William Bennett Scott, Sr.

William B. Scott, Sr., a free Black man, migrated to East Tennessee in 1847 after increased racial tension in North Carolina. He made harnesses and saddles in Blount County’s Quaker community of Friendsville until the Civil War. In Knoxville during the war, he learned printing, and after later moving to Nashville, he founded The Colored Tennessean in April 1865, the first newspaper for African Americans in Tennessee. In 1867 he moved his press to Maryville, where for ten years he published the Maryville Republican, Blount County's only newspaper, which was later renamed the Maryville Democrat. Scott also co-founded Maryville's Freedman's Normal Institute, one of the first schools for African Americans in East Tennessee, and in 1879 he was elected mayor of Maryville. In 1997, William Bennett Scott, Sr. was inducted into the Tennessee Newspaper Hall of Fame.

Maryville, Tennessee · United States