McFadden School: 221 Bridge Ave.

McFadden is the first school in Rutherford County named for a woman, Elvie McFadden. Dedicated to Christian benevolence work, she assisted the poor in this working-class neighborhood, then called Westvue. Before her death from tuberculosis, she led efforts to establish a mission church and received a promise from the chairman of the county school board that a school would be built here. A year later, the Elvie McFadden School opened with Madge Manson as principal and three female teachers. The school served only white children until desegregation in the 1960s. The current building (1939) replaced two earlier structures lost to fire. Once located nearby off Old Salem Road was the railroad freight depot where prominent local suffragist Annie Brawley Jackson worked as a clerk.