Old Bradley Academy

The 1917 building was designed by the Knoxville firm Manley and Young as a modern school for Black students, the county's first Black high school, and it became the social and cultural center of the community. In the 1920s it housed a health clinic supported by the Commonwealth Fund. Its programs included domestic science, sports, an orchestra and a glee club. After Holloway High opened in 1928 it served younger grades until desegregation in the 1960s, when it held school-system offices. A restoration from 1995 to 1998 made it a heritage center.

What the plaque says

Old Bradley Academy Bradley Academy was founded in the early nineteenth century as a school for white males. Among the earliest students was James Knox Polk. From 1884 until the 1960s, it was an elementary and secondary school for African-Americans in Rutherford County. The present, 1917 building is an excellent example of standardized, early-twentieth-century Schoolhouse architecture.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stones River National Battlefield — 3.3 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 — 30 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

• State Capitol — steps away
• Oaklands — steps away
• James Daniel Richardson — 0.2 mi
• Bradley Academy — 0.3 mi