Chattanooga and its Historic Suburbs

(For the most up-to-date and accurate information, see the entry "South Hamilton Co. TN communities and placenames" at https://notesfromtheninthcircle.blogspot.com/2017/01/south-hamilton-co-communities-and.html)

When I was younger—much, much younger—I used to wonder when I heard my older relatives talking about my dad being born in Alton Park, my maternal grandfather being from East Chattanooga, my paternal grandmother being born in East Lake and going to church in Ridgedale, and my cousins living in Tiftonia.

After I returned from the Philippines near the end of 1991, I began researching local history, first focusing on East Brainerd, with my best source being Becky Eaves.  For Native American history, my primary human source was ethnohistorian Raymond Evans.  For other than for East Brainerd, I have found the local history section on the 3rd floor of the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Bicentennial Library to be an incredible source.

The following is based on research from the large collection of historic maps, newspaper clippings, and books on local affairs that section offers.  The suburbs here are those directly dependent on Chattanooga and founded in the city’s “Dynamo of Dixie” era.  Most, but not all, were annexed before or in 1930.  The boundaries listed are not from scientific surveys, and many suburbs were not exactly square. 

In the beginning of what would become the City of Chattanooga, there was Ross’ Landing trading post.  There was a ferry too, which crossed the Tennessee River to Lower Ferry Road to link up with the county seat at Dallas.  Contrary to common belief, the Landing was named for Lewis Ross, not his brother John.  Lewis, who lived in what became Charleston, Tennessee, was the businessman of the family while John was the politician.

John never lived in Rossville’s Chief John Ross House either.  His grandfather, John McDonald, who sold the land that became Brainerd Mission did, however, and so later did John’s daughter and son-in-law, Nicholas Scales.

When the little town first incorporated, it adopted the name of a Cherokee town abandoned by the Removal that was a few miles distant, Tsatanugi, or Chattanooga.   No one knows why that name was chosen rather than that of the closer Cherokee town of Citico (at the mouth of Citico Creek), but it may have been because of the farm and tannery of Daniel Ross located near Tsatanugi, in the area that became St. Elmo.

In the area of the later town of St. Elmo and former town of Tsatanugi, another village grew up called Kirklen, named after one of the original post-Removal settlers.

The original borders of the town were the river in the north, James St. (9th, or MLK, between Chestnut and Market Sts.) in the south, Georgia Avenue on the side of Brabson Hill in the east, and Cypress St. at the foot of Cameron Hill in the west.  Its main street has always been Market St., its second street, now Broad, at first named Mulberry St., became Railroad Ave. in 1850.

In 1851, the city annexed territory out to what are now Baldwin St. in the east and W. 23rd St. (then Missionary Ave.) in the west; these were the city boundaries in the Civil War.  After the war in 1869, the city expanded to Central Ave. (then East End Ave.) in the east and W. 28th St. (then Chattanooga Ave.) in the West.

Downtown

Chattanooga’s “official” Downtown has always been the same as the original town, of which four streets to the west of Pine St. (Poplar, Cedar, Cypress, and Pleasant) were obliterated by the construction of the freeway.  Also lost from downtown to the freeway was Stillhouse Hollow between Cameron and Reservoir (Kirkman) Hill.

Irish Hill once sat between Cherry, Lindsay, 8th, and 9th Sts.  Many do not realize that the first railroads into Chattanooga (Western & Atlantic and East Tennessee & Virginia) were built by the same workforce that did so elsewhere in the country: immigrant Irish.  Most accounts tell that this population disappeared with the arrival of the Civil War.  However, that leaves unexplained how the Irish of Chattanooga contributed a regiment to the Fenian Brotherhood’s Army of Irish Liberation’s invasion of Canada in 1867.  Sts. Peter and Paul Church is all that remains today of that community.

Bluff View was once the premier place for the wealthy to live in downtown Chattanooga.  At the end of High St., it survives as Hunter Art Museum, Houston Museum, and Mary Portero’s Bluff View Arts District, which preserves the great majority of the former homes.

Cameron Hill was a prestigious West Side neighborhood in its own right, with two houses along its crest and others on Cameron Dr., with slightly less prestigious homes along its southern end on East Terrace and West Terrace.  A spacious Boynton Park once adorned its peak, only to become fill dirt for the freeway.  In its place, the Cameron Hill Apartments were constructed, now replaced by offices for Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

The upper ends of Cherry, Walnut, Lookout, and High Sts. and Georgia Avenue were also once affluent residential areas.

West Side

The West Side once included the area beyond Cameron Hill and the residential area between W. MLK (once W. 9th St.) Blvd. and W. Main St. (once Montgomery Ave.), from the river in the west to Carter Street in the east.  The north-south cross streets included Pine, College, Poplar, Cedar, Cypress, and Grove Sts.  Nearly all the West Side fell to the freeway and to the Golden Gateway “urban renewal”; all that remained were two small streets of row houses, but these too fell to the bulldozers when Findley Stadium was built.

Until the Golden Gateway came, W. 9th St. passed south of Cameron Hill and the one which crossed it where W. MLK Blvd. now does was W. 6th St. 

During the post-bellum, Second Industrial Revolution, the entire West Side was owned by the Roane Iron Company, then by the Chattanooga Land, Coal, Iron, and Railway Company.  The Roane Iron Works served as the centerpiece and main source of jobs in the manufacturing district west of Cameron Hill.  When the iron works closed due to being unable to compete with modernized techniques adopted by northern factories, the works shut down, and so did much of the West Side.  From being a mostly working class district, it became a center of poverty.

College Hill is actually a lower hill west of Cameron Hill, as one can see from the large panoramic photo behind the desk of the library’s local history section.  It remains as the College Hill Courts, or Westside projects.  Despite the fact that the hill and surrounding flats were farther from the pollution of the factories to the immediate west, this was where the rank-and-file of the factories lived, with a longer commute.  In the early 20th century, the name College Hill was synonymous with what we now called Westside.

Tannery Flats was a tenement that was originally company housing for the workers of the Chattanooga Tannery, which once stood along the river west of Cameron Hill.  It lay south of where W. 6th St. (now W. MLK Blvd.) came over the hill.  Of its four or five small blocks, only Ash St. remains.  During the heyday of Roane Iron, this was where the middle management lived.

Blue Goose Hollow was a slum  north of where W. 6th St. (W. MLK Blvd.) came over Cameron Hill.  It began as a company housing for workers at Roane Iron Works and is famous for being the birthplace of the Empress of the Blues, Bessie Smith.  Fulton St. is all that remains.  The upper management of Roane Iron lived here.

The public wharf was along the river at the end of W. Montgomery Ave. (W. Main St.).

East Side

The East Side runs between E. MLK Blvd. (formerly E. 9th St.) and the river, from Georgia Ave. to Baldwin St., and at one time included some of the most posh neighborhoods in the city, along with some of its worst slum areas.  Some of the East Side has been taken over by buildings and parking lots for Unum Provident, but most of the East Side that has disappeared has been swallowed up by the growing campus of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC).

Battery Place lies along the street of the same name between the river and Riverfront Parkway, formerly the site of a Civil War battery.  It was, and still is, one of the more prestigious areas in which to live downtown.

