African American Heritage Near Center Hill Lake

This guide keeps enduring history separate from one-time programming. A public museum with regular hours is not the same kind of stop as a cemetery, an active church or the landscape where a school once stood.

Each place below is labeled by the experience it can responsibly offer: public museum, historic landscape, active or private sacred space, timed exhibit, or reading and context. Check current hours and access before leaving. Never enter a building, cemetery or private drive simply because a map app suggests a route.

Begin in Alexandria with the documented story of Seay Chapel and the adjacent African American cemetery. Continue toward Silver Point for the history of George Phillip Bowser, the Silver Point Christian Institute and the surviving West End Church of Christ building. Finish in Cookeville, where the History Museum provides the most dependable public visitor experience and periodically hosts exhibits tied to Black education and local history.

Locate Seay Chapel in Alexandria · Locate West End Church in Silver Point · Locate the Cookeville History Museum

Nashville’s National Museum of African American Music deserves a separate, full-day plan. Do not tack it onto this route and turn an important museum into a rushed final stop.

In 1869, three acres in Alexandria were conveyed for an African American cemetery, church and school. The location became an anchor for Black religious, educational and civic life after emancipation. The present Seay Chapel building dates to 1931, after an earlier building burned, so the site’s history is older than the structure visitors see today.

The chapel also belongs to the regional W.E.B. Du Bois story. National Register documentation records that Du Bois worshipped with the congregation while teaching in Middle Tennessee. The connection is to this place and its congregation—not a claim that he entered the present 1931 building.

Treat the chapel and cemetery as sacred community space. Observe posted restrictions, avoid interrupting services or funerals, and do not promise yourself an interior tour.

Continue with Tony’s Guide to W.E.B. Du Bois’s Tennessee teaching years.

Du Bois taught at Wheeler School in rural Wilson County near Watertown during the summers of 1886 and 1887. Seay Chapel in Alexandria is his documented DeKalb County connection. The two places belong to the same story, but they are not the same site.

The Wheeler School building no longer stands. The most meaningful surviving experience is Du Bois’s own account, “Of the Meaning of Progress,” in The Souls of Black Folk. Read it through the public-domain text, then use the Tennessee Encyclopedia for authoritative regional context.

Educator, minister and publisher George Phillip Bowser established the Putnam County Normal and Industrial Orphanage at Silver Point in 1909. It became the Silver Point Christian Institute in 1913, part of a larger Black effort to build education, religious leadership and community institutions in the segregated South.

The surviving West End Church of Christ building provides a physical connection to that work. It should be approached as a historic religious place, not as a staffed museum. Confirm any current access locally and limit an unarranged visit to respectful exterior observation from public space.

The Cookeville History Museum is the clearest public starting point for local history. Admission is free; verify current operating hours on the museum’s official page before making the drive.

The museum’s Rosenwald Schools: Building a Bright Future exhibit runs September 29 through November 20, 2026. Created by the Tennessee State Museum with Fisk University, it explores the Black communities and educators who built schools across Tennessee, including the Putnam County legacy of West Side School, later known as Darwin School.

The National Museum of African American Music is the region’s most substantial, consistent public experience centered on African American history and culture. Its galleries connect spirituals, blues, jazz, gospel, R&B and hip-hop to the people, movements and technologies that shaped American music.

Reserve tickets through the museum, check current hours and build the Nashville day around it. Fisk University also provides essential context for Du Bois and Black intellectual history, but confirm current public tours and campus access directly with Fisk before going.

Du Bois, Seay Chapel, Black schooling and Silver Point offer a starting point—not the complete history of Black life in Middle Tennessee. Museum exhibits, lectures, guided tours and living-history programs can bring additional voices and records into view.

Check Upcoming Events for programs taking place during your visit. Dates and exhibits change, so confirm details with the organizer before traveling.