Her hand shook as she signed her name.
The lawsuit before her would challenge the way Chattanooga governed itself. At issue was a commissioner system built on at-large voting – a structure that diluted minority representation and concentrated power.
“She said, ‘I’m going to be the lead plaintiff on this,’” Carolyn Runyon recalls.
Runyon, director of Special Collections at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, interviewed the now late Dr. Tommie Brown years later about that moment in 1987. Brown spoke about the physical weight of the decision.
“She said her hand shook as she signed it,” Runyon says. “It was such a significant moment – putting pen to paper. It marked the first time she stepped into a leadership role as an organizer and civic leader.”
The lawsuit – Dr. Tommie Brown v. Board of Commissioners of the City of Chattanooga – would succeed. A federal judge ruled that the city’s commissioner system violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and Chattanooga moved to a more representative city council system.
Today, the legal correspondence, records and judgment order surrounding that pivotal chapter are housed in acid-free folders in a climate-controlled vault on the fourth floor of UTC’s Library. The trembling hand that signed a lawsuit is now part of the permanent record.
Brown’s archive – once scattered across three storage units – has become one of the most significant political collections in the region. And through it, UTC’s Special Collections continues its broader mission: preserving Chattanooga’s past while making it accessible to the public.
A repository for everyone
“Special Collections serves as the university’s – and really the community’s – repository for local and university history,” Runyon says. “Our mission is to preserve that history, provide access to it and foster engagement with Chattanooga’s past.”
The mission is intentionally expansive.
“People sometimes assume we only serve the university, but about 40% of our transactions each year are with community members,” she says. “You don’t have to be affiliated with UTC to use our collections or conduct research. We’re here to engage the broader community, too.”
The department’s roots stretch back to the 1950s, when the university and public library were housed in what is now Fletcher Hall. Early donors would give materials that librarians curated as best they could. Professionalization accelerated in the 1980s, and professional archivists were hired in the 1990s.
“That’s when it really started to solidify,” Runyon says. “That’s when we began making a more intentional effort to collect.”
Today, Special Collections is larger than it’s ever been, she notes, with a team of five full-time staff members. That group includes a manuscripts archivist, a university archivist, a digital capture specialist and a scholarly communications librarian.
Student training is central to the department’s work. Runyon says Special Collections has worked with numerous student assistants, interns and fellows, including many from outside UTC. Graduate practicum students have come from Louisiana State University, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and the University of Alabama.
At the same time, Runyon emphasizes the importance of preparing UTC undergraduates for professional careers. Two former student workers now hold professional positions, including one at the Tennessee State Library & Archives.
“We aim to prepare our undergraduates for great jobs,” Runyon says.
Industrial memory, local texture
Special Collections reflects Chattanooga in all its dimensions – political, industrial, cultural and sometimes whimsical.
“At the moment, our focus is on labor, manufacturing and Chattanooga’s industrial era,” Runyon says.
The emphasis feels timely. Former industrial sites like Wheland Foundry, Lupton Mill and Ross Meehan Foundry have been or are being repurposed, including the new baseball stadium at Wheland.
“There are so many creative reuses of industrial spaces happening right now,” she says. “We’re interested in that transformation of the built environment as Chattanooga’s economy moves from textiles, steel and pig iron into new sectors.”
Through labor records, archivists see early integrated workspaces in foundries. Textile mill records document women entering – and remaining in – the workforce post-World War II.
“We can see these big national and even international historical trends unfold right here in Chattanooga,” Runyon says.
Political papers are another cornerstone. The department holds the archives of U.S. Rep. Marilyn Lloyd, Gov. James Frazier and U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, alongside Brown’s.
The collections also include Dr. Ralph Hood’s documentation of serpent handling traditions in Pentecostal churches, Roland Carter’s extensive archive of African American choral sheet music and photographs by local photographer Herman Lamb – including a car crossing the Walnut Street Bridge.
A photo by another photographer shows alligators gathering at Fireman’s Fountain downtown.
“Some of our materials are intended for scholarly research,” Runyon says, “but we also have nostalgia that’s just for fun. Not everything is academic; some of it simply connects people to their memories.”
Tourism materials preserve Chattanooga’s self-promotion, including a century-old proposal called the Rompo Frolique that envisioned transforming Lookout Mountain into an amusement park.
“It’s fascinating to see how these things evolved over time,” Runyon says.
