CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – From suffragists to movie stars, from businesswomen to Olympic medalists, the women of Clarksville have been making history for centuries.
Here are 10 Clarksville women (in alphabetical order) who should be remembered for what they accomplished during their lifetimes.
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. Dorothy Jordan
Hollywood actress in 1920s
Dorothy Jordan was born in Clarksville in 1906 and studied at Southwestern University and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She performed as a chorus girl in the Broadway musical Funny Face, and in 1923 she made her screen debut in the film The Taming of the Shrew at a time when talking pictures were becoming popular. In the following four years, Jordan acted in 22 more films, including Min and Bill and The Cabin in the Cotton. In 1932, she met Merian C. Cooper, a filmmaker and screenwriter who flew planes during World War I. They were married in 1933, and Jordan gave up her career to become a homemaker. She came out of retirement in the 1950s for a few small roles. She died in 1988 in Los Angeles.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. Pat Head Summitt
College basketball coaching legend
Patricia “Trish” Head Summitt was born in Henrietta, a small community outside of Clarksville. 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.
10. Nora Witzel
Pioneering photographer
The daughter of German immigrants, Leonora Witzel was born in Clarksville in 1875. As a young woman, she developed an interest in photography, and she apprenticed herself to photographer W.G. Thuss. She began documenting people and places in Clarksville, and also experimented with lighting and new photography techniques. Eventually, she opened her own photo studio upstairs from M.L. Cross Clothing Store at 123½ Franklin St. She was notorious for her daring clothing choices for the time, smoking in public and playing pinball. She died in 1968 at age 93.
Today, Witzel is memorialized in a life-sized bronze statue of herself and her dog Nettie, which was unveiled on the Third Street side of the courthouse in 2007.
Sources: Visit Clarksville, Clarksville Now and Leaf-Chronicle archives, and research by Brenda Harper, Phil Petrie, KaSandra Stone, Ellen Kanervo and Arian Finley.
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Correction: An earlier image used for the Dorothy Dix entry was actually of Dorothea Dix. The image has been updated.