to head the Agricultural Experiment Station. Morgan rose through the ranks and followed Ayres as UT’s 13th president. Ayres also presided over UT’s recognition by the American Association of Universities and the provision of scholarships for each electoral district in Tennessee to attract students outside of Knoxville.

Although Bernadotte E. Schmitt studied chemistry at UT, he felt he was not “deft enough” at science to work in a family-owned drugstore after graduating in 1904. Instead he was selected as UT’s first Rhodes Scholar for 1905, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in modern history at the University of Oxford, followed by a PhD at the University of Wisconsin. Schmitt went on to a distinguished teaching career, largely at Western Reserve University and the University of Chicago. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1931 for his book about World War I called The Coming of the War, 1914.

The College of Liberal Arts was founded in 1905 and renamed the College of Arts and Sciences 89 years later in 1994.

Known for his acrobatics including cartwheels and handstands, Robert Clayton “Red” Matthews began cheerleading in high school and continued when he joined the faculty at the University of Illinois. After Matthews became UT’s professor of drawing and machine design (later engineering drawing) in 1907, he agreed to be the university’s first cheerleader. Matthews continued cheerleading through the Vanderbilt vs. Tennessee football game in 1916, but stayed on UT’s faculty until 1949. He was also a Volunteer booster, member of the Athletic Council for 38 years, and author of the university’s fight song “Down the Field,” which is also known as “Here’s to Old Tennessee.”

Matthew Glenn Smith was a guard on the Vols basketball team, a second lieutenant, and editor-in-chief of the Orange and White newspaper when he graduated from UT in 1909. He taught English at Knoxville High School for two years before he was named a Rhodes Scholar in 1911. He graduated from the University of Oxford in 1914 with a bachelor’s degree in jurisprudence. After serving in World War I, Smith returned to his home in Fort Worth, Texas, where he practiced law and served in federal bankruptcy court.

In the early part of the 20th century, UT students held the June Jubilee to celebrate classes ending for the year. This evolved into the Glee Club performing student vaudeville shows and sideshows. In 1911, the Athletic Department had fallen into debt and was suspended from the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association over eligibility infractions. The student body decided to host a circus with students dressing as animals and a vaudeville show in May 1911 to raise funds to get Athletics out of debt. The circus was successful, and by 1912 the Athletic Department was free from debt. In 1929, the All Campus Events Committee combined the carnival and the circus into one activity called Carnicus.

Lucy Ella Fay served as head librarian when the first building devoted to the UT library opened in 1911. Due to UT President Charles Dabney’s fundraising efforts, the Andrew Carnegie Fund covered $40,000 for the new library’s construction. The final cost for constructing the dedicated library space totaled $54,000. The library stood at the north end of what is now the Austin Peay Building and housed 38,000 volumes. However, within 10 years the building reached full capacity and portions of the collection had to be transferred to other locations. This led to the construction of the library in 1931 (named after UT President James Hoskins in 1950), the John C. Hodges Undergraduate Library in 1969, and the renovated John C. Hodges Library in 1987.

The College of Business was founded in 1914 as the School of Commerce. The College was renamed the James A. Haslam II College of Business a century later during its 100th anniversary celebration in 2014. It was the first time a UT college had been named for an alumnus or donor.

The first Homecoming was held in conjunction with the November 11, 1916, UT-Vanderbilt football game. The Vols staged a come-from-behind upset victory over arch rival Vanderbilt, winning 10-6. Three thousand invitations were extended and 300 alumni responded representing class years as early as 1872. The first Homecoming parade consisted of the UT cadet corps in dress uniform, led by the band. World War I and other factors kept Homecoming from becoming an annual event at UT until 1925.

The selection of cheerleaders became competitive in 1916 following Robert Clayton “Red” Matthews’ nine-year stint as UT’s first cheerleader. There was a distinction between the cheerleaders who performed at athletic contests and the “cheer leaders” who led cheers at pep meetings. In 1927, a formal cheerleading squad of one head cheerleader and two assistants was organized. The uniform for the all-male 1927 squad was an orange blazer trimmed in white, white shirts, orange-and-white ties and white pants with an orange stripe on the outside seams. By 1930, sweaters had replaced the blazers. Women first joined the cheerleading squad in 1938.

