bout it.”
“Doctor Woman of the Cumberlands: The Autobiography of May Cravath Wharton” (1953)
One of the overlooked heroes of Tennessee history, Wharton moved to the Cumberland County community of Pleasant Hill during World War I. For many years, she was the only physician for miles around. In her autobiography, she describes what it was like to travel through her part of the state (often on foot or by mule) and treat people in their tiny log cabin homes who were suffering from life-threatening diseases. It is a touching story that makes it very clear why some folks in Cumberland County still revere the name May Wharton.
“I resolved that mothers should be saved; that little children should be given a fair start in life; that pneumonia, pellagra, diabetes, anemia and all the rest should not go on and on until no medical skill should cure them; that the old and invalid should have some comfort and care even when they could not be mended; and that those far from doctors should have medical aid brought within reach — of their homes and their thin pocketbooks,” Wharton wrote.
“First Lady of the Seeing Eye” by Morris Frank (1957)
Nashville native Morris Frank was the first blind man to train and use a Seeing Eye dog, and the title of the book refers to his German shepherd. However, this is, in every sense of the word, Frank’s autobiography — the fascinating story about how his dog, Buddy, helped transform his life from a lonely one into one in which people were constantly talking to him.
In his book, Frank describes the way New Yorkers reacted when they realized his dog was leading him around the city. “Everywhere people were attracted to Buddy,” he wrote. “They spoke to her, petted her, offered her sweets. But she refused to be distracted, did not get irritated or side tracked, and did her work magnificently and with obvious pleasure. In a week Buddy had conquered the biggest city in the world. She was a celebrity in a town that loves nothing better.”
“The Long Haul: An Autobiography” by Myles Horton (1990)
Horton has many stories about Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and other civil rights leaders who were influenced by the Highlander Folk School, which he founded.
I was intrigued by many stories in this book — such as the time, in 1928, that he organized an integrated (and thus illegal) dinner that included white and black high school students at the YMCA in Knoxville. After some hemming and hawing, the waiters shrugged and served everyone at the meal — quite possibly the first publicly integrated event in the city’s history. “I took the gamble of doing something about a moral problem instead of simply talking about it,” Horton wrote. “I just reversed the process that was going on in the universities and churches, and over 120 people learned that they could change things if they wanted to.”
“Cash: The Autobiography” (1997)
Johnny Cash was a Tennessee history buff. He was especially interested in the Chickamaugan Indians and the geography of the Tennessee River just downstream from Chattanooga, and he wrote about both in a song called “The Whirl and the Suck.”
Cash also went through a stage of his life when he was addicted to drugs. In his autobiography, he says that, in 1967, he chose Nickajack Cave to be the site of his suicide because of all the events that had occurred there. “(An) army had slaughtered the Nickajack Indians there, men, women and children, and soldiers from both sides of the War Between the States had taken shelter in the caves at various times during the conflict.… If I crawled in far enough, I thought, I’d never be able to find my way back out, and nobody would be able to locate me until I was dead, and indeed if they ever could. (Nickajack Dam) was going in soon.”
Instead, Cash found Jesus, crawled out of the cave and turned his life around. “I told my mother that God had saved me from killing myself. I told her I was ready to commit myself to Him, and do whatever it took to get off drugs. I wasn’t lying.”