The Big Nine is the nickname for the stretch of E. 9th St. (E. MLK Blvd.), particularly between Houston and Magnolia Sts., that was the paramount cultural and commercial center of the African-American community in Chattanooga.  Amongst the barber shops, retail stores, and numerous clubs, its center-piece until 1985 was the Martin Hotel.  It once stood where the Bessie Smith Hall is now.

Tadetown was the residential area for African-Americans that sprang up after the Civil War along the north side of E. 9th St.

Scruggstown was the residential area for African-Americans that sprang up after the War along the south side of E. 9th St.

East 8th Street, from Mabel St. to East End (now Central) Ave. was once a vibrant neighborhood in its own right.

The University of Chattanooga (UC) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries occupied only the block bound by McCallie Ave. and Douglas, Oak, and Baldwin Sts., and it shared the block with one of the public elementary schools.  It did, however, also own the block between Douglas and Baldwin to Vine Street.

The Whiteside Flats were cheaper rental housing in the vicinity of UC.

Fort Wood, currently occupying the area between Palmetto and 5th Sts. and McCallie and Central Aves., at one time extended west to the line of the East Tennessee, Virginia, & Georgia Railroad, which is now barely discernible on the UTC campus.

Park Place originally lay Park and East End (now Central) Aves. And 10th and Flynn Sts., the south side of the latter, which in the late 19th century was called St. Charles St.  It can now be said to take in the territory to Magnolia St.

Onion Bottom lies between East 11th St., Central Ave., and the East End switchyards.  If you doubt it is bottom land, wait for the next gullywasher.  In the early 20th century, it contained the city workhouse, a dump, a coal processing plant, and one of the largest and most notorious slums in the city, with a mixed population.

South Chattanooga

South Chattanooga is not simply a geographic designation, it was a land company that developed the area for residential housing.  Everything south of Main Street to W. 23rd St. (or the freeway since its construction) and west of Market St. is South Chattanooga.

Hooterville lies south of the freeway to Chattanooga Creek.  That’s the name the locals have given it and those who know them.

Fort Negley, built around the site of the Civil War fort, stands east of Market St. to Rossville Ave. and Washington St., between Main and W. 20th Sts.

Jefferson Heights lies east of Fort Negley but straddles Main St., with Madison St. as its east boundary and the railroad to the south.

Cowart Place is south of Main St., across South Market St. from Fort Negley, extending south to the freeway.

The Suburbs

Though Chattanooga has always had satellite communities since even before the Civil War, its real historic suburbs did not come into existence until its speedy and broad industrial expansion during its “Dynamo of Dixie” years in the latter 19th century.

Until the late 1880s, the primary suburbs for Chattanooga were St. Elmo (originally named Kirklen) and Hill City on the north side of the river.  Beginning with the economic boom of 1887, however, numerous suburbs spread across the Chattanooga Valley beyond the city limits, which for decades rested at East End (Central) Ave. and Chattanooga Ave. (West 28th St.).  Each of these suburbs had at least minimal self-government, some of which were incorporated towns.  These differed from subdivisions, generally called “additions” at this time.

The opening of the Walnut Street Bridge paved the way for explosive growth north of the river and spurred development south of it as well. 

This system of suburbs was bound together by one of the country’s best trolley systems, the Chattanooga Union Belt Railway.

Alton Park lies south of W. 37th St., east of Alton Park Blvd., and north of W. 47th St., and is bordered on the west by Hawkins Ridge.  It began life as Oak Hills.  It was annexed in 1930.

Amnicola was the large farm of first the Crutchfield family and later the Montagues along the Tennessee River, south and west of South Chickamauga Creek and northwest of the railroad.

Angora Hill is the eastern wing of the U-shaped eminence north of Trueblood Hill/north end of Missionary Ridge joined to Billy Goat Hill by a narrow ridge.  It was occupied by Union troops under Sherman’s command during the Battle of Missionary Ridge.  Gun emplacements and rifle pits from the battle still exist.

Avondale originally lay between the railroad and Missionary Ridge, north of Wilson St. and south of what is now Infantry St.; later it spread south to Citico Ave.  It was annexed in 1923.

Belvoir was the residential area around the large home of Col. W.R. Crabtree that became part of the larger community of Brainerd.

Billy Goat Hill lies at the end of Chamberlain Ave., which at one time was Sherman Blvd. beyond Wilcox Blvd.  It is the westwing of the U-shaped eminence north of the end of Missionary Ridge.  It was occupied by Union troops under Sherman’s command during the Battle of Missionary Ridge.  Gun emplacements and rifle pits from the battle still exist.

Black Bottom got its name from the coal sludge dumped into Chattanooga Creek from the factories lining its path through the valley.  An effort was once made to restyle it “Harrisburg”.  Now the site of Piney Woods housing complex, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries its population was nearly all white.  It was annexed in 1930.

Boulevard Park was a suburb in its own right that lay west of Rossville Blvd. below E. 40th St. opposite Cedar Hills, and is now that suburb’s western half.  It was annexed in 1925.

Boyce was an organized town east of Boyce Station on the Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. Louis Railway and the Citico yards between Elmendorf and Cushman Sts. and Dodson Ave.  It later absorbed the community of East Chattanooga (East Section), then became part of the greater town of East Chattanooga after merging with Sherman Heights.

Bozentown came into being around 1910 within what was originally supposed to be East Chattanooga, between the railroad and the river.  It lies between the much later subdivisions of Sherwood Forest and Riverside Park.  Its “main street” was and is Wood Ave., upon which the First Baptist Church of Bozentown sat until recently (it now occupies the former Ridgedale Methodist, where my grandmother attended church).  It (along with its neighbors) was annexed in 1968.

Brainerd came into being in 1926 when the smaller communities of Olde Towne, Sunnyside, Dutchtown, Belvoir, and the Mission merged by popular vote under that name.  It was annexed in 1930.

Brown’s Ferry, also called Brown’s Valley, is the northern section of Lookout Valley, more or less everything north of Cummings Highway to the Tennessee River.

Bushtown was the first black-governed municipality in the State of Tennessee.  The suburb lays between the railroad, Citico Ave., E. 3rd St., and Orchard Knob Ave.  It was annexed in 1923.

Cedar Grove is listed as a community of 109 residents in the Chattanooga City Directory of 1900, this community had a depot on the Belt Line between National Cemetery and Orchard Knob.  It was, perhaps, the name for the community between Olympia/Warner Park and the National Cemetery west of Holtzclaw Avenue.

Cedar Hills lies at the foot of Missionary Ridge south of E. 40th St.  and east of Rossville Blvd., though it is now considered to take in the former Boulevard Park west of the boulevard (in fact, Cedar Hills Schools is there).  It was annexed in 1925.

Churchville is Bushtown’s nextdoor neighbor, and lies within Citico Ave., E. 3rd St., Orchard Knob Ave., and  N. Willow St., extending to Dodson Ave. between Blackford St. and E. 3rd St.  Like Bushtown, Churchville originated as a black-governed municipality in the late 19th century, next to the Belt Line station called Stanleytown.  It was annexed in 1923.

