CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – From suffragists to coaches, from businesswomen to Olympic medalists, the women of Clarksville have been making history for centuries.
In recognition of Women’s History Month, here are 10 Clarksville women (in alphabetical order) who should be remembered for what they accomplished during their lifetimes.
1. ‘Stockade Annie’
Eccentric missionary to Fort Campbell soldiers
Anna Mabry Barr was born in 1875 to the Mabry family at Poplar Hill, a farm on what is now Fort Campbell. Annie was educated at female academies in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and Clarksville. She married Dr. John Christie Barr and moved to New Orleans, where Dr. Barr was founder and president of Presbyterian Hospital in New Orleans as well as a pastor for 32 years, according to an account in The Leaf-Chronicle based on interviews with her nephew, the late Bill Mabry.
In 1931, amid the Great Depression, they returned to Montgomery County. In 1941, Dr. Barr died, and at about the same time, she lost her family property and faced eviction to make way for Fort Campbell. She didn’t go easily: She is said to have scared off property surveyors with a shotgun. Eventually, she gave in and took up an eccentric life on a small farm with a log cabin on Trenton Road.
She undertook a mission to visit the sick and imprisoned – those being the soldiers in the hospital on post and in the stockade, hence the nickname. Annie did this for years before a new commanding general tried to stop her and revoked her pass. Annie stormed into his office and chewed him out until he relented and let her keep the pass. Every commanding general afterward renewed that pass for the rest of her life. Fort Campbell began to take care of Stockade Annie, and in her final years, a military police car was sent out every day to drive her onto post. Despite her civilian status, she died at the post hospital on Sept. 26, 1969, at the age of 93, and she was buried with full military honors at Greenwood Cemetery.
2. Minnie Barksdale
Newspaper publisher, suffragist
Wilhelmina “Minnie” Sickenberger Barksdale was born in 1867 in Indiana. She was a German language teacher and moved to Clarksville with her husband, William Wallace Barksdale, shortly after they married, according to a history compiled by Brenda Harper. Minnie was active in local women’s groups and the local effort to win women the right to vote. On July 31, 1914, the 40-member Clarksville Equal Suffrage League held its first open meeting at her home at 1128 Madison St.
Mrs. Barksdale led the way for women in other ways, too, taking over as editor and publisher of The Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle in 1922 after her husband’s sudden death. She announced the change on the front page on March 13, 1922: “I shall do my utmost to continue the policies of the paper as here-to-fore; to make it the mouthpiece of every clean forward movement; to make it the rallying point for the hosts of progress in the life of the city, country, the state and nation.” That year, she was elected to the board of directors of the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association.
In 1924, she had to step away because of an illness and sold The Leaf-Chronicle in 1924. But she returned to publishing in 1934, founding The Clarksville Star and operating it until 1940 with her son, William W. Barksdale Jr., who later became city mayor. Minnie Barksdale died in 1954 at age 86.
3. Susie Brown
Education leader, community advocate
Susie A. Brown (later Susie Brown Farrar Tucker) born in the Rossview area, was an educator for 35 years. For 23 of those years, she was Montgomery County’s first supervisor for Black county schools, a position she held in 1919. During the 1920s, Brown worked tirelessly to ensure strong education for rural children. In early years of her work, she would often ride by horse and buggy to visit rural schools, though in later years she was driven out by car with a hired driver. She attended national conferences and brought back new training for her teachers, and she encouraged them to enroll in special summer college courses to improve their skills. She also organized annual arts and craft exhibits at the county courthouse for a two-day display, reviewed by the school board.
In addition to her leadership in the schools, Brown led the local Better Homes movement, an initiative to repair and restore older homes in Black neighborhoods. She was also choir director for St. Peter AME Church. She died Sept. 3, 1947.
