RPW 2610W A Hands-On History of the American Research University - Loss, Meadows: The Gilded Age

Since its founding, Nashville has been a center of black urban culture in the Upper South. Blacks--slave and free--made up 20 percent of Fort Nashborough's settlers in 1779. From these early years through the Civil War, a growing black community in Nashville, led by a small group of black elites, quietly built the foundations of a future society, developing schools, churches, and businesses. The Civil War brought new freedoms and challenges as the black population of Nashville increased and as black elites found themselves able--even obliged--to act more openly. To establish a more stable and prosperous African-American community, the elites found that they had to work within a system bound to the interests of whites. But the aims of this elite did not always coincide with those of the black community at large. By 1930, younger blacks, in particular, were moving towards protest and confrontation. As democratization and higher education spread, the lines distinguishing Nashville's black elite became blurred.

Between 1870 and 1900, the United States' population doubled, accompanied by an unparalleled industrial expansion, and an explosion of wealth unlike any the world had ever seen. The Old Money titans found themselves besieged by a vanguard of New Money interlopers eager to gain entrée into their world of formal balls, debutante parties, opera boxes, sailing regattas, and summer gatherings at Newport. Into this morass of money and desire stepped Caroline Astor. Mrs. Astor, an Old Money heiress of the first order, became convinced that she was uniquely qualified to uphold the manners and mores of Gilded Age America. Wherever she went, Mrs. Astor made her judgments, dictating proper behavior and demeanor, men's and women's codes of dress, acceptable patterns of speech and movements of the body, and what and when to eat and drink. The ladies and gentlemen of high society took note. Cecelia Tichi paints a portrait of New York's social elite, from the schools to which they sent their children, to their lavish mansions and even their reactions to the political and personal scandals of the day.

An early history of Vanderbilt University from its beginning in 1873 up to the end of World War II.

A comprehensive history of Vanderbilt University, from its beginnings in 1873 to 1982.

A pictorial survey of the Vanderbilt campus from 1873 up to 1978. There are 25 brief essays on aspects of the campus, an alphabetical list and identification of persons for whom buildings are named, and a chronological list of buildings with their principal architects.

In an extensive study of records from the period, William Preston Vaughn traces the development -- the successes as well as the failures -- of the early attempts of the states to promote education for African Americans and in some instances to establish integration. While public schools in the South were not an innovation of Reconstruction, their revitalization and provision to both races were among the most important achievements of the period, despite the pressure from whites in most areas which forced the establishment of segregated education.

In the 1890s Nashville, Tennessee had already developed into a bustling center of trade and industry. NASHVILLE IN THE 1890s is a memento of that era. An outgrowth of the Vanderbilt Oral History project, established in 1950, this book tells the events large and small--the cataclysms and commonplaces--that distinguished life in the nineties. From mumblety-peg to the Centennial, from a "storebought" jacket to the Panic of 1893, from filling coal boxes to the Spanish-American War, this book recreates the aura of Nashville's elegant era.

History of Nashville, Tennessee 1900-1910 as related in written memoirs and oral history interviews with local residents.