Citico City lies west of the railroad and north of E. 3rd St., and extended west to East End Avenue, originally founded in the early 1880s for Afro-American workers at the Citico Furnace.  Lincoln Park, the actual park founded in 1918 from which the  neighborhood gets its modern name, once lay between East End Ave. and Wiehl St until the hospital expanded to include it; a much reduced park remains.  It was annexed in 1886.

Clifton Hills straddles Rossville Blvd. below E. 28th St. down to E. 32nd St. east of Rossville Blvd. and to E. 33rd St. west of it.  It was annexed in 1925.

Curtain Pole was the community in the vicinity of the H.L. Judd factory, built about 1890.  Later Sherman Hill Baptist Church formed the center of the community.  Off Amnicola Highway along the road of the same name.

Doty, so named for Doty’s Junction station where the line of the Belt Railway connected with Central of Georgia Railway, lay about halfway between Alton Park and Poeville.

Dutchtown once stood in the area of the Lerch St. and Glendon Place neighborhoods and was the residential area around the dairy of Jacob Kellerhalls that later became part of the greater community of Brainerd.

East Chattanooga comprises everything north of Ocoee St. between the railroad and the Ridge until Campbell St. passes east thru Fords Gap.  As it now stands, this suburb came largely as the merger of the former town of Boyce with the suburb of Sherman Heights.  Originally, East Chattanooga was going to be a planned town between the Cincinnati Southern Railroad and the Tennessee River; this section was later known as East Chattanooga (West Section).  The only part of that actually inhabited was the African-American community of Bozentown.  East Chattanooga (East Section) was developed east of the tracks north of the town of Boyce, originally under the latter’s name, before changing to East Chattanooga.  The station on the Southern Railway for Sherman Heights was East Chattanooga, and Sherman Heights merged into the town of East Chattanooga around 1910.  East Chattanooga was annexed in 1923.

Eastdale came together as Hornville in the 1890’s, changing its name to Eastdale in 1909 in hopes of soon being annexed.  The former Eastdale Baptist Church moved to Ooltewah-Ringgold Rd. and became Eastwood Baptist.  It was annexed in 1957. 

East End, a name which has largely disappeared from usage except maybe by longer term residents, was for a long time one of Chattanooga’s largest suburbs, home to a sizable working class population that worked in many of the surrounding factories. Its station on the Belt Line was called Rathcliff.   Currently it lies south of E. 34th St. between Jerome Ave., Hamill Rd., and 4th Ave., though many people refer to the area as part of East Lake.  It was annexed in 1930.

East Lake lies along the foot of Missionary Ridge between E. 28th and E. 40th Sts. and 4th Ave., its central attraction being the still beautiful East Lake Park.  It was annexed in 1925.

East Ridge is a town that was organized in 1921 to prevent annexation from the earlier communities of Penny Row, Nickel Street, and Smokey Row, later taking in the Spring Creek and Scruggs Bridge communities.  It is still independent.

East St. Elmo (see Poeville)

Eden Park was one of the more prominent subdivisions in Highland Park suburb, from Willow St. to Lyerly St., between Main St. and Anderson Ave.

Ferger Place was a very posh subdivision in Oak Grove suburb on Morningside and Eveningside Drives.  It remains quite attractive.

Fort Cheatham, once the site of the headquarters of the Confederate general of that name during the Army of Tennessee’s siege of Chattanooga, is at the foot of Missionary Ridge between the freeway, E. 28th St. and 4th Ave.  It was, ironically (given its namesake), one of the oldest historically black suburbs.  It was annexed in 1925.

Foust Place, south of the freeway between S. Hickory St. and 4th Ave. and north of E. 28th St.  It began life as the suburb of New England Park, but came to be called by the name of the housing development that covered its entire territory.  It was annexed in 1925.

Gamble Town is the section of St. Elmo at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries centered around Harris Ave. that was populated by African-Americans.

Glenwood lies north of McCallie Ave. next to Missionary Ridge, west to Derby St. and north to E. 3rd St., taking in Derby Cir.  It was annexed in 1922.

Gobbler’s Peak is a knoll just south of Bozentown.

Hell’s Half Acre was one of the most interestingly-named areas of Chattanooga.  Or I should say “three”, since there were three areas so-nicknamed.  The “main” neighborhood so-called was between E. 16th St. and the railroad to the south, taking in Doris, Fillmore, Fagan, and Polk Sts. within those bounds.  There was another Hell’s Half Acre next to Tannery Flats and yet one more Hell’s Half Acre near Moses St., which once ran near W. 19th St. beyond Riverside Drive.

Highland Park lies between McCallie and Holtzclaw Aves. and Main and S. Lyerly Sts.  The elevated part of the suburb is the Civil War-era Indian Hill.  Highland Park Baptist still stands in its original location.  The suburb was annexed in 1929.

Hill City originated as Camp Contraband during the Civil War.  Its boundaries are Manning St., Stringer’s Ridge, and the backside of North Market St.  At one time, it was a mixed municipality which stretched to Forest (later Forrest, now Forest again) Ave.  It merged with the town of North Chattanooga in the 1920s.

Hornville (see East Dale)

Indian Springs

The northern portion of what later became Glenwood, so called for having been the site of one of the two internment camps during the Cherokee Removal in Hamilton County.

Fords Gap is the gap between Trueblood (Tunnel) Hill of Missionary Ridge and Billy Goat Hill.

Lincoln Park (see Citico City)

Lookout Mountain incorporated in 1891, the same year Crawfish Springs, Georgia, changed its name to Chickamauga in honor of the soon-to-be national military park.  It’s still independent.

Lovell Air Field – Originally established in 1928 on pasture land owned by Dr. J. B. Haskins as Brainerd Aviation Field, its terminal sat across the tracks from Chickamauga Station and the adjacent village of Chickamauga, later called Shepherd.  It was renamed for founder of the Aero Club of Chattanooga (1917), John E. Lovell, when it became the official airport of the city in 1930.

Lookout Valley is the community in the valley west of Lookout Mountain from the stateline to the Tennessee River.  The Cherokee town of Tuskegee was there before the Removal, and for a long time the area was called Wauhatchie.  It acquired the name Tiftonia from a late 19^th century housing development.  However, to locals this name meant just the middle section straddling Cummings Highway; the northern section was Brown’s Ferry and the southern section near the railroad station was still Wauhatchie.  It was annexed in three stages in 1972, 1995, and 2003.

Lupton City is on the south end of Lupton Drive below Hixon Pike.  It was founded as a company town for workers at Dixie Spinning Mills finishing plant.  It was annexed in 1968.

Marr Aviation Field – The Chattanooga City Chamber of Commerce opened the city’s first airfield in 1919, dedicated to local aviation pioneer Walter L. Marr, in the open area bound by the Cincinnati & Southern to the west, Dodson Ave. to the east, Avondale to the south, and Anderson (now Crutchfield) St. to the north.  It ceased to operate in 1934.

Mindell Park was a fashionable, though less prestigious than Ferger Place, neighborhood of the suburb of Oak Grove.  It lay along Orchard Knob Ave. and Hawthorne St.