4. Dorothy Dix
Nationally syndicated advice columnist
Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer was born Nov. 18, 1861, near Clarksville. In her early teens, the family moved to Clarksville and enrolled Dorothy into The Female Academy, where she graduated at age 16. In 1882, she married, but by 25 she was unhappy and began writing as an escape. During a trip to the Gulf Coast, she met Eliza Jane Nicholson, owner of the New Orleans Picayune, who purchased Gilmer’s first story, “How Chloe Saved the Silver,” about an enslaved man named Mr. Dicks who saved the family silver from Union raiders. She began writing a regular advice column named “Sunday Salad,” and she took the pen name Dorothy Dix, crediting Mr. Dicks for jump-starting her career.
In addition to the advice column, Dix spent 17 years as a roving crime reporter, interviewing murder suspects and giving reports on popular trials. Dix’s advice column, which was renamed “Dorothy Dix Talks” became nationally syndicated with an audience of 60 million readers. At the time of her death in 1951 at age 90, she was America’s most widely read and highest paid journalist.
5. Caroline Gordon
Novelist, prominent in Modernist movement
Caroline Gordon was born in 1895 near Clarksville and was the only female student at Clarksville Classical School for Boys, which was founded by her father. She attended Bethany College in West Virginia, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in Greek.
While writing her first novel and working at the Chattanooga News, she reported on and became involved with the Fugitive writers of Vanderbilt University. In 1924, Robert Penn Warren introduced her to Allen Tate. Tate and Gordon married in that same year. The couple took up residence in New York, England and France, becoming prominent figures in the American modernist movement. Gordon and Tate returned to Clarksville in 1931, and they purchased a home near the Cumberland River that they called “Ben Folly,” which became a refuge for many fellow modernist writers.
While being mentored by Ford Maddox Ford, Gordon completed her first novel, Penhally, in 1931. She continued writing novels, to include Aleck Maury, Sportsman, The Garden of Adonis, The Strange Children, and How to Read a Novel. In 1947, Gordon converted to Catholicism, and she became a mentor to fellow Catholic writers Walker Percy and Flannery O’Connor. In 1979, when Gordon was 84, she retired and moved to Mexico with her daughter. She died in 1981.
6. Phila Hach
Celebrity chef and author
Phila Rawlings Hach was born in Nashville in 1926, according to Visit Clarksville. As a teen, she learned to cook from a chef at a resort in Chattanooga. She then studied music at Ward-Belmont College and food and nutrition at Vanderbilt University before becoming a flight attendant. In-between flights, she stayed at fine hotels in Europe, where she visited the kitchens and asked the cooks if she could prepare food with them. From this experience, she created the first in-flight catering manual for the airline industry.
In 1950, television came to Nashville, and Hach hosted a “Kitchen Kollege” with her assistant, Martha Mormon, the first Black woman to appear on television in the South. Hach and Mormon did the show for five years and saw guests such as Roy Acuff, Minnie Pearl and June Carter Cash. Hach wrote her first cookbook based on the show and would later author 16 more. She married Adolph Hach Jr. and they eventually settled in Clarksville, where they built an inn modeled in the European style, calling it Hachland Hall Bed and Breakfast. She died in 2015 at the age of 89.
7. Bea Lowe
Head coach for Austin Peay men’s basketball
Bea Lowe arrived at Austin Peay State College in 1941 as the “Instructor of Physical Education for Girls.” Her husband, Dr. Marvin Lowe, was chair of the history department. Mrs. Lowe had trained in Denmark, graduated from Colorado State College and taught at Shurtleff College in Illinois. According to a 1943 article in The All State, Lowe was a “super-dynamic little redhead with personality plus (the plus is for the love of the students) who dashes around school happily calling herself Mrs. Dr.” Having studied recreation and exercise in Europe, she transformed the physical education program with strange new equipment such as soccer balls, bowling and badminton. She put her female students through an obstacle course created on campus for Navy cadets.
The big surprise came in 1945, according to a report by APSU communications. As World War II was winding down, college athletics began to revive. But there was a shortage of qualified coaches. When the men’s basketball program came back after a two-year hiatus, Lowe stepped in and was named head coach for the Governors, leading the team to a few wins during her time on the court and making history as one of the first women coaches of a men’s college basketball team.
