Memphis Moments

Founded two decades before the Civil War, Gray’s Creek Missionary Baptist Church is one of the oldest black congregations in the area. The church was organized as a congregation for freedmen and slaves and has continued to serve African Americans for more than 150 years.

The Memphis Red Sox was one of the most exciting teams in the Negro League in the 1930s-1940s.

Catcher Larry Brown created a lot of that excitement. He was known as one of the best catchers in the Negro League, a brilliant defender of home plate, throwing-out runners with cool precision and snagging wild pitches with ease.

Lena Angevine Warner is rightfully known as Tennessee’s pioneer nurse. Lena Angevine, born in Grenada, MS, in 1869, was the only member of her immediate family to survive the yellow fever epidemics of 1877 and 1878.

Raised by her grandmother, Lena attended St. Mary’s Episcopal School in Memphis, and, in 1887, became the first student accepted at the Memphis Training School for Nurses. She studied further in Chicago, was briefly married to E.C. Warner, and, in 1898, became the first superintendent of nurses at the new City of Memphis Hospital.