Three Star

While black men and women have played important roles in Tennessee's growth and history; slavery, caste, and segregation have forced them to live apart and to create a separate history. In this historical analysis, Lester Lamon offers an understanding of the history of black Tennesseans, recognizing that they have been both a part of and apart from the developments affecting the dominant white population of the state. The different economic priorities, political loyalties, and racial populations evident in the three "Grand Divisions" of the state have created superficial differences in the historical experiences of blacks in the three regions. Intrastate competition has reinforced these sectional differences, but a common factor found in the black experience has been a racial "givenness"-the idea that blacks should not expect equality or free association with whites. Tennessee's black history is not one of a surrender to racial pressure, but, instead, is a story of courage, sacrifice, frustration, and dreams of freedom, equality, and respect for human dignity. Blacks in Tennessee provides a necessary and culturally enriching addition to the traditional history of the state.

Country music grew up in Tennessee, drawing from sources in the white rural music of East and Middle Tennessee, from the church music of country singing conventions, and from the black music of the Memphis area. The author traces the vital role played by Tennessee and its musicians in the development of this unique American art form.

Hernando De Soto's invasion of Native lands in 1540 marked the onslaught of great change in the lives of Tennessee's Native Americans. Although these first Tennesseans boasted a cultural heritage of thousands of years, only three centuries of contact with the white man elapsed before their population was decimated and the remnants driven out. The Indians were a settled people when de Soto visited, not the savage or exotic woods creatures so often depicted. Tennessee's Indian Peoples, then, is a story of the ways the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Creeks, Shawnees, and other Indian peoples lived, reared families, farmed and hunted, worshipped, played, fought, and governed themselves. He describes also the eventful destruction of their societies-destroyed not only by external pressures for Indian lands, but also by internal change wrought by increasing dependence on the white man's trade goods.

With its unique position as the gateway to the entire western Confederacy, Tennessee found itself the prime battleground in the West during the Civil War. Further, both the North and the South coveted the state's vast resources in agriculture and industry. Thomas L. Connelly (1938–1991), credited with some of the earliest studies of the Western Theater, traces the tactical maneuvers to garner the prize called Ten­nessee. He recounts the battles fought by large armies and master­minded by the most brilliant generals of the period. In Civil War Tennessee, Connelly is at his best in providing the reader with synop­ses of the events that made the state the spearhead of the war effort.