Story by Dr. Yvonne D. Nelson Information Retrieved from The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, T. O. Fuller State Park Tennessee brochure, www.tnstateparks.com, https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/thomas-oscar-fuller/, https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/fuller-thomasoscar, and was compiled by Dr. Yvonne D. Nelson Who was T.O. Fuller? Research reveals that Thomas Oscar Fuller (1867-1942) was a prominent Memphian, author, and civic leader who lived in the early 20th century. Fuller, whose parents were both literate and who had become landowners, attended local schools before graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in 1890 and a Master’s degree in 1893. Both degrees were attained at Shaw University, where he enrolled in 1885. Shaw University is located in Raleigh, NC near Franklinton, NC, where Fuller was born. Fuller was ordained by the Wake County Baptist Association and his first pastorate was the Belton Creek Church at Oxford. Church was held in a log cabin schoolhouse and Fuller was paid a salary of $50 a year for his services. He also taught school in the Granville County public school for the salary of $30 a month. By 1892, Fuller returned to his hometown of Franklinton, formed and operated a “colored graded” school subsequently known as the “Girls Training School,” and became principal of the Shiloh Institute at Warrenton in 1894. By 1898, Fuller had been elected to the North Carolina State Senate when a white Republican had to relinquish his nomination. Fuller was the only African-American in the Senate at the time, yet this fact did not prevent or hinder all of his desires. He achieved several objectives including (1) being largely responsible for getting the circuit court to hold hearings every four months instead of every six months, (2) persuading the senate not to reduce the number of “Negro normal schools” from seven to four; and (3) support for the publication of sketches of North Carolina regiments in the Civil War while contending credit should be attributed to “those who stayed home and raised cotton and corn.” In 1900 Fuller left North Carolina and accepted the role of minister of the First Colored Baptist Church, then located at 217 Beale Street, in Memphis, TN, where he became one of the most prominent black ministers in the city. With only $100, he found a splinter group and rented a hall. Considered by many to be a born organizer and persuader, he soon increased the congregation size and embarked on a building program. Two additional churches were built, the first on St. Paul Avenue and the second at Lauderdale and Polk Streets. Fuller was named principal of Howe Institute, established in Memphis in 1888 as the Memphis Baptist and Normal Institute for West Tennessee Baptists. The school eventually merged with Roger Williams College. It was there where Fuller held classes in theology for local pastors. Howe was a training school to give young blacks manual skills and exposure to academic and cultural subjects including both the Latin and Greek languages. It is said that Fuller’s drive and active support system from Northern Baptists resulted in the fivefold growth of the building in the following 10 years. In 1905 Fuller was a conservative voice in the dispute and strike over the segregation of Memphis’s streetcars. He viewed attempts to protest the new laws as futile, believing that the white power structure would crush any opposition and he urged compliance and highlighted the Christian virtues of abiding the law, rejecting any direct confrontations occurring due to black community members negatively addressing streetcar conductors. Thomas Oscar Fuller received a doctor of philosophy degree from the Agriculture and Mechanical College of Normal, AL in 1906. Shaw University awarded him a M.A. in 1908 and a doctor of divinity degree in 1910. After a Caucasian mob lynched Ell C. Parsons by burning him to death in May 1917, Fuller ventured into more of an activist social and political agenda. As a result, he became one of the initial members of the first chapter of the Memphis Branch NAACP, but soon found himself at odds with the organization when it denounced Tennessee Governor Thomas C. Rye and allowed his membership to lapse. In 1920 he played a significant role in establishing a Memphis chapter of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation (CID). A conservative organization aimed at improving communications between African American elites and their white counterpart, the CIC rose out of the ashes of considerable racial violence following the end of World War I. Operating as a subcommittee of the white Chamber of Commerce and a group of minister, the organization was chaired by Fuller who also headed the Public Welfare League. The organization was commonly referred to as the Memphis InterRacial League (MIL) and might have been the largest and most activist black group in Tennessee claiming over twelve hundred members. Fuller took credit for bettering race relations and improving schools and playgrounds in Memphis in the 1920s. He successfully petitioned the city of Memphis for a change in the name of the Negro Industrial High School to the Booker T. Washington High School. The MIL spoke out against crime and waged a campaign encouraging the upholding of the law, temperance, and active employment. Fuller was so successful at presenting his views in the white press that he wrote more columns of print than any other African American man in Memphis history. 16
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