University of Tennessee System - History

History

The University of Tennessee was founded in Knoxville as Blount College in 1794. The university was designated as the state's land-grant institution in 1869, and gained the name "University of Tennessee" in 1879. The medical campus, the UT Health Science Center was founded in Memphis in 1911.

In 1927, UT acquired Hall-Moody Institute and renamed it to the University of Tennessee Junior College. In 1951, the school began awarding bachelor degrees and became the University of Tennessee Martin Branch. In 1968, the UT system was officially formed, with the University of Tennessee at Martin and UT Knoxville as the primary campuses.

That same year, the Tennessee state legislature gave UT permission to establish a campus in Chattanooga, which was the largest city in Tennessee without a public university. The private University of Chattanooga determined that it could not raise enough private capital to compete with a public institution, and agreed to merge with UT to form the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 1969.

Also in 1968, UT announced plans to create a campus in Nashville, expanding an existing UT center of education created in 1947. Rita Sanders Geier filed a desegregation lawsuit against the state, arguing the existence of a UT campus in Nashville where Tennessee State University is located perpetuated a dual system of higher education. As a result, the UT Nashville campus was eventually merged with TSU by court order in 1979.