2. T. H. McCallie

Although educating slaves was illegal when T. H. McCallie was 15, he and his mother nevertheless taught slaves to read in the basement of the city’s leading church, 1st Presbyterian. McCallie later became pastor. When all gray-uniformed soldiers were in his congregation, he preached the same message he preached when the Union took the city and men in all blue were before him: “Who is on the Lord’s side?” (Ex. 32:26)

During the war, his home was filled with dozens of soldiers, first gray then blue, covering his floors and 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 instead helped 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.