The Mission was the loosely-defined area in the vicinity of the former Brainerd Mission to the Cherokee across the creek from Old Chickamauga Town.  It became part of Brainerd.

Mission Ridge Junction, which gets its name from the junction of the Belt Line with Missionary Ridge Incline Railway, lay between the Ridge and South Lyerly Avenue from Kirby Avenue to McCallie Avenue.  It has been entirely swallowed up by McCallie School.

Missionary Ridge lies along the crest of the ridge of the same name and was incorporated in 1891, the same year as Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, and Chickamauga, Georgia.

Mountain Junction, also known as South St. Elmo, lies between Forest Hills and Lookout Mountain from W. 47th St. to the stateline.  It was annexed in 1930.

New England Park (see Foust Place)

North Chattanooga began as a planned town in 1913 and was incorporated the same year.  Its boundary was originally Forest Ave.  In 1915, the town forbade African-Americans from living in its limits, an ordinance made practically null and void by its later annexation of Hill City, which was a majority black town.  North Chattanooga was annexed in 1930.

Oak Grove sits north of the freeway between Holtzclaw Ave. and S. Lyerly St. to Main St.  Among others, it contains the subdivisions of Ferger Place and Mindell Park.  It was annexed to the city in 1913.

Oak Hills (see Alton Park)

Olde Towne was the business section and its immediate neighborhood of what became Brainerd by popular vote in 1926, east of Tunnel Blvd.

Orange Grove borders the Chattanooga National Cemetery on the south and sits north of the railroads tracks between Central and Holtzclaw Aves.  Orange Grove School was originally here, which is how it got its name. It was annexed in 1913.

Orchard Knob is north of McCallie Ave. and south of E. 3rd St., between Holtzclaw Ave. and N. Lyerly St.  It was annexed in 1922.

Park City, one of the smaller suburbs, is north of Doyle St., along Cannon Ave., all of it east of Rossville Blvd.  It was annexed in 1930.

Piney Woods (see Black Bottom)

Poeville, also called Arlington, East St. Elmo, or South Alton Park, lies along both sides of Central Ave. east of Mountain Junction and Forest Hills south of Piney Woods.  It was annexed in 1930.

Ridgedale lies adjacent to the Ridge between the freeway and Kirby Ave., west to S. Lyerly Ave.  Its former Methodist Church which my grandmother attended is now First Baptist of Bozentown.  Ridgedale Baptist is now on Hickory Valley Rd.  It was annexed in 1913.

Ridgeside is that part of Sunnyside which self-incorporated rather than be annexed into Chattanooga along with the rest of Brainerd.  It includes the subdivisions of Shepherd Hills and Crescent Park.  It is still independent.

Riverview  is separated from North Chattanooga by Hixon Pike.  Once centered around the 30-room Lyndhurst mansion of John T. Lupton and still taking in the Chattanooga Golf and Country Club, this suburb was annexed in 1930.

Rosstown once lay north of McCallie Ave. between Derby and Kelly Sts. up to E. 3rd St.  At one time it was populous and prosperous enough to sponsor a baseball team in the city’s local Negro League.  Parkridge Hospital now occupies a good deal of the former suburb, and only two small of its original blocks remain.  It was annexed in 1922.

Rustville, named for a Dr. Rust, was not in South Chattanooga as the current real estate designation has it.  It spread south of Chattanooga Creek and west of Alton Park Blvd. above W. 37th Street and also included the area now known as Hooterville.  It was annexed to Chattanooga in 1930.

St. Elmo (Kirklen) lies between Hawkins’ Ridge and Lookout Mountain north of 47th St.  The oldest suburb of Chattanooga, it began life as Kirklen before the Civil War and was renamed because of a novel based there.  It was annexed in 1930.

Sherman Heights was a prestigious suburb of the late 1890s that sprang up north of Crutchfield St. and east of Dodson Ave., extending up onto the foot of Missionary Ridge to the east.  It was more or less the same area as the currently-designated Glass Farm District.  The suburb’s Glass Street was Chattanooga’s first paved street.  It merged with East Chattanooga after 1905.

South Alton Park (see Poeville)

South St. Elmo (see Mountain Junction)

Stanleyville was a historically black community north of Blackford St. and south of Citico Ave. between what are now N. Willow St. and Arlington Ave. that eventually got swallowed up by Churchville.  It was annexed in 1923.

Suburba

The southern portion of what later became Glenwood, so called after the post office of that name on the Mission Ridge Incline Railway.

Sunnyside was the residential area east of Tunnel Blvd. that grew up around the home of Judge R.B. Cooke and later became part of the greater community of Brainerd.

Tiftonia is the middle section of Lookout Valley.

Trueblood Hill is the northernmost hill of Missionary Ridge, called Tunnel Hill by Confederate Maj. Gen. Patrick Cleburne as well as his opponent Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman.  It is separated from Billy Goat Hill by Fords Gap.

Wauhatchie is the southern section of Lookout Valley.

White City sits west of Jerome Ave., south of E. 32nd St., and includes everything to Chattanooga Creek.  It was annexed in 1930.

Civil War engagements in the Chattanooga area

Civil War engagements in the Chattanooga area

(Last revised 27 December 2021)

The nation is mid-way through the second year of the sesquicentennial of the great civil war which ripped this country apart from 1861-1865.  Every chamber of commerce, every visitors bureau, every county and municipal government in the Tri-state area and beyond has been preparing for this and advertising events in search of the lucrative tourist dollars.  Except in the City of Chattanooga and Hamilton County, where not a peep has been spoken.

Perhaps this is because the city’s premier private social and dinner establishment, the Mountain City Club, has its origins in the Society of the Army of the Cumberland.  Of course, that would only seem to highlight Chattanooga’s place in in the war.

As one of the most important transport hubs in the South, Chattanooga was vital to both sides and focus of the longest and bloodiest campaign in the western theater of the war.

Other than enlistment and mustering to troops, the first action the area saw was along South Chickamauga, where two of the nine railroad bridges destroyed in the East Tennessee Bridge Burnings the night of 8 November 1861.  One of the bridges served the Western & Atlantic, the other the East Tennessee & Virginia.

Though it never reached its intended destination, the goal of the Andrews’ Railroad Raid on 12 April 1862 was to reach Chattanooga after stealing the locomotive named General and destroying tracks and burning bridges along the way.  Due to the tenacity of the General’s conductor, the Union infiltrators did not get much accomplished and ran out of fuel three miles north of Ringgold, Georgia.  The men were held in Swaims Jail on Lookout Street in Chattanooga before being sent to Atlanta, Georgia, for trial.  Eight men, including Andrews, were hanged, and are now buried in the Chattanooga National Cemetery.

The Chattanooga-Hamilton County area was occupied by Braxton Bragg’s (Confederate) Army of the Mississippi from 23 July through 28 August, 1862, in preparation for the Kentucky Campaign.  Bragg had moved the entire army by train from Corinth, Mississippi.  A monument from that occupation stands in the community of Silverdale, the cemetery for 155 Confederate soldiers who died in field hospitals nearby.

