Black History in Knoxville

Click images below to learn more about Black History in Knoxville
Mayor, Vice Mayor, City Council	Knoxville Area Transit (KAT)
Knoxville Fire Department	Knoxville Police Department
Noted Knoxvillians and Knoxville Connections
Resources & Events

Remembering Nikki Giovanni
(June 7, 1943-December 9, 2024)

Knoxville lost a powerful voice with the passing of our very own Nikki Giovanni on Dec. 9, 2024. Her legacy will live on among the many writers and readers she cultivated, inspired, and delighted. We are proud that she called Knoxville home.

In her words from “Knoxville, Tennessee”

I always like summer
best
you can eat fresh corn
from daddy’s garden
and okra
and greens
and cabbage …
and go to the mountains with
your grandmother
and go barefooted
and be warm
all the time
not only when you go to bed
and sleep

Learn More About Nikki Giovanni

2024 Annual MLK Parade, March and Juneteenth Celebration

There was a great turnout of participants and spectators for the 2024 MLK Jr Parade and celebration on Juneteenth. Dozens of City staffers and many of our Summer in the City interns helped celebrate the day by marching from Chilhowee Park to Dr. Walter Hardy Park. City Comms captured the day in video and still pictures. Check out the highlights.

View photo gallery on Facebook
Watch a video of Celebration

Remembering Dr. Bob Booker
(April 14, 1935 - February 22, 2024)

Local Historian and Civil Rights Activist Dr. Robert J. "Bob" Booker made an indisputable impact on Knoxville.

In 1967, Dr. Booker became the first Black person ever elected from Knoxville to the State Legislature. He served a total of seven years as administrative assistant to Mayor Kyle Testerman of Knoxville. Dr. Booker was appointed by Governor Lamar Alexander as the first Black person to serve on the Tennessee Civil Service Commission.

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Carla Jones breaks gender, color barriers at KFD

KFD Assistant Chief Carla Jones

Carla Renee Jordan Jones is one flat-out character you’ll never forget. This is a life-loving, family-loving, job-loving and sports-loving woman. For 30 years come December 2024, she’s been serving the city she loves – Knoxville – in a job she treasures. “For me going to work every day is like going to the playground.”

Her playground is the Knoxville Fire Department (KFD). Life for her is wrapped around family first, then her God and church, and then the KFD. Her office sits across the hall at KFD Headquarters from Chief Stan Sharpe. In June 2020 she was the first woman and the first-ever black woman to be promoted to the position of KFD assistant chief. In this role, she has key supervisory responsibility for logistics, recruiting and ISO ratings for fire insurance.

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Remembering Knoxville's Pioneering Black Baseball Players

Rev. Renee Kesler shares information about the Negro League in baseball and Knoxville's team called the Knoxville Giants. The Giants ballplayers of the 1920s and '30s were memorable. With a new multi-use stadium coming to "The Bottom," history lovers say it's a great opportunity to share their stories and the experiences of other Knoxville African-Americans.
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Knoxville History Project Art Wraps on Magnolia Avenue Celebrate Black Artists

Box wrap art by Charles Griffin

As of a year ago, the four shiny metal utility boxes along Magnolia Avenue could best be described as "utilitarian." They were modern infrastructure upgrades, for sure, but no one probably would judge them to be aesthetically attractive. The large boxes were being used narrowly to house traffic-signal wiring and electronics - not as a means of merging art and interpretive local history of East Knoxville. The Knoxville History Project saw the potential for more.
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History of Knoxville Urban Renewal with the Willow St. Project (The Bottom)

Video from the Beck Cultural Center describing Urban Renewal in Knoxville. The video focuses on the Willow Street Project (The Bottom) and the site of the newly proposed stadium for the Smokies baseball team.

The Middlebrook Legacy: We Celebrate Black History

Legacy Award honoree, civil rights activist, friend of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., ordained minister, community leader and loving father—all titles rightfully attributed to the Reverend Harold Middlebrook. While Middlebrook has called Knoxville home since 1977, he was actually born in Memphis in 1942, he attended Morehouse College and Lemoyne-Owen College, and was ordained a minister in 1966. More than 10 years after his ordination, he moved to Knoxville to pastor at Mount Calvary Baptist Church.

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Library Gathers WBIR Videos to Develop Black History Collection

The Knox County Public Library’s Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound (TAMIS) preserves East Tennessee’s cultural history through film, video and audio. Underrepresented community stories found in their WBIR-TV news collection were gathered to make a Black History Collection more accessible. The collection includes just over 100 records in the Calvin M. McClung special collections catalog. Click here to read more about the project from KnoxTNToday.com.

View WBIR Black History Collection

Black History Month Display at City County Building

Each year, the City celebrates Black History Month on the 6th floor of the City County Building with a poster display of inspiring, influential, progressive and sometimes transgressive Black Americans. Black history is American history.Click each image below to see posters in larger PDF view.