Tennessee’s Founding Documents on Display for First Time
Tennesseans will get an opportunity for a rare glimpse of the original handwritten copy of Tennessee’s constitution this week.
On Monday the documents will be taken from a temperature-controlled locked vault, where they have not been available for the public to see, and digitized. After the documents are digitized — carefully, as some of the pages are so brittle they must be handled with cotton gloves and turned with a special spatula — they will be put on display as part of a week-long celebration that includes the opening of the Tennessee Judiciary Museum at 10 a.m. Wednesday in the Supreme Court Building.
Assistant Tennessee State Archivist Wayne Moore told TNReport.com “It’s the first time these have been digitized to be available in a widely available form for the people in Tennessee. One of the things that makes this kind of special is because those constitutions have always been stored away … and not available for anybody to see.”
In addition to the opening, the museum will host the original constitutions on display on the following dates:
- Thursday, Dec. 6 from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
- Friday, Dec. 7 from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
- Saturday, Dec. 8 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
- Monday, Dec. 10 from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
The display marks the 75th anniversary of the Supreme Court Building and the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.
— read the full article on TNreport.com (a video is also available) __