The (Confederate) Army of Tennessee occupied Chattanooga and Hamilton County from 4 July 1863 through 9 September 1863.  During this time, Irish Maj. Gen. Patrick Cleburne’s Division was stationed in the Tyner-Silverdale-Chickamauga Station area and built several redoubts in the area.  One stills stands at the former site of Tyner village, abandoned to the TNT plant in 1940, and the remains of another around the water tower overlooking Lee Highway at Highway 153.  Three more, long since destroyed, were atop the hill where Grace Memorial is now, where Tyner Junior stands, and in Harrison, now under the Chickamauga Reservoir.

The Chattanooga Campaign lasted 21 August-28 November 1863.  Though many historians divide the same period into a campaign for Chickamauga and a campaign for Chattanooga, in truth the entire maneuvering and combat from 21 August-28 November 1863 was centered around control of Chattanooga, making it three months and one week long.  Beginning with the start of the shelling of Chattanooga on 21 August, the Chattanooga Campaign ended with the actions at Shellmound, TN, and Tunnel Hill, GA, on 28 November.

The Battle of the Chickamauga (of Mud Flats) was by far the bloodiest two days of fighting in the entire war.  Called Mud Flats by the Confederacy, their Union opponents named it for the creek which ran through the battlefield.  The nearby town was still called Crawfish Springs at the time.  The Army of Tennessee, augmented by Longstreet’s Corps from the (Confederate) Army of Northern Virginia, decisively defeated their Army of the Cumberland opponents under Rosecrans.  It took two days for Bragg’s generals to convince him of the overwhelming victory his army had achieved.

The three engagements on 23 November 1863 dislodged the most forward positions of the (Confederate) Army of Tennessee.  The action at Lookout Mountain was to protect the Union rear.  The same evening of that battle, Sherman’s 15th Corps of the (Union) Army of the Tennessee (named for the river) secretly crossed the Tennessee River and seized what it thought was the north end of Missionary Ridge.  It was actually the detached Billy Goat Hill.

Bragg had earlier sent Longstreet’s Corps to besiege Buell’s (Union) Army of the Ohio in Knoxville, and had just ordered Cleburne’s Division to join him.  Just as the division was boarding the train at Tyner, orders came from Bragg to seize and hold the actual north end of the ridge against the coming attack.  Cleburne’s Division did so, one division against Sherman’s five, fighting from early evening through nightfall and all day beginning the next dawn, driving back the superior numbers again and again and again.

The local name for that section of the ridge, just beyond the tunnel of the East Virginia & Georgia Railroad, is Trueblood Hill, but records of both armies refer to it as Tunnel Hill, Tn., and consider that battle separate from the action that followed.  Today it makes up Sherman’s Reservation of the Chickamauga-Chattanooga National Military Park.  Unfortunately, several years ago, the City of Chattanooga took the unilateral action of all-but closing off safe and easy access to this major site.

Gen. Grant, commanding all Union forces in the field, intended Sherman’s assault in secret to be the main attack against Bragg’s forces along the crest of the ridge.  In desperation, at about 3 pm he ordered the Army of the Cumberland soldiers of Gen. Thomas (who had replaced Rosecrans), to attack across the valley and seize the rifle pits (trenches) in the valley floor, but to go no further.  He feared those men were too demoralized to do much more.

That’s why he was so stunned when they took the ridge.  This assault, intended as a feint, is what historians call the Battle of Missionary Ridge, completely ignoring the sound trouncing which Cleburne’s Division had given to Sherman’s Corps.

Here I need to comment on the oft-made critique of Bragg about the placement of his rifle pits atop the ridge being on the “actual crest” rather than the “military crest”.  Bragg’s placement was, in truth, standard practice at the time; in fact, the rifle pits Sherman had his men dig along Billy Goat Hill were likewise on the “actual crest”.  The resounding defeat Bragg suffered at Missionary Ridge made the doctrine of the “military crest” standard practice.

Five engagements took place the day after the battles of Tunnel Hill, Tn., and of Missionary Ridge.  The battle at Tyner was fought to prevent any of the retreating troops from joining the siege at Knoxville.  The other four, attested to in the Official Record as well as numerous personal accounts, were fought between the two columns of the defeated Army of Tennessee and their Union pursuers. 

Beginning at Chickamauga Station, where Brig. Gen. Jefferson C. Davis’ Division attacked the Confederates’ rear guard (Maney’s Brigade of Stewart’s Division and Lewis’ Brigade of Cleburne’s Division), the opposing forces waged continuous intermittent battle.  The next major episode of the day was within sight of the Shepherd house of Altamede, with the Confederates entrenched on Concord Ridge and the Union troops in the valley below.  That at Cat Creek was fought for several hours in the core of what is now East Brainerd, just beyond Concord Ridge.  The last action, beginning in the evening and lasting till twilight, took place in Graysville, GA, between Stewart’s Division and the vanguard of Hooker’s Corps from the Army of the Potomac.

Ironically and unintentionally, that day, 26 November 1863, was the first national Thanksgiving Day, proclaimed by Pres. Abraham Lincoln in the aftermath of the carnage at Gettysburg and Vicksburg and the Union loss at Chickamauga.

With the Army of Tennessee retreating from Catoosa Station just east of Whiteoak Ridge, Bragg ordered Cleburne’s Division to hold the pass at Ringgold Gap at all costs.  Sure it was a suicide mission, Cleburne let his men volunteer for the battle or retreat with the rest.  To a man, they all volunteered to stay and face Hooker’s Corps.  What followed was an example of courage reminiscent of the Greeks at Thermopylae, with the difference that Cleburne’s Division inflicted significant casualties on their enemies while taking very few of their own.

During the Atlanta Campaign, the Army of the Cumberland was part of Sherman’s forces invading the Deep South.  However, the base of the Union Army’s Department of the Cumberland and the Quartermaster Corps for its army remained in Chattanooga.  The main force supporting this occupation were the 14th, 16th, 18th, 42nd, and 44th U.S. Colored Troops (USCT) regiments of the first Colored Brigade of the Department of the Cumberland, later joined by the 1st U.S. Colored Heavy Artillery.  These troops all saw combat action, some in major battles and all against the numerous guerrilla outfits in the region.

The following is a list of battles, engagements, and skirmishes in the vicinity of Chattanooga during the Civil War, compiled from the Official Record of the War of the Rebellion, Wikipedia, Armstrong’s history of Chattanooga, James County: A Lost County of Tennessee, and numerous other books I’ve read on the war.  Certified battles are designated as such, while other encounters simply have the name of the town or geographic area they occurred.  Actions which were part of a larger attack or campaign are grouped together.

East Tennessee Bridge Burnings, 8 November 1861

Andrews’ Railroad Raid, Western & Atlantic Railroad, 12 April 1862

Siege of Bridgeport, AL, 23-29 April 1862

Jasper, TN, 4 June 1862

First Battle (Shelling) of Chattanooga, TN, 7-8 June 1862

Battle Creek, TN, 21 June 1862

Decatur, TN, 21 June 1862

Rankin’s Ferry, TN, 28 June 1862

Walden’s Ridge, TN, 5 July 1862

Valley Road, TN, 5 July 1862

Stevenson, AL, 18 July 1862

Occupation of Chattanooga by the (Confederate) Army of the Mississippi, 23 July-28 August 1862.

