Tennessee

On July 23, 1923, a group of 12 teachers met with William Jasper Hale, president of Tennessee Agricultural & Industrial State (current day Tennessee State University) in Nashville to discuss the state of education within Tennessee. The group believed an organization had existed as early as 1895 but had ceased to exist. The goal of the newly established Tennessee State Association of Teachers in Colored Schools was to improve instruction, create spaces to exchange ideas concerning methods of teaching, develop a greater spirit of friendship among a network of those working for a common goal, and improve the teacher and the teaching profession. The twelve founders represented educational leadership across Tennessee's three Grand Divisions of East, Middle, and West, a geographic structure that would later be formalized in the organization's constitution, which established three regional teachers' associations, one for each division, whose presidents served as ex-officio Vice-Presidents of the statewide body. The organization would undergo several name changes over its 44-year history, becoming the Tennessee Negro Education Association and later the Tennessee Education Congress, before merging with the Tennessee Education Association on July 1, 1967.