8. Wilma Rudolph
Winner of three Olympic gold medals
Wilma Rudolph, born June 23, 1940, in St. Bethlehem, faced misfortune from an early age, being diagnosed with polio and told she would never walk again. She beat those odds and ended up being a basketball star at Burt High School, then excelled at track at Tennessee State University. Her success led her to qualify for her first Olympics in 1956. She competed in the 4×100 relay in Melbourne, Australia, and won bronze. Rudolph’s dominance in track continued in the Rome Olympics in 1960. This time, she won three gold medals and broke three world records. She became the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field at a single Olympics.
Most importantly for Clarksville’s history, after the Olympics she refused to attend her own homecoming parade unless the event was integrated. Rudolph’s actions led to the first fully integrated event in Clarksville. Rudolph died Nov. 12, 1994. Her name carries on in Wilma Rudolph Boulevard, dedicated to her in 1994. A life-sized bronze statue of Wilma Rudolph has been placed at the Wilma Rudolph Event Center at Liberty Park.
9. Brenda Runyon
Founder and director of First Woman’s Bank
Brenda Vineyard Runyon was born in 1868 in Missouri, and her family moved to Trenton, Kentucky. She was active in Clarksville for many years and was the first woman to serve on the Clarksville-Montgomery County Board of Education. Her efforts during World War I helped to establish Clarksville’s first local Red Cross chapter, according to Visit Clarksville.
But her biggest contribution was as founder and director of the First Woman’s Bank of Tennessee. Opening on Oct. 6, 1919, First Woman’s Bank was the first bank in the United States to be directed, managed and staffed entirely by women. The bank was created during the women’s suffrage movement, at a time when many women desired a way to bank separately from their husbands and fathers. Welcoming deposits from both men and women, they collected a deposit of nearly $20,000 the first day of operation. In 1926, after an illness, Runyon resigned as director, and the bank merged with First Trust & Savings Bank, which eventually became part of Bank of America. Runyon died in 1929 and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery.
10. Pat Head Summitt
College basketball coaching legend
Patricia “Trish” Head Summitt was born in Montgomery County, and at age 14 she moved to Henrietta, a small community outside of Clarksville, since there was no women’s basketball program at Clarksville High School. She graduated from Cheatham County High School in 1970 and attended the University of Tennessee-Martin, where she played on the Lady Pacers basketball team. As a junior, she competed in Moscow at the U.S. World University Games and won a silver medal. Summitt received a bachelor’s in physical education in 1974, and she was offered a graduate assistantship at the University of Tennessee that consisted of being assistant coach of the Lady Vols while she worked on her master’s. Shortly afterward, Lady Vols Head Coach Margaret Hutson stepped down, and Summitt was offered and accepted the job of the head coach.
In 1976, Summitt won a silver medal in the Summer Olympic Games, and in 1984, she coached the U.S. women’s team. Her 1984 Olympic Women’s Basketball Team won gold, making Summitt the first U.S. Olympian to both win a medal of her own and coach a medal-winning team. In her 38 seasons of coaching, she produced a record of 1,098 wins to only 208 losses. At the time of her retirement, Summitt had coached more winning NCAA games than any other men’s or women’s basketball coach at that time. Throughout her coaching career, her teams won eight NCAA National Championships.
In 2012, Summitt retired from coaching. That same year, President Barack Obama honored Summitt with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She died in Knoxville in 2016, and she is memorialized at the Pat Head Summitt Legacy Park in Clarksville’s Liberty Park with a bronze statue and interpretative display of her life story.
Sources: Visit Clarksville, Clarksville Now and Leaf-Chronicle archives, and research by Philip Grey, Bill Mabry, Richard Gildrie, Howard Winn, Brenda Harper, Phil Petrie, KaSandra Stone, Ellen Kanervo and Arian Finley.
Correction: Pat Summitt was born in Montgomery County and later moved to Henrietta. The article has been updated.
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