Battle of Fort McCook (South Pittsburg), TN, 27-28 August 1862

Stevenson, AL, 31 August 1862

The Department of the West, with authority over both the Army of the Mississippi under Braxton Bragg and the Army of Mississippi under John C. Pemberton, as well as all other forces between the Appalachians and the Misssissippi, is created on 12 November 1862 with Gen. Joseph Johnston as general commanding and headquarters in Chattanooga.

The (Confederate) Army of Tennessee was created from the Army of the Mississippi and the Department of East Tennessee on 20 November 1862.

Tullahoma Campaign, 23 June-27 June, 1863

Hoover’s Gap, TN, 23 June 1863

Liberty Gap, TN, 23 June 1863

Manchester, TN, 27 June 1863

Wartrace. TN, 27 June 1863

Decherd, TN, 28 June 27 June 1863

Occupation of Chattanooga and Hamilton County by the (Confederate) Army of Tennessee, 4 July-9 September 1863

Jasper, TN, 24 July 1863

Shellmound, TN, 21 August 1863

Chattanooga Campaign, 21 August-28 November 1863

Second Battle (Shelling) of Chattanooga, TN, 21 August-8 September 1863

Thatcher’s Landing, TN, 26 August 1963

Harrison’s Landing, TN, 26-27 August 1963

Siege of Bridgeport, AL, 23- 29 August 1863

Trenton, GA, 31 August 1863

Lookout Valley, TN, 7 September 1863

Stevenson, AL, 7 September 1863

Fryar’s Island, TN, 9 September 1863

Lookout Mountain, GA, 9 September 1863

Occupation of Chattanooga by Union troops, 9 September 1863-August 1866

Peavine Creek, GA, 10 September 1863

Battle of Davis’ Cross Roads, GA, 10-11 September 1863

Bluebird Gap, GA, 11 September 1863

Ringgold, GA, 11 September 1863

Tunnel Hill, GA, 11 September 1863

Lee & Gordon’s Mill, GA, 11-13 September 1863

Leet’s Tanyard, GA, 12 September 1863

Lafayette, GA, 14 September 1863

Catlett’s Gap, GA (Pigeon Mtn.), 15-18 September 1863

Lee & Gordon’s Mill, GA, 16 September 1863

Ringgold, GA, 17 September 1863

McLemore’s Cove, GA, 17 September 1863

Owen’s Ford, GA, 17 September 1863

Jay’s Mill, GA, 18 September 1863

Peavine Ridge, GA, 18 September 1863

Alexander’s Bridge, GA, 18 September 1863

Dyer’s Ford, GA, 18 September 1863

Battle of the Chickamauga (Mud Flats), GA, 19-20 September 1863  

Sequatchie Valley, TN, 21 September 1863

Shallow Ford Gap, TN, 22 September 1863

Boyce Station, TN, 22 September 1863

Siege of Chattanooga, TN, 22 September-25 November 1863

Calhoun, TN, 26 September 1863

Wheeler’s Raid on the Union supply lines from Nashville, TN, 1-9 October 1863

Washington, TN (Rhea Co.), 1 October 1863

Blue Springs, TN (Bradley Co.), 5 October 1863

Blue Springs, TN 11 October 1863

Battle of Brown’s Ferry, TN, 27 October 1863

Battle of Wauhatchie, TN, 28-29 October 1863

Blythe’s Ferry, TN, 13 November 1863

Third Battle of Chattanooga, TN, 23-25 November 1863

        Orchard Knob, TN, 23 November 1863

Indian Hill, TN, 23 November 1863 (elevated area of Highland Park)

Brushy Knob, TN, 23 November 1863 (in the National Cemetery)

        Battle of Lookout Mountain, TN, 24 November 1863

        Battle of Tunnel Hill, TN, 24-25 November 1863

        Battle of Missionary Ridge, TN, 25 November 1863

        Battle of Gillespie Hill, TN, 25 November 1863

Ooltewah, TN, 24 November 1863

Cleveland, TN, 25 November 1863

Charleston-Calhoun, TN, 26 November 1863

Chickamauga Station-Hickory Valley, TN, 26 November 1863
Tyner Station, TN, 26 November 1863

Battle of Cat Creek/Shepherd’s Run, 26 November 1863

Graysville, GA, 26 November 1863
Red House Ford, 26 November 1863

Indian Springs, GA, 26 November 1863
Peavine Creek, GA, 26 November 1863
Pigeon Hills, GA, 26 November 1863

Battle of Ringgold Gap, GA, 27 November 1863

Cleveland, 27 November 1863

Red Clay, 27 November 1863

Tunnel Hill, GA, 28 November 1863

Shellmound, TN, 28 November 1863

End of the Chattanooga Campaign

Charleston, TN, 16 December 1863

Calhoun, TN, 27 December 1863

Ooltewah, TN, 21 January 1864

Chickamauga Station, TN, 30 January 1864

Ooltewah, TN, 18-19 February 1864

Tunnel Hill, GA, 23 February 1864

First Battle of Dalton, GA 27 February 1864

Atlanta Campaign, 1 May-8 September 1864

Stone Church, GA, 1 May 1864

Lee's Crossroads, GA 2 May 1864

Ringgold Gap, GA, 2 May 1864

Catoosa Springs, GA, 3 May 1864

Red Clay, GA, 3 May 1864

Varnell's Station, GA 7 May 1864

Battle of Tunnel Hill, GA, 7 May 1864

Battle of Dug Gap, GA, 8 May 1864

Battle of Buzzard’s Roost, GA, 9 May 1864

Battle of Rocky Face, GA, 12 May 1864

First Battle of Resaca, GA, 13-15 May 1864

Lay’s Ferry, GA, 16 May 1864

Rome Crossroads, GA, 16 May 1864

(The Atlanta Campaign did, of course, continue long after 16 May, but those actions took place outside what is considered the Tri-state area.)

Battle of Lafayette, GA, 24 June 1864 (part of the Atlanta Campaign)

Wheeler’s raid behind Union lines, late summer 1864

Second Battle of Dalton, GA, 14-15 August 1864 (involved the 44^th USCT)

Graysville, GA, 16 August 1864

Cleveland, TN, 17 August 1864

Parker’s Gap, TN, 4 September 1864

Nashville Campaign, 25 September-27 December 1864

Second Battle of Resaca, GA, 12 October 1864

Rome, GA, 12 October 1864

Lafayette, GA, 12 October 1864

Third Battle of Dalton, GA, 13 October 1864 (involved 14th USCT)

Siege of Decatur, AL, 26-28 October 1864 (involved 14th USCT)

Battle of Nashville, TN, 15-16 December 1864 (involved 14th, 16th, 18th, & 44th USCTs)

Ooltewah, TN, 4 February 1865

Stevenson’s Gap, TN, 19 March 1865 (involved 101st USCT out of Nashville)

Chattanooga's Black Community from the Civil War thru Jim Crow

This essay was inspired by a class I substituted in a couple of days one year at Howard High School in the late 1990’s.  The teacher for whom I was substituting taught American History, and the period the classes were currently in was the War Between the States, though this material here covers mostly the time from Reconstruction thru Redemption to Jim Crow.

