Imagine you’ve just brought a new house in a nice neighborhood. You’ve built a respectable business, and all you want to do is get yourself and your family moved in. But before you can even do that you receive threatening letters saying “oh no, you better not.”

The home in question sits at what is now 1927 Dandridge Avenue and on the campus of the Beck Cultural Exchange Center. But in May 1947, the street address was 1691. Edgar F. Lennon M.D., a successful Black physician in Knoxville, was getting pushback from some of his future white neighbors. On May 25 that year a cross was burned in his new front yard with an accompanying explosion. A note left behind said “be gone from here in the next 24 hours, or else.”

That’s not exactly the Welcome Wagon.

Dr. Edgar F. Lennon (From the Beck Collection)

It happened again just a few weeks later, but in fairly short order some suspects were rounded up, and confessions came forth. Probably because on the next round the Ku Klux Klan chuckleheads responsible got a little too bold and decided to target the Safety Building, the Knox County Court House and City Hall. They tossed in a couple on New York Avenue for good measure.

The confession came from one Robert Long, a foreman at one of the local knitting mills. He and two of his compatriots were charged under an old Tennessee law with “night riding, marauding and intimidation.” Long explained that he’d been in the KKK for about a month, having paid a $3 initiation fee with monthly dues of 50 cents and that meetings were held at the Golden Cross Hall near the Ashe Hosiery Mill (located near Emory Place).

Long also stated that the reasons for attacking the municipal buildings was over concerns over lax law enforcement. So naturally, go break some laws in order to get your message across. He also said the reason for burning on a cross on Dr. Lennon’s lawn was to scare him out of the white neighborhood. His tactics were unsuccessful.

Item 11035 of the State Code of Tennessee at the time said “Any person or persons who shall willfully prowl or travel or ride … through the country or towns to the disturbance of the peace or the alarming of the citizens … for the purposes of damaging or destroying property or … terrorizing or intimidating any citizen or citizens … shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.”

While I personally think a misdemeanor charge for the crime to be too light and the fine of $50-$100 too paltry for the offense, at least there was something on the books decades ago to deal with terroristic threatening.

Despite the setbacks thrown his way by these yahoos, the doctor did indeed get moved into his house. He said at the time of the trial that he had never been physically harmed by the racist shenanigans. Lennon graduated from Meharry Medical School in Nashville and started practicing in Knoxville in 1919. He eventually opened the Helen Mae Lennon Hospital named for his first wife, with whom he eventually had a rather acrimonious divorce. The hospital was located on Clinch Avenue and had 25 beds and a training facilty for nurses.

Upon his death in July 1966, he was survived by his second wife, Avie Lennon, and two brothers: G. H. “Dusty” Lennon, a coach at Austin High School, and Madison Lennon, a teacher at Spellman College in Atlanta. He had been preceded in death by his only son, E. F. Lennon Jr., who died at the age of 19 in 1943 from a brain hemorrhage at Fort Benning, Georgia. The Lennon Seney Methodist Church on Dandridge Avenue was originally the Lennon Methodist Church, named in memory of the good doctor’s late son. Lennon made substantial contributions to the church building fund.

Beth Kinnane writes a history feature for KnoxTNToday.com. It’s published each Tuesday and is one of our best-read features.

Sources: McClung digital collection-Knox County Library, Knoxville Journal digital archives, Beck Cultural Exchange Center, Middle Tennessee State University Digital Archives