An estimated 1,600 UT students and alumni served in the military during World War I. The war began in 1914, but the United States did not enter it until 1917. Life at UT slowed considerably during the war, as attendance fell from more than 800 students to fewer than 500. During World War I, UT was among the more than 500 colleges used to establish the Students’ Army Training Corps. The government launched the SATC to involve higher education in military training. University personnel and equipment were used to help train new soldiers. The program was geared toward training officer candidates and technical experts, according to a 1918 government document detailing the SATC. Asked to house at least 500 men, UT’s Old College (later torn down to make way for Ayres Hall) was converted into a dormitory for the SATC, and a two-story barracks was built that could house 200 men. Jefferson Hall (no longer standing) served as their dining hall. More than 2,000 people attended UT’s formal opening as an SATC training school on October 1, 1918. The Knoxville Journal and Tribune’s story the following day called the festivity “an impressive military ceremony” featuring a flag raising and company drill, and 550 men took the oath of allegiance to the American flag. Some of the troops housed at UT wound up admitted to Reese Hall with the Spanish flu, which had broken out in Knoxville during the global pandemic. The SATC was short-lived. A November 2, 1918, article in the Knoxville Sentinel reported that UT’s SATC would soon demobilize. The war ended on November 11, 1918. Even before the formal launch of the SATC, UT’s Department of Engineering started in April 1918 to offer vocational training for the military’s Section B program. These men were known as the Fighting Mechanics. Many of the Section B men were stationed at Chilhowee Park in Knoxville. Some of the section B instruction occurred at UT’s Estabrook Hall. The Section B program was later folded into the SATC. Of the 27 UT students and alumni who gave their lives during WWI, 13 did so in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in northeastern France. The success of that offensive, when combined with the Hundred Day Offensive, contributed heavily to the end of the war. Alumni Memorial Building is dedicated to the students and alumni who died in World War I as well as four who perished in the Spanish-American War.

Although Arthur Preston Whitaker, who was editor-in-chief of the Orange and White newspaper and the Volunteer yearbook as well as a singles tennis champion, was selected in 1917 as UT’s third Rhodes Scholar, he chose to serve his country in World War I instead. After his service in the US artillery in France, Whitaker earned a PhD in history at Harvard in 1924 and became a professor at Cornell. Twelve years later, he moved to the University of Pennsylvania as the chair of Latin American history and taught until his retirement in 1965. Whitaker published around 20 books and numerous articles and reviews. He died in 1979.

The height of the Spanish flu, a global pandemic, occurred in Knoxville in October 1918. The city’s health physician, Dr. W.R. Cochrane, said in a Knoxville-Sentinel story dated October 5, 1918 “people are urged to shun public gatherings and stay out of crowds whenever possible.” On October 9, the city board of health ordered schools, churches, theaters, and pool rooms to close for nearly four weeks. UT canceled classes until November. The local chapter of the Red Cross converted UT’s original Reese Hall to an infirmary equipped with cots and medical supplies. The Reese Hall infirmary housed 47 patients sick with the Spanish flu, the Knoxville Journal and Tribune reported on October 6, 1918. Many of the sick were soldiers on campus as part of a new government program called the Students’ Army Training Corps during World War I. The Red Cross asked people with training in hygiene and home care for the sick to report for volunteer service at the Reese Hall infirmary or another military infirmary at Chilhowee Park. It is estimated that about 500 million people, or one-third of the world’s population, became infected with the Spanish flu. While the number of deaths in Knoxville was 132, at least 50 million people were estimated to have died of the flu worldwide, with about 675,000 of those deaths in the U.S. In 1937, UT razed Reese Hall, and a new dormitory with the same name opened in 1966.

A Canadian who made great contributions to agriculture in the US South, Harcourt A. Morgan’s research at Louisiana State University helped turn the fortunes of cotton farmers. It also caught the attention of UT President Brown Ayres. Morgan came to UT to head the Agricultural Experiment Station, then he became dean of the College of Agriculture, the 13th president of UT in 1919, and a board member for the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1933. Despite the Great Depression, UT added an engineering building, two women’s dormitories, Cherokee Farm, land along Cumberland Avenue, and Shields-Watkins Football Field during Morgan’s administration. Morgan resigned as UT president in 1934 so he could remain on the TVA board, eventually becoming its chairman. Morgan died in 1950, a little more than three years after he retired from TVA.