My point in sharing the information was that blacks in Chattanooga in the latter half of the 19^th century and early 20^th century had much more power and control over their own lives than their descendants who marched, demonstrated, and were beaten and killed as part of the civil rights movement.

After conferring with the regular teacher, I stepped out into the hallway to view what some of the students had posted on the wall as part of this section.  They were to write letters posing as either a soldier in the field or a sweetheart at home, depending on their sex.  With just two of three exceptions, the students chose to identify as Confederates.

That may sound strange to some, but Tennessee was a Confederate state, after all.  It’s more about home and belonging and having every bit as much right to the history of their home as the descendants of those who oppressed them.

Chattanooga was very fortunate after the Civil War in that it experienced no outbreak of riots like that in Memphis 1-3 May 1866.  In that violence, 46 blacks and 2 whites were killed, 75 other persons were wounded, 5 black women were raped, over 100 people robbed, and 4 churches, 12 schools, and 91 houses were burned to the ground.  These “riots” were actually an invasion of the black shantytown near Fort Pickering by white policemen, firemen, laborers, and small businessmen.

Since September 1863, Chattanooga had served as headquarters for the Union Army’s Department of the Cumberland, and, later, beginning with the Atlanta Campaign, as rear base for its primary field component, the Army of the Cumberland, after serving as its bivouac in the winter of 1863-1864. 

From late 1863 through mid-spring 1864, five infantry regiments of the United States Colored Troops were transferred to Chattanooga, which became their base.  These regiments were the 14^th USCT, 16^th USCT, 18^th USCT, 42^nd USCT, and 44^th USCT.  Not long after they all arrived, the five were gathered into the Department of the Cumberland’s First Colored Brigade. 

Far from being used solely for “fatigue duty” (manual labor) and other routine garrison duty, all the units did see combat.  The 14^th USCT fought in the First Battle of Dalton, 14-15 August 1863, while the 44^th USCT fought against the vanguard of the Confederate Army of Tennessee in the Second Battle of Dalton on 13 October 1864.  The 14^th USCT saw action again at the Battle of Decatur, 27-30 October 1864.  The 14^th, 16^th, 18^th, and 44^th USCT’s all fought in the Battle of Nashville, 15-16 December 1864, which put the final nails in the coffin of the above-mentioned Army of Tennessee as an effective field unit.

True, the 42^nd USCT served as the primary garrison troops in Chattanooga, headquarters to the Department of the Cumberland, and a large part of their duties was to maintain fortifications there, build roads, construct Chattanooga’s first bridge, etc.  However, its soldiers were the primary anti-guerrilla force for the immediate region, particularly in North Georgia, though its sister regiments also provided such support on occasion.

In August 1865, the Department of the Cumberland ceased to be and its First Colored Brigade became 2^nd Brigade, 4^th Division, Department of the Tennessee, in which they were joined by the 1^st United States Colored Heavy Artillery.  All five regiments demobilized in Chattanooga on various dates in the spring of 1866.  There, most joined the large population of former slaves who had migrated there in the wake of Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign and March to the Sea and concentrated at Camp Contraband north the Tennessee River.

(For more on African-American troops in the Chattanooga area during the Civil War, see Raymond Evans’ “Contributions of United States Colored Troops” in the local history section of the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Bicentennial Library.)

With the Union occupation of the city after the end of the Chattanooga Campaign, two men, one a former slave who had earned enough money as a blacksmith to free both him and his family and the other his free-born nephew, spearheaded the business development among African-Americans.  “Uncle Bill” Lewis made himself wealthy by the end of the war, and his nephew, John S. Lovell, was well on his way.

Bill Lewis’ primary business after the war was real estate, primarily for the former slaves who poured into the area in Sherman’s wake or migrated to Chattanooga afterwards.  Though he later joined his uncle business ventures, John S. Lovell’s wealth sprang initially from his grand Mahogany Hall, which occupied the block where Miller Park now sits.  Three stories tall, the establishment had a hotel, restaurants, saloons, casino, dancehall, and brothel.  Lovell chose that site specifically because it had previous been the site of the slave auctionhouse, which drew many customers from as far away as the Deep South.

Reconstruction in the State of Tennessee lasted only as long as the Parson Brownlow administration in Nashville, which ended in 1869.  Brownlow’s successor, Dewitt Senter, immediately removed all the legal disabilities against former Confederate soldiers and officials placed by the preceding administration and began rolling back of rights won by the freedmen.

The postwar population of Chattanooga was two-thirds African-American, and so was its city police force and its fire department.  In addition to the former Camp Contraband, which eventually became Hill City, Chattanooga black citizens occupied primarily its Fourth Ward in the years after the war.

Lewis and Lovell’s business and real estate ventures helped spur the growth of the black neighborhood along East 9^th Street past the former Irish Hill area.  Along the north side of the street, the neighborhood that grew up came to be called Tadetown, while along its south side the neighborhood was known as Scruggstown.  Naturally, the avenue that ran betwixt the two communities became the focus of commercial and cultural life from an early stage.

In 1867, Congregational minister the Rev. Ewing O. Tade founded the first public school in Chattanooga, which also included its first public high school, Howard Free School, to serve the black community.  As such, Rev. Tade became the county’s first Superintendent of Education as well as being headmaster of Howard Free School, where his wife was one of the teachers.

In 1886, Bell Washington became the first and first female graduate of Howard School in a class of one.  The first male graduate, Augustus Wickliff, followed her the next year in a  class of one.

Public schools for white children were finally established in Chattanooga in 1873, with the beginning of four district primary schools.  Superintendent Tade was summarily deposed, and his congregation sent him to California, where he served as pastor to the First Congregational Church of Ferndale.  Chattanooga High School opened in 1874 on East 8^th Street as the second public high school in Chattanooga and Hamilton County.

Several African-Americans served the region in various positions of city, county, state, and federal government.

Until 1900, the City of Chattanooga had a unicameral Board of Aldermen elected by ward, or which there were five.  African-Americans who served as Aldermen during Reconstruction, Redemption, and Jim Crow included Commodore P. Letcher (1868), M. Shields (1869), Clem Shaw (1870 & 1873), David Medlow (1871 & 1875), George Sewell (1871), R.P. McCronklin (1872), Robert Marsh (1873-1875), William C. Hodge ( 1878-1884), Hiram Tyree (1888-1902), George Shaw (dates unknown), and Charles Grigsby (dates unknown).

In 1900, Chattanooga adopted a bicameral form of government with the introduction of a City Council as its lower house.  Due to the way in which boundaries for elections were now drawn, it was nearly impossible for a black man to be elected as Alderman.  Three black men served as City Council before the city’s adoption of a commission form of government with members elected at-large prevented any more black men from being elected for years.  They were Eugene Reid (1900-1902), Hiram Tyree (1904-1911), and Charles Grigsby (1904-1911).

In 1911, the city ordinance mandating the commission form of government went into effect, only being overturned by the case of Brown v. City of Chattanooga in 1989.

