Lane College

The land came first. At the Tennessee Annual Conference, Reverend J. K. Daniels offered a resolution for a school to educate African American students and train CME clergy, and a committee was named to raise money. On January 1, 1880, the church bought four acres in east Jackson. The school opened in November 1882, with Jennie Lane teaching, and its first graduating class finished in 1887. Her brother James Franklin Lane later served thirty-seven years as president. The Southern Association gave a B rating in 1936, and full membership came in 1961.

What the plaque says

Lane College Founded, 1882, by the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church of America, as a high school, under direction of Bishop Isaac Lane, with his daughter as principal. It became Lane Institute in 1883. Its first president, Rev. T. F. Saunders, served from 1887 to 1903. It received its present name in 1895.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Pinson Mounds State Archaeological Park — 11 mi
  The largest group of Middle Woodland mounds in the United States, about two thousand years old, with the second tallest mound in the country, a museum and paved trails.
• Tina Turner Museum at Flagg Grove School — 25 mi
  The one-room Black school Tina Turner attended in Nutbush, moved to Brownsville in 2012 and opened as a museum in 2014 beside Sleepy John Estes's house.

More markers nearby

• John Luther Jones — 0.3 mi
• Occupation of Jackson — 1.0 mi
• Lambuth College — 1.1 mi
• 61st US Colored Infantry Regiment — 1.2 mi