Ayres Hall, a four-story brick and limestone structure completed on the summit of the Hill in 1921, is UT’s most recognized academic building. It took the place of West College, Old College, and East College, which had served as the university’s principal buildings for more than a century. Ayres Hall is named for UT’s 12th president, Brown Ayres, who helped plan its construction using UT’s first $1 million appropriation from the state of Tennessee. The construction project still lacked funds, however, and some elements of the original design such as the clock faces on the bell tower, a plaza on the north side of the building, and a wing on the southeast side of the building were omitted. In 1950, Chi Omega Sorority gave UT the first set of Westminster Chimes to sound from the bell tower in honor of their 50th anniversary on campus. The chimes ceased to function in 1980, and the components were stolen in 1982. The Class of 1991 replaced the chimes as their senior gift. Although an elevator was installed in 1983 and a few other alterations were made to Ayres Hall, the building gradually deteriorated. Eventually the fourth floor was closed due to safety concerns. In 2008, Ayres Hall closed for a $23 million renovation project. The building reopened in 2010 with a north-side plaza, clock faces on the bell tower, updated flooring and fixtures, new energy efficient windows and lights, a new HVAC system, and additional elevators. The renovation maintained the original grandeur of the building and preserved many original construction materials. It also enhanced the building’s energy efficiency, resulting in a LEED Silver certification by the US Green Building Council. Ayres Hall was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012. The checkerboard pattern on Ayres Hall has inspired many other UT checkerboard designs.

In 1919 and 1920, UT trustee Colonel W. S. Shields, who was president of City National Bank, paid off the purchase of land for a new athletic field, and UT agreed to get the field ready. About 700-800 students and faculty volunteered over two days in March 1921 to level the playing surface, install drainage tiles, and complete construction of the field. It was called Shields-Watkins Field in honor of the donor and his wife, Alice Watkins-Shields. The Vols played their first football game there on September 24, 1921, defeating the Emory and Henry Wasps 27-0. The original west stands that were transformed into Neyland Stadium were also completed in 1921 and seated 3,200 people. Shields-Watkins Field, which originally included the track and space for baseball games, was UT’s first regulation football field. The Vols played their earliest games off campus at Baldwin Park and Chilhowee Park. Games began on campus in 1908 at Wait Field, UT’s first athletic field, located near Cumberland Avenue and Phillip Fulmer Way.

From the time he became an associate justice of the US Supreme Court in 1923, alumnus Edward Terry Sanford authored 130 opinions before his death in 1930. Prior to his appointment, Sanford had served as a special federal prosecutor, an assistant attorney general, and a Tennessee district judge. He also served 19 years as a law school lecturer at UT and 36 years as a university trustee.

Although he was once nicknamed the “king of the melodramas,” alumnus Owen Davis won a Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for a serious drama called Icebound. He was later elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the Authors League of America, and became the first president of the Dramatists Guild. During the remainder of his life, Davis authored over 100 additional plays and also became a screenwriter.

The first Torch Night, called the Freshman Pledge Ceremony, was held on October 9, 1925. It was renamed Freshman Torch Night in 1929. Vic Davis, secretary of the Alumni Association; Ralph Frost, head of the campus YMCA, and students Bob and Warren Kennerly instituted the ceremony, which was patterned after a candlelight ceremony for seniors at the University of South Carolina. Freshmen lined up at the Gym (where Alumni Memorial Building stands now) and, in response to bugle calls from Ayres Tower, marched up the Hill to the steps of Ayres Hall, in two single lines from the east and west sides. The freshmen gave a yell for the sophomores and one for the juniors as they made their way to the steps of Ayres. Candles were passed out as they came up the stairs in front of Ayres. The ceremony included a dedicatory prayer and the playing of Taps in memory of the university’s dead. A chosen senior representative then passed the Torch of Preparation to a designated freshman, signifying the inclusion of the freshmen in the student body. The freshmen then chanted the UT Pledge in unison. “Standing beneath the shadows of this tower, and in the presence of the student body here assembled, I pledge my allegiance to the school of my choice, the University of Tennessee, and to the ideals for which she so nobly stands. My prayer is that I may so conduct myself that Tennessee will be proud to call me her own.” The freshmen then lit their candles and walked down the Hill in silence.

By 1925, UT held an indoor carnival in mid-winter, and the circus was an outdoor event held in the spring. In 1929, the All Campus Events Committee combined the carnival and the circus into one activity called Carnicus.

Jessie W. Harris became the director of what was then known as the School of Home Economics under the College of Agriculture in 1925. She became the first female dean of a college on the Knoxville campus when Home Economics became its own college in 1957. The college, which was renamed the College of Human Ecology in 1985, merged with the College of Education in 1987 and was renamed the College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences in 2002.

