FIVE MORE incredible after-school inservices coming up:
Thursday, Feb 13: “California Gold Rush: The inside story from where it all started“
Holly Thane and Ed Allen, two experienced guides at Marshall Gold Discovery State Park in California, will do a two-hour presentation including a tour of the actual site where gold was discovered in Northern California in 1848.
They will answer questions such as: Who discovered gold in the first place? How did he know it was gold? Why could they not keep it secret? What did the discovery of gold to the population of the California territory? What did it do to the Native American population? What did it eventually do the environment?
This is the second time TN History for Kids has staged an event from this state park. The first one may have been our best ever.
Click here to register for the Feb. 13 event on the California Gold Rush.
Thursday, Feb. 20: The passage of the suffrage amendment and Tennessee between 1910 and 1925
Part One: David Ewing gives the inside story of how it was that the Suffrage Amendment came down to one vote at the Tennessee State Capitol in August 1920. He also explains the different personalities involved: from Anne Dallas Dudley to Sue Shelton White to Frankie Pierce to Josephine Pearson. And what role did race play in the debate?

A meeting of (mostly) women in Springfield in 1920 in opposition to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment (TN State Library and Archives photo)
Part Two: A lot of important things happened in Tennessee between 1910 and 1920. Don’t believe us? Hydroelectric dams started being built all over East Tennessee. The KKK became so powerful that it affected national politics. The influenza epidemic killed tens of thousands of people, then changed medical education forever. Tennessee solders went off to World War I; one of them would become the most famous soldier in American history. The battle over turning the Great Smoky Mountains into a national park was fought and won. There was this thing called the Scopes Trial. Oh, and by the way, the 19th Amendment — passed in Tennessee — granted the right to vote to all women. “History Bill” Carey fills us in on all the details.
Click here to register for the Feb. 20 event on the passage of the suffrage amendment and Tennessee between 1910 and 1925.
Tuesday, Feb. 25: The inside story of Brown v. Board of Education AND school integration in Tennessee
Part One: Preston Webb, education director at Brown v Board of Education National Historic Site, tells the “back story” of the Topeka, Kansas, case that launched the modern Civil Rights Movement. Webb will focus on the aspects of the case that people may not understand. For example, who was Brown? Why was the lawsuit filed in the first place? How did the conditions of “whites only” public schools and “blacks only” public schools compare? What role did “doll tests” play in the Supreme Court decision? Etc.

High school senior Bobby Cain walks into Clinton High School in August 1956 (Library of Congress photo)
Part Two: Brown v. Board would eventually cause all public schools in Tennessee to integrate. But it happened in phases — year-by-year, and in some cases grade-by-grade. In this presentation, “History Bill” will show newspaper articles that prove that some parts of the South were more defiant than others. He will also explain why Oak Ridge High School was the first to integrate in 1955; then Clinton High School in 1956; then (in most parts of Tennessee) grade-by-grade, under what was known as the “Nashville Plan.” He will also show articles that linked the creation of many new private schools to the backlash against busing, and these private schools deny (to this day) the role that race played in their creation.
Click here to register for the Feb. 25 event on the Brown v Board of Education decision and school integration in Tennessee.
Thursday, Feb 27: The Battle of New Orleans AND the first steamboats in American and Tennessee history
First Hour: The Battle of New Orleans was one of the most shocking upsets in world military history. It humiliated the British, elevated Andrew Jackson to national prominence, and gave Tennesseans a reputation for toughness we STILL have! But what exactly happened at Chalmette on January 8, 1815 – a day all Americans used to celebrate as a holiday? How did a British Army that had defeated Napoleon lose to a hodgepodge American fighting force? It’s too far to drive, so Amanda Stedman of Chalmette National Battlefield will do the presentation from afar.
Second Hour: “History Bill” has a lot of fascinating details about Robert Fulton’s development of the first steamboat on the Hudson River, and his later involvement in the first steamboat on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. (That was a wild ride that encountered waterfalls, hostile Native Americans, a mysterious comet, and the New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811-1812.) Bill will also reveal new information about the first steamboat to arrive in Nashville in 1818 — it wasn’t the one the textbooks claim — and the first steamboat to arrive in Knoxville 10 years later.
Click here to register for the Feb. 27 event on the Battle of New Orleans AND the first steamboats in American and Tennessee history.
Tuesday, March 4: World War II in Tennessee AND the Medal of Honor Connection to the Volunteer State
First Hour: Author, activist and Hamilton County historian Linda Moss Mines will present on the Medal of Honor and its connections to Tennessee. The medal was created during the Civil War because of actions during the Great Locomotive Chase in northwest Georgia. Since that time more than 3,000 people have received it. Today, Chattanooga is home to the Charles H. Coolidge Medal of Honor Museum, which is named for one of Tennessee’s 9 World War II Medal of Honor recipients. Hear about those 9 men, along with many others.

Low attack planes fly above Wilson County during the maneuvers (TN Maneuvers Collection, Albert Gore Research Center, MTSU)
Second Hour: World War II affected not only those who went to war, but those who stayed home. In this presentation, “History Bill” talks about how Tennessee factories (from Alcoa to General Shoe) shifted to wartime footing; how several parts of rural Tennessee housed POW camps for Axis prisoners; how victory gardens and rationing affected day-to-day life; and how large chunks of Middle Tennessee hosted U.S. Army War Maneuvers.
Click here to register for the March 4 inservice on World War II in Tennessee and the Medal of Honor Connections to the Volunteer State.