Mary Ellen Vaughan

Vaughan's training school ran from 1933 to 1951 out of her own house on South Highland Street. For twenty-five cents a week students took typing, cosmetology and sewing; Sadie Jones and Martha Kimbro were among the teachers. A 1971 MTSU master's thesis says she started it because of the literacy requirements for voting. She had come to Murfreesboro in 1920 to care for her uncle, William Bibb, and she published the Murfreesboro Union, a four-page monthly that mostly reported social events. She closed the school for ill health in 1951 and died in 1953.

What the plaque says

Mary Ellen Vaughan Born in Alabama, in 1893 Mary Ellen Vaughn, a graduate of Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), Chicago Business College, and Tennessee A & I (now Tennessee State University), lived in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the last thirty years of her life. In 1920 she founded the Murfreesboro Union, the city's first African American newspaper. Continued: Thirteen years later, in 1933 she founded and operated the Vaughn Training School for African American adults. A nurse, Vaughn worked for the Commonwealth Fund to improve rural health in Rutherford County. A major civil rights advocate, she worked diligently to improve political opportunities for African Americans in Rutherford County. Murfreesboro's Vaughn Street is named in her honor.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stones River National Battlefield — 3.6 mi
  The Murfreesboro battlefield of December 1862, with a national cemetery built by Black soldiers, a Trail of Tears route and the story of the freedmen's settlement called Cemetery.
• Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration — 24 mi
  The Shelbyville show grounds where the Tennessee Walking Horse has been crowned world grand champion each late summer since 1939, and where the practice of soring is part of the story.
• Henry Horton State Park — 25 mi
  A Duck River park on Governor Henry Horton's former farm in Marshall County, with a mill ruin from 1845, kayak floats and the grave of a governor the House declined to impeach.
• Old Stone Fort State Archaeological Park — 29 mi
  A 2,000-year-old enclosure of piled stone and earth on the bluffs above the forks of the Duck River, built by Native people between about 80 and 550 A.D., with a museum and waterfall trails.

More markers nearby

• Holloway High School, 1929-1968 — steps away
• Dr. James Robertson Patterson — steps away
• Bradley Academy — steps away
• Oaklands — steps away