Around 1800, a Revolutionary War veteran named Micajah Frost came to the Cumberland Mountains of East Tennessee and cleared a portion of virgin forest in what is now Anderson County. Others followed, and eventually this small area was dotted with settlers. In the years since, those settlers and their descendants witnessed the strife of the Civil War, the rise of the coal-mining and logging industries, the coming of the railroad, and countless smaller upheavals. Drawn largely from the memories of long-time residents, this delightful book revisits two hundred years of history in the communities surrounding what was locally called Windrock Mountain. The stories Augusta Bell recounts take us from Oliver Springs--which had its origins in the grist mill Moses Winters built in 1799 and which later became a "boom town" with a fashionable resort hotel--to places like New River Valley, Graves Gap, and Duncan Flats. She depicts the everyday lives of the mountain people as well as the extraordinary events that sometimes shattered those lives--such as the Coal Creek War of 1891-93, in which miners squared off against state militia, and the two mine explosions that came a few years later, sealing up 268 men deep inside the mountain. Bell also tells of happier times, as when the famous Windrock Mine opened above Oliver Springs in 1909. Tapping a rich lode of folklore and oral tradition, along with other historical sources, Circling Windrock Mountain offers a view of Appalachian life that defies old stereotypes. Far from being static, the communities described here saw an amazing variety of changes to which they adapted with resilience and ingenuity. The Author: Augusta Grove Bell, a writer who now lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, has been a newspaper reporter and teacher. From 1958 to 1970, she lived in Anderson County, Tennessee, where she worked for the Oak Ridger and wrote feature stories that form much of the basis for this book.

"An intimate portrait of a small Southern town living through tumultuous times, this propulsive piece of forgotten civil rights history-about the first school to attempt court-ordered desegregation in the wake of Brown v. Board-will forever change how you think of the end of racial segregation in America. In graduate school, Rachel Martin volunteered with a Southern oral history project. One day, she was sent to a small town in Tennessee, in the foothills of the Appalachians, where locals wanted to build a museum to commemorate the events of August 1956, when Clinton High School became the first school in the former Confederacy to undergo court-mandated desegregation. After recording a dozen interviews, Rachel asked the museum's curator why everyone she'd been told to gather stories from was white. Weren't there any Black residents of Clinton who remembered this history? A few hours later, she got a call from the head of the oral history project: the town of Clinton didn't want her help anymore. For years, Rachel Martin wondered what it was the white residents of Clinton didn't want remembered. So she went back, eventually interviewing sixty residents-including the surviving Black students who'd desegregated Clinton High-to piece together what happened back in 1956: the death threats and beatings, picket lines and cross burnings, neighbors turned on neighbors and preachers for the first time at a loss for words. The national guard had rushed to town, followed by national journalists like Edward Murrow and even evangelist Billy Graham. And still tensions continued to rise... until white supremacists bombed the school. In A Most Tolerant Little Town, Rachel Martin weaves together a dozen disparate perspectives in an intimate and yet kaleidoscopic portrait of a small town living through a tumultuous turning point for America. The result is a propulsive piece of forgotten civil rights history that reads like a ticking time bomb... and illuminates the devastating costs of being on the frontlines of social change. You may have never before heard of Clinton-but you won't be forgetting the town anytime soon"--

The roadside historical markers of East Tennessee highlight the fascinating personalities and significant events of a culturally and historically rich region. Forthree years, Knoxville News Sentinel columnist Fred Brown presented the storiesbehind the local markers placed by the Tennessee Historical Commission. He searchedthe highways and back roads of East Tennessee, tracking down markers with directionsthat were sometimes no more specific than ?Highway 11, Greene County.'Arranged by county, the entries link East Tennessee's past and present and highlightthe enormous diversity of the state's history from its prehistoric past through its involvement in World War II. The markers detail bitter struggles with Native Americans in the eighteenth century, but also explain the unique contribution of Cherokee culture and civilization, such as Sequoyah's development of the Cherokee syllabary. Brown commemorates the numerous Civil War sites throughout the region, but he also includes the service of East Tennesseans in later wars. One marker commemorates Kiffin Yates Rockwell, a founding pilot of the Lafayete Escadrille, a famed squadron of aviators in World War I. Another marker details the achievements of Sgt. Elbert L. Kinser of Greene County, who was posthumously decorated for his leadership of a First Marine Division Rifle Platoon on Okinawa.The markers also showcase East Tennessee's unique political history. They tell thestory of the ?lost state? of Franklin in the 1780s and record the region's efforts to secede from the state when Tennessee left the Union in 1861. Brown's narrative also explains the nature of opposing political factions throughout the decades through the biographies of their leaders, such as Elihu Embree, a Quaker abolitionist who founded an antislavery paper in East Tennessee.From the vantage of the armchair or out on the road, Marking Time is a surprisingand engaging trip on the byways of East Tennessee's politics, culture, and history through the stories of the men and women who shaped the state.

John C. Tramazzo highlights the relationship between bourbon and military service to show the rich and dramatic connection in American history.