Just minutes from downtown, this Dogwood Trail features Morningside Park with gently rolling hills, large shade trees, and lots of open play space.  While at the park, visit the 13-foot bronze statue of author and Pulitzer prize winner Alex Haley. Follow the pink lines through the neighborhood and stop by the historic Mabry-Hazen House, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Italianate-style house built in 1858 showcases over 2,000 original artifacts and is home to an 8-acre site and arboretum which features one of the largest old-grove of dogwoods in the area.

 

Just down the street is The Beck Cultural Exchange Center, a non-profit organization established in 1975 as a result of Knoxville’s Urban Renewal projects. Beck is the storehouse of African American history and culture and is designated by the state as a primary repository of black history and culture in East Tennessee.  The trail continues on to the Knoxville Botanical Garden and Arboretum, a 47-acre property that was home to the former Howell Nurseries and features walking trails, display gardens, a Secret Garden, over two miles of historic stone walls, and timeless buildings. Be sure to visit the Dogwood Nature Trail with 20 cultivars of native Cornus florida and dozens of other dogwood varieties.

 

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Morningside Park features an outstanding tournament-level 18-hole disc golf course, greenways, bicycling, skateboarding, soccer, playgrounds, shelters, and fitness stations. 

 

While in the park, visit the Alex Haley Heritage Square which is home to a 13-foot high bronze statue of author and Pulitzer prize winner Alex Haley.  Designed by sculptor Tina Allen and cast in bronze in New York City, the statue weighs 4,200 pounds and Allen’s depiction of Haley shows the author in a seated position, gesturing with an open hand as he reads from an open book in his lap.

 

Haley worked to promote literacy, adult literacy especially, and participated in programs that encouraged young people to remain in school. Haley was born in 1921 in New York and served in the Pacific theater during WWII. Following the war, he became the first chief journalist within the Coast Guard and retired in 1959. Retirement was short-lived as he became the senior editor for Reader’s Digest Magazine. He became well-known for “The Autobiography of Malcolm X“ and “Roots”. In his later years he acquired a small farm in Clinton, Tennessee (northwest of Knoxville) and close to the Museum of Appalachia. 

 

The historic Mabry-Hazen Home overlooks downtown Knoxville, the Tennessee River and the Great Smoky Mountains. The museum's impressive collection is a look back in time. 

 

The Beck Cultural Center is crafting a Cultural Corridor that will recognize African-American historical and cultural monuments that are located throughout the greater community including the area demolished by Urban Renewal.  A vibrant part of the Beck Cultural Corridor will be the only remaining ancestral home of one of the greatest modern painters of the twentieth century, Beauford Delaney. Beck is restoring this extraordinary piece of Knoxville history as the future Delaney Museum at Beck.