Before he transformed the Tennessee football program, Robert Reese Neyland was a superb student–athlete in the Army. He won 35 games (20 consecutive) as a baseball pitcher, played starting end on the Cadets’ 1914 national championship football team, and won the academy’s heavyweight boxing championship his final three years. In 1925, Neyland was serving as UT’s assistant football coach and an ROTC instructor who was also a major in the Army when he was named head coach. His only piece of instruction was to beat Vanderbilt since the Commodores began trouncing the Vols in 1920. It took three years, but Neyland delivered on that win and many more. He developed one of the most efficient single-wing offenses in the country, complemented by an unyielding defense. Of the 216 games he coached, the Vols shut out their opponents 112 times. In fact, from 1938 to 1940, his teams recorded 17 consecutive regular season shutouts. Neyland’s teams eventually won four national championships and compiled an overall record of 173 wins, 31 losses, and 12 ties. During World War II, Neyland left his coaching duties and returned to active service, eventually earning a promotion to brigadier general. After the war ended and Neyland resumed coaching at UT in 1946, he was always known as “the General.” Although health issues forced Neyland to step down from coaching six years later, he served as UT athletic director for a decade and helped design the stadium. The UT trustees voted to name Neyland Stadium after him about a month before his death in 1962, and UT dedicated a statue of him there in 2010 that displays his seven game maxims.

The first Aloha Oe ceremony was held on May 17, 1926 with a band and a muddy tug-of-war. It evolved into a solemn companion event to Torch Night and by 1935, senior women in white dresses and senior men in suits marched through Grecian columns installed on Shields-Watkins Field for the ceremony. Initially, a senior toga was given to the outstanding junior. Starting in 1937, the outstanding junior was proclaimed “Volunteer of the Year” and a small model of the Volunteer Statue replaced the toga. Each senior class member was then given a lighted candle, the Torch of Service, which signified a pledge to serve UT and their community as responsible and loyal adults. The seniors proceeded up the side of the hill where they formed a T and extinguished their candles in unison to bid farewell to their alma mater. Aloha Oe was set aside in 1967 and revived in 1994.

After the School of Education became a college in 1926, it merged with the College of Human Ecology in 1987 and became the College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences in 2002.

In 1928, UT adopted its alma mater “On a Hallowed Hill,” penned by Mary Fleming Meek. The song was the winner of a yearlong contest to produce an original alma mater. Meek had attended the Summer School of the South at UT in its first years.

In 1928 UT’s School of Information Sciences was founded, 74 years before it merged with the College of Communication in 2002.

An alumnus with a perfect academic record who also played on the football and tennis teams and served as director of the University Glee Club, William Everett Derryberry became the university’s fourth Rhodes Scholar in 1928. During the 1930s, he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English literature at the University of Oxford and captained a tennis team. After teaching at Burritt College, Derryberry became a department head and football coach at UT Junior College at Martin, and then he was appointed to a similar position at Murray State University. Derryberry eventually rose to serve as president of Tennessee Polytechnic Institute (later Tennessee Tech) from 1940 to 1974, overseeing its largest period of growth to that time.

After the name of the Freshman Pledge Ceremony changed to Freshman Torch Night in 1929, freshmen would gather “in answer to bugle calls from Ayres Tower.” Led by their band and carrying torches, they marched to the front entrance of campus and gave a yell for the sophomores. Then they walked part way up the Hill and gave a yell for the juniors. Finally, they presented themselves to the seniors in front of Ayres Hall. The freshmen took an oath of loyalty and pledged allegiance to UT. A chosen senior representative passed the Torch of Preparation to a designated freshman, signifying the formal inclusion of the freshman class in the student body. Tradition also dictated that freshmen stay silent while leaving the ceremony.

Carnicus began at UT in 1929 when the All Campus Events Committee combined the carnival and the circus into one activity. George Abernathy, a member of the All Students’ Club, coined the name. The celebration ended with the crowning of the first Carnicus Queen Pauline Buster. As Carnicus evolved over the years, more emphasis was placed on skit competitions, eliminating the parades, dances, and crowning of the queen.

By 1932, UT had adopted the Volunteer Creed—“One that beareth a torch shadoweth oneself to give light to others”—and the university’s official symbol—a man holding a torch high in his right hand and the Goddess of Victory in his left hand. Colloquially called the Torchbearer, the symbol—whose design was the winner of a sculpture contest—is also the name of the highest student honor conferred by UT as well as the name of our university publication.

