Fourth and Gill Oral History Collection

This collection documents the history of the Knoxville, Tennessee based Fourth and Gill Neighborhood Center (opened in 1968) and the Fourth and Gill Neighborhood Organization (initiated in the early 1970s). The names for the two entities relate to their location at the intersection of Fourth Street and Gill Avenue in an historic neighborhood on Knoxville’s northern edge. The collection was brought together by then Berea College student Christopher (Willie) Dodson as part of an internship project during the summer of 2013. The Center was established in 1968 by four local churches as a ministry to what was then a poor inner-city neighborhood. In the early 1970s, a small group of community organizers and neighborhood residents established the Fourth and Gill Neighborhood Organization which began providing child and youth programming in the Neighborhood Center and organizing community residents to work on such projects as establishing a public park, improving food-stamp accessibility, advocating for tenants' rights, obtaining loans for low-income individuals, combating racial discrimination, and advocating for urban renewal and highway construction policies that would allow the neighborhood to stay physically intact.