History and Tradition

Students in 1916 studied plant taxonomy in the Great Smoky Mountains.

The Pride of the Southland band celebrates 150 years in 2019.

A century ago, the world was at war. The United States’ 1917 entry into World War I rippled across the country leaving its mark, certainly on families, but also on institutions of higher learning, including the University of Tennessee.

General Robert Neyland’s game maxims helped former football player Austin “Shifty” Shofner (’37) and several others escape a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp.

In just 10 minutes in August of 1967, Felice and Boudleaux Bryant wrote a song that would endure through generations to become the university’s unofficial fight song.

There’s nothing like a verse of the alma mater to bring a tear to a Vol’s eye, but did you know it wasn’t written by an alumnus? Take a look at the history behind a few of the university’s most beloved songs.

At 103 years old, Joyce Weaver Fowler (’33) has lived in two centuries and seen many changes in the world. Last fall, during the 100th anniversary of Homecoming, she returned…

If a single image enshrines the memory of the late Avon Rollins Sr., it’s a Knoxville News Sentinel photo from May 1963 of his six-foot-four body lying on the sidewalk in front of the Tennessee Theatre as part of the effort to integrate Knoxville’s movie theaters.

On November 11, 1916—a date that hadn’t yet become Veterans Day—the undefeated Vols beat Vanderbilt 10–6 and “gladdened the hearts of hundreds of alumni who had journeyed back to the…