proposing Four new Monuments for Hamilton County and Chattanooga

Currently two statues or monuments stand on the grounds of the courthouse for Hamilton County, TN: A. P. Stewart, a Confederate General, and John Ross, Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation and a slaveholder. We propose that four more monuments be erected to create a better sense of the values and history of Hamilton County and Chattanooga.

1. John P. Franklin

Heir of Chattanooga’s Franklin Funeral Home (1890), which buried Booker T. Washington, coach and principal John P. Franklin was the first black elected official for Chattanooga in 61 years, after the city changed from districts to citywide elections in 1911 during the Jim Crow era. He served as vice-mayor, and also chairman of the city school board and the Tennessee School Boards Association. He was the first black president of the Tennessee Municipal League.

In 1976, Franklin stood alone in voting to change 9th Street to M.L. King Blvd until pressure caused his four fellow commissioners to follow him. The trailblazing Franklin retired to his family funeral business just as lawmakers switched voting back to districts in 1990, leading to four black members on the new nine-member City Council.

2. T. H. McCallie

Although educating slaves was illegal in Tennessee when Thomas Hooke “T. H.” McCallie was a teenager, he and his mother nevertheless taught slaves to read in the basement of the city’s leading church, First Presbyterian. McCallie later became lead pastor. When all gray-uniformed soldiers were in his congregation, he preached the same message he preached when the Union took the city and all blue-uniformed men were sitting before him: “Who is on the Lord’s side?” (Exodus 32:26)

During the war, his home was filled with dozens of soldiers, first gray then blue, sleeping in every open floor spot and in the hallways. Later, he confronted an angry lynch mob at Walnut Street Bridge and prevented the death of a man of color. He then quelled a mob seeking to lynch ex-Confederates. Taking ill early in life, he stepped down from the city’s top podium and spent the rest of his years helping establish numerous churches and most of the educational institutions of his day.

3. William T. Lewis

William T. “Uncle Bill” Lewis was an extraordinary free black man and entrepreneur. Born a slave in Tennessee in 1810, he was taught the blacksmith trade by his Cherokee owner. Working many extra hours at night, he saved enough money to buy his freedom.  He moved to Ross’s Landing in 1837, a year before the village was named “Chattanooga.” As the town’s blacksmith, he forged the bell used by the “Little Log Cabin” community center to call meetings, including the meeting to give the town it’s new name. He became quite prosperous and a landholder.

During his life he bought the freedom of his wife and children, mother, brother, sister, and many other relatives, including the mother of his son-in-law, John Lovell (Lovell Field), who became one of Chattanooga’s most wealthy citizens.

4. Samuel A. Worcester

Named head of the Brainerd Mission in 1825, Samuel Worcester, husband and father, was imprisoned for several years at age 32 for refusing to take of vow of allegiance to the State of Georgia. The nation watched with alarm. He insisted he was a missionary to the Cherokees, a sovereign nation by U.S. Treaty. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Worcester, but President Andrew Jackson failed to enforce the ruling. This development charted the course for all Native Americans. The Cherokees were forcibly removed to the West where Worcester joined them. 

The Brainerd Mission was the first non-native settlement in what is now Hamilton County. A great opponent of slavery, Worcester’s Brainerd Mission Church was comprised of a third black, a third Cherokee, and a third white, while other missions refused to allow black members. When he discovered a Cherokee alphabet by an illiterate silversmith named Sequoyah, he demanded it be utilized despite disbelief from his authorities in Boston. After he translated the Scriptures and hymns into the new Cherokee script, 90 percent of the nation became literate, converted to Christianity, and developed their own Constitution with three branches of government. Worcester’s prison saga was one of the great civil rights episodes of the 1800s.