James Dickason Hoskins held three UT degrees and had served in numerous administrative roles including dean of the College of Liberal Arts when he became UT’s 14th president. Under his leadership, the university successfully weathered the Great Depression and World War II to see student enrollment increase by the thousands. Hoskins retired as president emeritus in 1946 after more than 40 years of service at his alma mater, but he kept an office on campus where he worked on a history of UT. Hoskins Library was completed in 1931 and named after him in 1950.

Fred C. Smith was appointed the first dean of the UT Graduate School and academic dean of the university in 1936 by President James Hoskins. Smith, who held six degrees including an LLD and an EdD, organized and defined the university’s graduate degree requirements and programs. After he was promoted to UT vice president, Smith appointed the second dean of the Graduate School, Eugene A. Waters, in 1948.

In 1938, the Vols football team won its first national championship under head coach Robert Neyland. The Vols went 10–0 in the regular season and then shut out unbeaten Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl, 17–0, snapping the Sooners’ 14-game win streak. Tennessee added more national championships under Neyland in 1940, 1950, and 1951, as well as championships in 1967 and 1998.

In 1940, the Vols football team won its second national championship under head coach Robert Neyland. Only three teams were able to score points against the Vols that season, and Tennessee’s only loss was to Boston College in the Sugar Bowl.

The board of trustees established the University of Tennessee Press as a scholarly publisher in 1940. The press was mandated to stimulate scholarly research in many fields; to channel the studies to a large readership; and to extend UT’s regional leadership by publishing worthy projects about the South, including those by non-university authors.

John C. Hodges, head of the English Department and namesake of Hodges Library, produced the first Harbrace College Handbook in 1941. It became one of the best-known and most-purchased writing and grammar guides published in the United States. Hodges was a scholar of English literature and a professor at UT for 41 years.

Thousands of students, faculty, and alumni served in World War II from 1941 to 1945, although it is impossible to determine exactly how many. Tennessee Alumnus calculated in the winter of 1945 that 6,826 men and women had served in one or the other branches of the armed forces. Whether this included women other than nurses is unknown, although UT alumnae were in the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), the WAVES—the Navy’s counterpart—and the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve. Other women served with the Women’s Air Force Service Pilots and the Red Cross. In January 1943, the War Manpower Commission asked UT to provide housing and academic instruction for Army aviation cadets during a five-month basic training period. Several dormitories and a gymnasium were used to house trainees, displacing students. UT agreed to train 1,200 cadets every five months. Additionally, the university housed draftees in the Army Specialized Training Program, and university faculty offered instruction in civil, mechanical, and electrical engineering. President James Hoskins established a defense council made up of administrators to coordinate the many war-related programs on campus, including training for military personnel and civilians. His biennial report of 1947 estimated that 8,000 alumni had served in the armed forces.

The College of Social Work began in 1942 as the Nashville School of Social Work. The school later became part of UT and expanded to Knoxville in 1958. It became a formal college in 1986.

UT and Oak Ridge National Laboratory forged a collaboration during World War II and continued afterward. In 1942, the Army Corps of Engineers established the town of Oak Ridge as the home of the Clinton Engineer Works (CEW, later renamed Oak Ridge National Laboratory). During the Manhattan Project, CEW produced enriched uranium used in the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. A number of UT faculty were involved with the Manhattan Project in a variety of ways. Some taught courses in a safety program organized in the summer of 1943 at UT for training Manhattan Project personnel; some continued to serve in this capacity when a separate school for that purpose was established at Oak Ridge. Among the faculty who were granted leave or who resigned to work at the Clinton Engineer Works, were four engineering professors: Julian R. Fleming, Francis R. O’Brien, Clayton R. Plummer, and Elwood D. Shipley; two engineering instructors: Ernest C. Holdredge and Charles L. Segaser; and a physics instructor: E.T. Jurney. Just what specific roles these faculty members played in the making of the atomic bomb is unknown. After the war ended, the UT Board of Trustees responded to the increased enrollment of veterans and Oak Ridge workers who had interrupted their graduate studies by offering new PhD programs in chemistry, physics, and English. UT established a program to teach graduate courses at the Knoxville campus and in Oak Ridge. In 1982, the two institutions formed the Science Alliance, a formal organization that linked UT science operations and ORNL. In 2006, UT and ORNL established the Governor’s Chair Program which brings exceptionally accomplished researchers from around the world to Tennessee.

The Pi Beta Phi Settlement School in Gatlinburg, Tennessee and UT’s College of Home Economics collaborated in 1945 to create a summer crafts workshop known as Arrowmont Shop. Marian Heard, who brought a related arts and crafts program to the college in 1936, headed the summer program until her retirement in 1977. The workshops were a success, enrollment increased and attracted students and faculty worldwide. In 1967, the name was changed to Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts and provisions were made to build a new studio complex. Arrowmont is now an internationally recognized visual art education center.

