Tennessee State University

Tennessee State University in Nashville was founded in nineteen twelve as the Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State Normal School, created by the state legislature to provide higher education for Black Tennesseans who were barred from the University of Tennessee. It took the name Tennessee State University in nineteen sixty-eight. TSU is perhaps best known outside the academy for its track program: over four decades, its women's team, coached by Ed Temple, produced forty Olympians and twenty-three Olympic medals.

Temple's runners, known as the Tigerbelles, included Wilma Rudolph, who won three gold medals at the Rome Olympics in nineteen sixty, becoming the fastest woman in the world. The campus sits in north Nashville on land that was part of a Civil War battleground.