Schoolteacher John Thomas Scopes is convicted on July 21 of violating Tennessee's ban on teaching evolution in the "Scopes Monkey Trial."

The Ku Klux Klan is founded in Pulaski, Tennessee on December 24.

Running on a platform that advocates "Manifest Destiny," meaning the expansion of the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific, James K. Polk of Tennessee wins the Presidential election on December 4, becoming the eleventh President of the United States.

On June 1, Tennessee becomes the sixteenth state.