Three hundred trailers placed on and off campus in 1946 helped house the surge of incoming World War II veterans who enrolled as students at UT. Many were aided by the GI Bill, a nickname for the Serviceman’s Readjustment Act of 1944, which granted stipends covering tuition and expenses for veterans who attended college or trade schools. UT had such a surge of students—7,300 for fall quarter 1946—that new freshmen and sophomores were barred for a quarter and out-of-state applicants were barred for a longer time. From 1945 – 1949, enrollment at UT more than quadrupled. By 1947, enrollment topped 12,000 students. This influx gave the campus a new appearance. Registration for classes in 1946 was a marathon event, as students stood in line for hours in front of Alumni Gym (later named Alumni Memorial Building). Course sections swelled out of control, putting classroom space at a premium. One freshman English class was scheduled to meet in a room in the biology building that turned out to be an elevator shaft. While UT waited for funds to build new classrooms and hire new faculty members, the board of trustees extended classes from 8 am until 5:50 pm without a noon lunch break. Later that year, UT received nearly $9 million for new building projects and operating funds. Demand for student housing also transformed the campus landscape. Trailer villages were constructed on the Hill, dubbed Hillside Village, and on the agricultural campus, called Kingston Pike Village. UT flung up prefabricated barracks and other temporary structures on campus as well. A prefab building south of Ayres Hall served as a much-needed student center. Off campus, Sutherland Village was also home for veterans and their families. By 1948, the five wave of postwar graduates walked in UT commencement ceremonies.

Horticulture specialist Cloide E. “Charlie” Brehm was UT’s dean of the College of Agriculture when he became the university’s acting president in 1946. Two years later he was named the 15th president, an office he held until he decided to step down in 1959.

In a collaboration between the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra and the College of Liberal Arts, Dean Alvin Nielsen brought conductor, composer, and musician David Van Vactor to conduct KSO and found UT’s Fine Arts Department. Van Vactor remained with the KSO for 25 years and taught with what is now UT’s School of Music in what became the College of Arts and Sciences until 1976.

On October 29, 1949, radio station WUOT began broadcasting from the basement of Ayres Hall. The 3,000-watt station aired five hours of classical music and eclectic educational programming Monday through Friday. WUOT was backed with a $14,000 university-provided budget and had two full-time employees. Student Government Association president and future US Senator Howard H. Baker Jr. was instrumental in starting the radio station.

In 1950, the Vols football team won its third national championship under “the General” head coach Robert Neyland. The Vols’ only loss that season was in the second game, a 7–0 upset at Mississippi State. The Vols handed No. 3 Kentucky its only loss and defeated No. 3 Texas in the Cotton Bowl Classic to finish 11–1.

In 1951, the Vols football team won its fourth national championship, and the second of back-to-back championships, under “the General” head coach Robert Neyland. The Vols’ 27-13 win over Alabama on the third Saturday in October was the first ever nationally televised game for both teams. After shutting out five opponents in the regular season, Tennessee lost to No. 3 Maryland in the Sugar Bowl and finished the season 11-1.

UT’s first Black graduate student, Gene Mitchell Gray, was admitted to study chemistry in the winter quarter of 1952. His admittance followed a lawsuit in fall 1950 when he and three other students sought admission to UT’s law and graduate programs. Lincoln A. Blakeney and Joseph H. Patterson applied to the Law School. Gene Mitchell Gray and Jack Alexander applied to the Graduate School. After a judge in federal district court upheld their right to admission but did not issue an order, the students took their case to the US Supreme Court. However since UT had already changed its admission policy and admitted Gray, the Supreme Court declined to take action. Gray took undergraduate courses in the sciences for a year before withdrawing and transferring to Lehigh University. Alexander did not enroll in UT. Blakeney spent one quarter in law school and then withdrew. Patterson announced that he would enter law school in September 1952, but never did.

Alumnus journalist John M. Hightower’s coverage of international and national affairs was so impressive that in 1952 he won three of journalism’s most prestigious awards. One of those awards was a Pulitzer Prize for the sustained quality of his international affairs coverage. Hightower continued to cover international events until he retired from the Associated Press in 1971 to teach journalism at the University of New Mexico and write a column for the Santa Fe New Mexican. A member of UT’s Academic Hall of Fame, Hightower died in 1987.

