Paris, Tennessee

Authors [about]: Pat Palmer and others. CZ is an open collaboration. Please join in to develop this article!

Henry County, TN, court house, Nov. 24, 2005

Paris, Tennessee (USA) is a small town in West Tennessee that was incorporated in 1823. In recent decades, its population has hovered at around 10,000 people. It is the county seat for Henry County and its town center, like many towns in the region, is built around an imposing court house which is now more than a hundred years old. People have to go there to get licensed to be married, to look at property records, or to have trials. Except for these occasions, people in Paris, TN, go to Walmart or The Home Depot just like everyone else in the USA.

The town, located in the upper right corner of West Tennessee, bordering with Kentucky to the north and the Tennessee River to the east, can reasonably be said to be "out in the boonies". It requires a couple of hours by car to reach a really large city (such as Memphis, Nashville or Paducah, KY), and even the nearest medium size city (Jackson, TN) is more than an hour away. The two towns which can be reached in slightly less than an hour (Murray, KY and Camden, TN) are no larger than Paris itself.

Paris, TN, by the decades

The following sections are contributed by people who lived in, or are closely associated with, Paris, TN, and without hype or interference from the Chamber of Commerce, Lion's Club, Kiwanis Club, the Woman's Club, Daughters of the American Revolution, the Historical Society, the Farmer's co-op, industry, the school boards, the police, the hospital, the sheriff, the mayor, the county commissioners or any member of the club of any sort, or of the government.

1930's: The Great Depression

People who were young in the 1930's and survived, learned to be extremely frugal and made it a habit never to throw anything away, leaving enormous piles of decades-old stuff to their descendants upon their eventual passing. This phenomenon was, of course, not confined to Paris, TN, but we know for sure that residents of Paris, TN, did a very good job of playing their part.

1940's: World War II

Women were suddenly allowed to work in jobs that, before, only men worked at, such as in factories for the war effort. When men returned from the war, some women kept working those jobs.

1950's: More big factories were built

We're not sure what to say about the factories that appeared around this time, providing a livelihood to a lot of people who were formerly farmers. They were big. They made things like automobile parts, furniture and lamps. We don't think African Americans were allowed to work in them. We know that Mexicans were not allowed to work in them. Well, management tried, but the workers were not so welcoming. At least, not at this time.

1960's: Steps towards racial integration

Although Paris, TN was the only incorporated town in the county, several smaller communities nearby, up until 1970, had their own schools, including Henry (W), Cottage Grove (N), and Springville (E). Some of the outlying schools were, in fact, very small if not quite one-room school houses. Paris itself had multiple elementary, junior high, and high schools. The population of the area in the 1960's was about 15% African American, and schools in Paris were segregated. Like most--if not all--communities in the South, neighborhoods were also segregated, with African Americans predominantly relegated to live in one small portion of the town. And that was, of course, a rather low income district because of the limited kinds of work that, in those days, African Americans would be allowed to do (such as, picking cotton all day in the hot, boiling sun, for 25 cents a bag). Around 1963, facing the Supreme Court mandate to end racial school segregation, the Henry County school system began a gradual introduction of African American students into formerly all-white elementary schools in Paris, paralleling similar actions taken all over the South. The first year, about 1964, three or four brave children of color were admitted to the formerly all-white schools, with the number slowly growing each year before the planned complete integration to occur at the end of the decade.

1970's: Consolidating all schools into the geographic middle

In the late 60's, Henry County Schools began construction of a then-very-large high school in the town which would become the only high school in the county and, being located in the county center, would serve all students regardless of race. This "consolidated" Henry County High School opened in 1970 with an innovative, round-building design. Three round buildings were built, with classrooms around the outsides and common areas (auditorium, library, cafeteria) in the middle, and some people said they resembled flying saucers. Smaller high schools in outlying communities had to close and bus their students to the consolidated school. The outlying elementary schools closed in favor of larger elementary and junior high schools in Paris. By these actions, the Henry County School system finally became racially integrated, with less overt conflict than some surrounding areas in the region.

1980's: Factories were out; Logging was in

We're looking for someone to set us straight about this. For one thing, the bigger factories started to leave the area around this time. The buildings of those big factories are now, in many cases, moldering wrecks. In desperation for lost livelihoods, some local people turned to logging, and some of the lush forests were clear-cut and housing developments appeared instead. This phenomenon was widespread and not confined just to Paris, TN, but it definitely occurred there. People also discovered that the government would pay farmers to "harvest" trees from their land at an allegedly sustainable rate which fell short of actual clear-cutting. In our experience, people in Paris, TN, had no opinion on whether the government should develop lasers in space that could shoot people on earth (Ronald Reagan's so-called "Star Wars" project), on grounds that Paris, TN, was too small to be a target anyway.

1990's: Replica of the Eiffel Tower fails to be the tallest

Eiffel Tower replica in Paris, TX; made taller by the addition of a red hat to beat the height of Paris, TN's replica tower

In 1993, both Paris, TN and Paris, TX decided to build Eiffel Towers, each 60 feet high. But when the towers were deployed, the people of Paris, TN, had sneaked an extra 10 feet onto their tower, making it the tallest Eiffel tower in the USA. The people of Paris, TX, feeling perhaps uncharacteristically belittled, found it necessary to escalate the towers arms race by adding a highly provocative red Stetson hat to their tower. That decision turned out to be controversial, as some people in the state of Texas described it as the stupidest decision ever made, even for the state of Texas.

2000's: Millenials were born

Arguably, the birth of hundreds of Millenials marked the long, slow evolution towards a revolution that we are living in today. The Millenials born in Paris, TN, bore an extra burden, though, because forever afterwards, they had to explain to people that they were from Paris, not France, but Tennessee.

2010's: Nothing at all appears to have happened

We're currently too close to this era to understand what has happened, but if someone figures it out, please write about it here.

2020: Historic school divested of its Civil-war-era name

On the outskirts of Paris, TN stands an old school building, abandoned in the 1970's due to consolidation. The site's use as a school began in 1825, soon after the founding of the town, when it opened as a private school called the "Paris Male Academy". During the Civil War, it was the site where Confederate troops mustered for service, but it was only in 1910 that the then public school was renamed as the Robert E. Lee school, a name which would persist informally for more than a century. The renaming was part of wave of regional fervor, in which many towns and cities around the South erected statues, and renamed parks and schools for so-called "Civil War heroes", all of whom happened to be on the confederate (rebel, losing) side of the war. in 1988, the Lee school building in Paris, TN, dating from the 1890's, was added to the National Trust Register of Historic Places. In the early 2000's, a non-profit was formed to renovate and convert the building for use as "Lee Academy for the Arts", a charter school focused on the visual and performing arts. . At the start of the 2020-21 school year, with race relations again in the limelight, the school's non-profit board renamed the charter school to the Paris Academy for the Arts.

Renamed in 2020 to Paris Academy for the Arts, this now-private school was, when this postcard was issued circa 1900, a public school. It was not renamed for the Civil War confederate general Robert E. Lee until 1910.