World War II to Civil Rights

Rutherford County was very involved with the war effort during World War II. In addition to the hundreds of men and women from the area who served in the military, Murfreesboro also took in wounded veterans at the newly constructed Veterans Administration Hospital. In 1941, the Army Air Force chose Smyrna as the location for a training command base, where cadets were taught to fly B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberator Bombers. Between 1942 and 1944, the Second Army used several Middle Tennessee counties, including Rutherford, to prepare more than 850,000 soldiers for the planned invasion of Europe.

Jean Faircloth MacArthur, the second wife of General Douglas Macarthur, lived in Murfreesboro for many years and attended Soule College. In 1947, after Vaughn’s Training School won first place for their exhibit at the Mid-South Colored Fair, Jean Macarthur wrote a letter to Mary Ellen Vaughn congratulating her for the school’s prize. In 1951, Jean, General MacArthur, and their son visited Murfreesboro and were greeted with a citywide celebration.

In 1943, Middle Tennessee State Teachers College became Middle Tennessee State College. Enrollment increased dramatically after World War II, as returning soldiers took advantage of the GI Bill to attend college. The school continued to grow throughout the 20th century. In 1951, it established a Graduate School and in 1965 became Middle Tennessee State University.

In the aftermath of World War II, African Americans increased their efforts for civil rights. These efforts were influenced by the treatment of African American veterans, who returned from fighting only to experience Jim Crow segregation at home. In 1946, WWII veteran Ewel Willis took over Murfreesboro’s NAACP branch, which had been founded in 1932. Under Willis’s leadership, the Murfreesboro NAACP advocated for the city’s Black population, pushing for school integration, voting rights, and equal job opportunities.

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that school segregation was unconstitutional in the Brown v. Board of Education case. However, Rutherford County schools defied the Supreme Court and continued to have segregated schools for several years. Desegregation began in 1959, spurred by a successful lawsuit against the county by sixteen Black families. Even after the lawsuit, Rutherford County was slow to integrate. Middle Tennessee State College did not gain its first Black student until 1962, and Murfreesboro public schools did not fully integrate until 1968, fourteen years after the Brown v. Board decision. Holloway High School, previously the only public high school open to African Americans in Murfreesboro, closed in 1968 after being open for almost 40 years.

In 1975, Myrtle Glanton Lord led a group of residents in advocating for the creation of a community center that would serve the Black community in Murfreesboro. Lord, a graduate of Bradley Academy and a teacher there for 42 years, was a leader in Murfreesboro’s African American community. She was involved in organizations like the NAACP and the League of Women Voters. Thanks to her and the community’s efforts, the Patterson Park Community Center was opened in 1979 at the site of Holloway High School’s old football field. The center was named for James R. Patterson, an African American dentist who had provided free dental care to the students of Bradley Academy. In 2004, The Myrtle Glanton Lord Memorial Library opened inside Patterson Park Community Center in her honor.