The Wound Beneath Franklin: A Civil War History Walking Tour

Franklin, Tennessee is a proud All-American award winning city, but its downtown streets tell a more tight-lipped story. On this walking tour, you'll see how the Confederacy's white supremacist foundation still impacts the city today. You'll also hear personal stories of Black Franklin residents who lived through Jim Crow segregation, and built lives despite it.

The tour starts outside Franklin City Hall, where you'll consider how man-made laws once enforced slavery and segregation here. Walking past First Horizon Bank, you'll learn how Black Franklinites were shut out of the banking economy for generations, while still making a living without reparations. You'll pass the site where a white moonshiner hired Black men to commit his crimes to avoid being convicted, and stop at Franklin's Confederate statue, nicknamed Chip, to unpack the Lost Cause mythology, still celebrated as CHAMPIONS in the town square, despite losing both the battle and the war.

Along the way, you'll stand where Samuel Bierfield, the first Jewish man lynched in America, was killed by the Ku Klux Klan, and visit the old courthouse where a Black man named Amos Miller was lynched in 1888. You'll also hear the story of ANC Williams, born enslaved, yet became one of Franklin's longest-running Main Street merchants. The tour ends with a wound healing framework, at St Philip Catholic Church and how it was the only downtown congregation that welcomed Black worshippers after the Civil War.

On this 75-minute tour, you'll have a chance to:

• Stand at the site where Andrew Jackson signed treaties leading to The Indian Removal Act and The Trail of Tears
• See The Franklin Theatre, segregated from 1937 until The Civil Rights Act ended the practice in 1964
• Visit the former Corner's Drugstore, where Black customers once had to be served ice cream at the back door
• Learn how and see where The KKK used a federal post office basement to plan attacks on Franklin's Black citizens
• Hear how the Williams-Hilbreth House and Shorter Chapel Church anchored one of Franklin's historic Black neighborhoods
• Discover the ties between Ben Franklin's namesake statue and his own history of enslaving people

By the time you reach St Philip Catholic Church, you'll understand exactly how Franklin's cornerstone values were built, and how Franklin continues to heal from them..