In 1953, the UT Pep Club held a contest to select a coonhound as the school’s live mascot. Rev. W. C. “Bill” Brooks entered his prize-winning bluetick coonhound “Brooks’ Blue Smokey.” At halftime of the game against Mississippi State, several dogs were lined up for voting. Each dog was introduced over the loudspeaker, and the student body cheered for their favorite. “Blue Smokey” was the last hound introduced. When his name was called, he howled. The students cheered and Smokey howled more. This kept on until the stadium was in an uproar. Smokey I began his mascot career at the 1953 home game against Duke by entering the field on a white carpet rolled out by cheerleaders. He served for the 1953 and 1954 seasons under head coach Harvey Robinson with an overall record of 10-10-1. Smokey I was hit and killed by a car in 1955 after escaping from the garage at his home. In 2019, the bluetick coonhound became the state dog of Tennessee.

Smokey II, one of Smokey I’s sons, had an exciting term as mascot. He and new head football coach Bowden Wyatt both began their service at 1955’s opening game against Mississippi State. In his rookie season, Smokey II was dognapped from his home by Kentucky students posing as members of the UT Pep Club who needed him for photos. His dognappers sent a postcard to his owners saying he would be alright and was simply part of a friendly rivalry. They even took him to the Kentucky pep rally draped with a Wildcats blanket. Smokey II was returned to his owners eight days later, before the kickoff of the Kentucky game. Smokey II also had a clash with the Baylor University bear during halftime at the 1957 Sugar Bowl. The bear took some swats at him after Smokey II barked at the bear. The two were separated, and neither was injured. Smokey II also served under head coach Jim McDonald. Smokey II died in Lexington in 1963 after he was fed an entire chocolate pie during the Vols game against Kentucky. His owners believed it was an accidental death, the result of someone who did not know dogs cannot digest chocolate.

Johnny Majors, a star tailback on the Vols football team, was runner up for the Heisman Trophy in 1956. He led the Vols to a 10-1 record, an appearance in the Sugar Bowl, and a final national ranking of No. 2. Majors went on to become head coach at Iowa State University in 1968, followed by the University of Pittsburgh in 1973, and he returned to take the helm at UT in 1977. As head coach of the Vols from 1977 to 1992, his teams won three Southeastern Conference championships in 1985, 1989, and 1990. UT retired Majors’s No. 45 jersey in 2012. Majors died on June 3, 2020 at 85 years old.

In 1956, US Senator and alumnus Carey Estes Kefauver was selected by the Democratic National Convention to be the running mate of presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson. After they lost to the Eisenhower-Nixon ticket, Senator Kefauver was named chair of the US Senate Antitrust and Monopoly Subcommittee in 1957, a position he held until his death in 1963. In 1950, Kefauver headed a US Senate committee investigating organized crime. Officially known as the Senate Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce, it was popularly known as the Kefauver Committee. Hearings were held in 14 cities, and many of the witnesses were well-known crime bosses (for example Frank Costello). The hearings, televised live as many Americans were first buying televisions, made Kefauver nationally famous and introduced many Americans to the workings of the Mafia. In 1951, when Kefauver was a celebrity guest on the game show What’s My Line? he discussed the hearings briefly with the panel. Before he was a senator, Kefauver had served five terms in the US House of Representatives. He graduated from UT in 1924 with a bachelor of arts degree. He was an editor and reporter for the Orange and White student newspaper from 1921-1924, junior class president in 1923, president of the All Students’ Club in 1924, and a tackle and guard on the Volunteers football team. The Estes Kefauver wing of Hoskins Library was taken down in 2019 due to structural issues, but it had been home to an exhibit that recreated his office in Washington. The Kefauver archival collection is in the Modern Political Archives.

Prolific writer David Madden graduated from UT with a bachelor of arts in education in 1957. He enrolled at UT in 1951, but left later for opportunities with the US Merchant Marines and the Army. After earning his MA in creative writing at San Francisco State University in 1958 and attending the Yale Drama School from 1959 to 1960, Madden published his first novel The Beautiful Greed in 1961. Madden began his teaching career in 1958 as an instructor in English at Appalachian State Teachers College. He spent time teaching at Centre College, the University of Louisville, Kenyon College, and Ohio University. In 1968, he joined the faculty at Louisiana State University as the writer in residence, a position he held for 24 years. Madden retired in 2008 as Robert Penn Warren Professor of Creative Writing, Emeritus. He is the recipient of a Rockefeller Grant and a National Endowment for the Arts Grant. His stories have appeared twice in Best American Short Stories. Madden’s collection of four novellas called Marble Goddesses and Mortal Flesh was published by UT Press in 2017.