The department’s materials regularly find their way into public life. Special Collections provided source material for the award-winning documentary short “How To Sue The Klan: The Legacy of the Chattanooga Five.” Restaurants request historic images for décor. And items are loaned to the Hunter Museum of American Art, including a Coca-Cola bottling mold that’s currently on display.
Within this broad civic memory, Brown’s papers carry particular weight.
A life of record
“Dr. Brown’s collection is especially rich because she had three significant careers,” Runyon says.
First came social work. After college, Brown returned to Chattanooga and rose quickly, training social workers in 15 counties. During that time, she earned her Master of Social Work from Washington University in St. Louis – a prestigious institution that had not been open to her when she first entered higher education during segregation.
In 1971, she joined UTC as the first tenure-eligible faculty member of color. She then became the first person of color to serve as a department head. While building and accrediting the social work program, she completed her doctorate at Columbia University.
“Dr. Brown was clearly brilliant,” Runyon says.
Then came the lawsuit. Activists discovered that under Chattanooga’s commissioner system, small parcels of land were divided among multiple owners so they could vote in city elections.
“As they researched the case, she and others found that small parcels of land were shared among 10 people at a time so each could qualify to vote in Chattanooga elections,” Runyon says. “It technically wasn’t election fraud, but it functioned that way.”
Brown stepped forward as lead plaintiff, setting in motion a federal ruling that ultimately reshaped local governance.
Her third career unfolded in the Tennessee General Assembly. From 1992 to 2012, she represented the 28th District, becoming the first Black woman to represent Chattanooga in the legislature. Known for meticulously researched bills, she focused on early childhood education and broader advocacy.
Early in her tenure, she learned that Tennessee had never formally ratified the amendment abolishing slavery. As a woman of color, she wrote the bill that finally secured ratification.
Each of those chapters generated paper – dissertation interviews with civil rights leaders, legislative drafts, speeches, correspondence and clippings. Brown kept it all.
Processing a public life
“It was a massive amount of material,” Runyon says. “Political offices tend to keep everything. We had to hire a moving company to empty the three storage units she’d filled with her papers.”
The initial transfer measured roughly 300 linear feet. Archivists reduced the collection to 125 linear feet by removing duplicates and materials lacking enduring historical value.
“If something wasn’t important or didn’t shed light on Dr. Brown’s life, we didn’t necessarily keep it,” she says. “We respectfully deaccessioned those items.”
When asked whether materials are ever set aside to protect someone’s image, Runyon explains that while archivists strive for neutrality, selection priorities can reflect professional judgment.
“We try to let the materials speak for themselves,” she says. “At the same time, we know we’re not without our own biases.”
To process the archive efficiently, Runyon secured approximately $145,000 from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, a division of the National Archives and Records Administration. The grant funded 18 months of focused work by a professional archivist and a student assistant.
“That’s what allowed us to complete such a large collection so quickly,” she says. “We carved out time for them to focus entirely on this project because we knew it mattered. It was gratifying to see it recognized as historically important.”
One requirement of the award was advancing understanding of American democracy.
“Dr. Brown’s papers can absolutely deepen our understanding of American democracy,” Runyon says. “Making them accessible to researchers gives us a chance to better examine how we govern ourselves.”
Preserving for perpetuity
Behind secured doors, two separate HVAC systems regulate temperature and humidity. Boxes are acid-free, lignin-free (lignin causes paper to become brittle and yellow over time) and pH neutral. High-density shelving maximizes storage. Photographs rest in a cooler, drier chamber.
“Everything is as stable and preserved as we can make it,” Runyon says.
Materials are retrieved by staff and viewed in a supervised reading room.
“Many of our materials are unique or one of a kind, with historical, intellectual or artifact value,” she says. “That allows us to preserve them while also providing responsible access.”
Brown’s archive includes a detailed finding aid. Researchers can request specific folders – such as her dissertation research, legislative files or speeches – and examine them in person.
Looking ahead, there’s also the possibility that portions of Brown’s collection could be digitized, Runyon says, expanding access beyond the reading room. Digitization would allow researchers, students and community members to explore key documents online, making her papers available to a broader audience while still protecting the original materials.
Though Brown died in January, her papers endure – carefully preserved by UTC’s Special Collections – and remain available to continue her legacy.
Inside those acid-free folders lies the arc of a life that reshaped local government, expanded educational opportunity and pressed the state to reckon with its own constitutional history.
In archiving Brown’s papers, UTC’s Special Collections has preserved more than documents. It’s safeguarded the record of a moment when a citizen’s signature changed the structure of power – and ensured that future generations can open a box, pull out a page and feel the weight of that decision for themselves.