Five black men served the Hamilton County Court before Jim Crow brought its hammer down, four as Justice of the Peace:  Alexander P. Flowers (elected 1867), George Sewell, G.L. Nelson, and B.F. Whiteside (who served 1904-1910); and one as Circuit Court Clerk: John J. Irvine, who won election by 1400 votes over white candidates from both parties.  Hiram Tyree also served the county as School Commissioner for 10 years, as did Dr. Daniel Trigg Edingburg from 1904 to 1908.

Hamilton County sent two African-Americans to the Tennessee General Assembly during these years:  William C. Hodge, who served 1885-1886, and Styles Hutchins, who served 1887-1888 and was successful in repealing the poll tax for Chattanooga.

In addition to his stints as Alderman and Justice of the Peace, George Sewell, was the Federal Court Cryer in Hamilton County for 20 years.  Another black man, Henry C. Smith, served the county as its Federal Clerk, and he was a Democrat where most black men were Republicans.

Other African-Americans who served in various official capacities included Jim Hodge, Larkin Fralix, Marion Keith, Charles Bird, William Richardson, Isaac Allen, Woodson Weaver, Andy Thompson, and J.R. Franklin.

Of all these elected and appointed officials, unquestionably the most influential and longest-lasting was Hiram Tyree, who was boss of the Fourth Ward until being dethroned by Walter C. Robinson in 1928.

Styles Hutchins was one of three of the last African-Americans to serve in the Tennessee State Legislature until the civil rights movement of the mid-2oth century.

Until the beginning of the Jim Crow era (around 1890), segregation laws were largely local, such as the Chattanooga ordinance requiring segregated seating in its streetcars in the 1880’s (then horse-drawn).  These laws did not meet without protest.  On 7 September 1885, Chattanooga experienced its first documented lynching in its jailhouse after Charlie  Williams shot a street car driver who tried to enforce Chattanooga’s segregated seating ordinance.

Twelve years earlier on 7 October 1873, Elridge Merrill, living near St. Elmo (probably in Gambletown), then outside the city limits, was brutally beaten, whipped, tortured, and lynched by a mob of white men angered over his cohabitation with a white woman named "Dink" Norris.

As Jim Crow raised its ugly head across the South in the form of state laws mandating segregation in public accommodations and transportation along with introducing such voter restriction measures as poll taxes and literacy tests, Alfred Blount has dragged from the Hamilton County Jail and hanged from the Walnut Street Bridge 14 February 1893.  He was accused of sexually assaulting a white woman.

At the beginning of the 20^th century, African-Americans in Chattanooga were concentrated in the neighborhoods of Tadetown and Scruggstown along E 9^th Street, in parts of East Side, the area from Georgia Avenue to East End (later Central) Avenue.  On the West Side, between Cameron and Academy Hills and the river, they lived in the shantytowns of Blue Goose Hollow (north of West 6^th, later West 9^th, Street) and Tannery Flats (south of the same street).

In the suburbs, African-Americans lived in Citico City (aka Lincoln Park, between Wiehl Street and the railroad tracks, north of E. 3rd St.), Bushtown (the first all-black municipality in Tennessee), Churchville, Stanleyville (southeast section of what would otherwise be Churchville), Rosstown (behind and including what is now Parkridge Hospital), Fort Cheatham (between Ridgedale and East Lake), the Gamble Town section of Saint Elmo, Hill City (north of the river between Manning Street, Stringer’s Ridge, and Forest Avenue), Bozentown (between Amnicola Highway and Riverside Drive), and in central East Chattanooga, right next to the public park.

From at least 1904 to 1925, two years after its annexation by the city, Bushtown hosted Abraham Lincoln High School for black students living in the East Side and the suburbs east of the city.  It was part of the Hamilton County school system.  Bushtown, along with Churchville and Stanleyville, were annexed in 1923.  After 1925, Lincoln became a junior high school, and some of the high school students of those communities went to Howard High; most, however, preferred Booker T. Washington School in the county in the community of Shot Hollow.  Abraham Lincoln Junior High School closed its doors in 1936, and the building was torn down in 1948.

In the wider Hamilton County, African-Americans occupied the communities of Chickamauga (Shepherd), Shot Hollow, Turkey Foot (an organized municipality), Hawkinsville, Black Belt (south of Harrison), Black Ankle (south of Ooltewah), Summit, and Bakewell (between Soddy and Sale Creek).

The black community in Chattanooga and Hamilton County did not take its subjugation lying down.  African-Americans here chose nonviolent resistance.  In a foreshadowing of the later Montgomery bus boycott, blacks in Chattanooga and its suburbs boycotted the segregated streetcars of the three trolley companies in the city in July 1905. 

In place of these, enterprising individuals ran “hack lines”, horse-drawn trolleys from such suburbs as Churchville, Tannery Flats, St. Elmo, and Fort Cheatham.  The leaders of the boycott were Alderman Tyree and Randolph Miller, editor of The Chattanooga Blade, which was a nationally-syndicated publication.

In 1906, a black man in St. Elmo, Ed Johnson, was accused, arrested, and convicted on faulty evidence of sexually assaulting a female resident of that suburb.  Two black lawyers, the former Assemblyman Styles Hutchins and Noah Parden, approached former judge Lewis Shepherd to help them with Johnson’s appeal and in the meantime to get a stay of execution.

Their attempt for a stay was successful.  It was the first time in the history of the Supreme Court that it had intervened directly in a state criminal case.  However, on 19 March 1906, a crowd stormed the jail, overwhelming the single guard present who tried to resist, dragged Johnson out to Walnut Street Bridge, hanged him, and shot him several times.  Sheriff Shipp and others were indicted for violating Johnson’s civil rights.  Judge Shepherd defended them; they were convicted but given light sentences. 

The next year, Shepherd successfully won acquittal of a black man, Floyd Westfield, who had shot the local white constable, Lon Rains, on Christmas Eve 1905.  Rains at the time was attempting to invade the home of the old woman with whom he (Westfield) was staying near, armed with a pistol and by testimony of his companions intent on using it.  The events were the result of Rains having been disturbed at a Christmas party at Walnut Grove School (on South Gunbarrel Road) by firecrackers and Roman candles shot off by guests at the house.

Shepherd also worked on the writ of habeus corpus in the Leo Frank case in Atlanta.

Once the commission form of government and at-large elections were in place in Chattanooga in 1911, no black man had a chance of being elected to office.  The next significant attempt by a black man to be elected to office was in 1930, when Mark Coad of the Communist Party ran for city judge.

In 1915, the municipality of North Chattanooga took the ultimate step in segregation.  The town and its neighbor to the immediate east, Hill City, were separated by Forest Avenue.  North Chattanooga’s main street was Tremont Street, while Hill City’s was Spears Avenue.  North Chattanooga’s town council passed an ordinance that forbade any African-Americans not already residing within its borders from living there. 

They also changed the name of Forest Avenue to Forrest Avenue in honor of former Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest.

You may remember that year, 1915, as the one in which D.W. Griffith’s movie “The Birth of a Nation” premiered across the U.S. and became the first film ever screened in the White House, at the request of then-President Woodrow Wilson.  It was also the year that Indiana native William J. Simmons, inspired by the movie, inaugurated the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in the Georgia town of Stone Mountain.