A Place of Honor and Memory: Knoxville National Cemetery and Veterans' Legacy

UT History Department
Event Location: 
Knoxville National Cemetery
When: 
Saturday, May 26, 2018 - 11:00am to 1:30pm

oxville National Cemetery

 

A Place of Honor and Memory: Knoxville National Cemetery and Veterans' Legacy

A Memorial Day weekend event hosted by the
UT Department of History

Saturday, May 26, 2018

4 PM
Tour of the Knoxville National Cemetery
Led by Jack Neely, Knoxville historian
Tour will begin promptly at 4 p.m. by the front gates.

5 PM
Presentations by Jack Neely and Professor Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius
Remedy Coffee
800 Tyson Street
Knoxville, TN 37917

This event is free and will include the presentation of a new book, Knoxville’s National Cemetery: A Short History, written by Jack Neely. Free copies of the book will be made available to veterans and their families.

Space at the event is limited, so please RSVP to mcopela8@utk.edu by May 18.

 

 

ck Neely

The Honor Due a Brave Man
Jack Neely, Knoxville History Project

Memorial Day has been celebrated at Knoxville National Cemetery, sometimes extravagantly, for most of the last 150 years. The cemetery founded as a practical urgency of our bloodiest war, as a burying place for mostly obscure and unknown soldiers, is now a place of honor where well-known veterans of modern wars choose to be buried. The story of its evolution includes some surprising stories of African-American troops buried there, as well as the beginning of a former slave’s astonishing career as a successful businessman and philanthropist; the possible origin of the flag-planting tradition, as the serendipitous answer to a flower shortage; and the devastating destruction—by lightning—of the long-awaited Union monument; and its reconstruction, with a significant design change.

 

 

jas Gabriel Liulevicius

The First World War, Knoxville, and the Veterans Legacy Program
Professor Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, UT Center for the Study of War and Society

As we mark the hundred-year anniversary of the First World War, we can appreciate better the truly global impact of that "Great War" (as contemporaries called it), by identifying its traces in Knoxville and Knoxville National Cemetery. The Center's work as part of the Veterans Legacy Program reveals individual stories that enrich our historical understanding.

 

UT’s Center for the Study of War and Society and the UT Department of History have been awarded a contract as part of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ new Veterans Legacy Program. This program pairs local universities and local school systems to produce education materials and public outreach programs about local National Cemeteries, telling the individual stories of veterans and their service. UT is partnering on this project with the Knoxville History Project, the East TN Historical Society, and Knox County Schools. Learn more about the project.