Coverage of a school integration crisis earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1958 for the Arkansas Gazette and its editor, alumnus John Netherland Heiskell. He was publisher and editor of the newspaper for more than 70 years during the 1900s. Heiskell also served a 23-day stint as a US senator after the death of a senator he had feuded with in editorials.

Andrew D. “Andy” Holt was already a nationally prominent educational administrator when he began his career at UT. At the end of World War II, Holt, who served in the Army preparing training programs for high schoolers, declined an offer to become public relations director for the US Office of Education. Instead, he returned to his home state of Tennessee and his position as executive secretary of the Tennessee Education Association. While with the TEA, Holt successfully lobbied for a state retirement plan for teachers and a statewide sales tax to help finance public education. In 1948, he was elected as the first vice president of the National Education Association and became president in 1949, the first time a state association executive secretary had been elevated to that office. He was also once named chairman of the US Delegation to the World Organization of the Teaching Profession meeting. Holt began at UT in 1950 as executive assistant to President Cloide Brehm. He rose to become Brehm’s vice president and made substantial contributions to UT’s improvement including the establishment of a faculty retirement system and the creation of a development council to organize and promote a development fund. Selected as the 16th president of UT, Holt took office on July 1, 1959. His administration was marked by a burst of energy. Student enrollment tripled; faculty and staff doubled; eight new buildings were added; the west side of campus was developed, and the physical plant doubled in size and tripled its value. Holt also made a lasting impact during his administration through his relationship with J. Clayton Arnold, the first million-dollar donor to the College of Education. He spoke to almost any community group that invited him, estimating that in one year alone he had given 150 speeches. After the creation of the UT System in 1968, Holt became its first president, and UT Knoxville created the position of chancellor. He retired in 1970 and died in Knoxville on August 7, 1987. His daughter, Ann Skadberg, and her husband, Dean, established the Andrew D. Holt Endowed Professorship in the College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences in 2018.

Theotis Robinson Jr., Charles Blair, and Willie Mae Gillespie were UT’s first admitted Black undergraduates in January 1961. Robinson, whose first attempt to apply to UT in 1960 was turned down because it was policy not to admit Black students, was elected as Knoxville’s first Black city council member from 1970 to 1977. He returned to UT in 1989 as a lecturer in political science and later joined the purchasing department staff. In 1992, Robinson became an administrative aide in the Office of Federal Affairs where he remained until 1999, when he transitioned into the same post within the Office of the Senior Vice President. In 2000, he became the vice president for diversity and equity for the UT System. Robinson retired from UT in 2014 and received an honorary doctorate in social work in 2019.

W J Julian became director of the Pride of the Southland Band in 1961 and designed the uniform that band members still wear. Under his tenure, the band became nationally known for performing the circle drill, forming the T for the football team to run through in Neyland Stadium, playing “Rocky Top,” and playing in the parades for presidential inaugurations—all traditions that continue today.

In 1962, former radio broadcaster George Mooney found a quicker and more exciting way to get to Neyland Stadium than fighting the notorious Knoxville traffic. Mooney navigated his little runabout down the Tennessee River to the stadium and began the tradition that would later become the Vol Navy. Orange and white boats and yachts bearing Vol fans fill the docks on home football weekends, within sight of Neyland Stadium, one of only a few college stadiums in the country that fans can travel to by boat.

Ray Mears was head coach of the men’s basketball team from 1962 to 1977, tallying a 278-112 winning record that put him in the top 20 of the Tennessee, SEC, and NCAA coaching record books. The Vols won three SEC championships under Mears, winning outright in 1967 and 1977 and sharing the title in 1972. Mears is known for originating the tradition of running through the T during the 1962 season when players ran onto the court before each home game. He also coined the term Big Orange Country to represent Tennessee basketball fans. That name later influenced UT’s branding campaign launched in 2012 and the Volunteer family tradition of wearing orange each Friday, known as Big Orange Fridays, which began in 2013.

Smokey III presided over the football team’s national championship in 1967 among a total of 10 bowl games. The Vols defeated coach Paul “Bear” Bryant’s unranked Alabama team 10-9 on October 19, 1968, after the Alabama quarterback took a kick at Smokey III, saying the UT cheerleaders were letting him come close and bark. A descendant of Smokey I, Smokey III served from 1964 to 1977 under three head coaches Doug Dickey, Bill Battle, and Johnny Majors.