Thomas O’Conner Prize for Outstanding Junior Student; academic prize for undergraduate students memorializing Thomas O'Conner
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O'Conner, Thomas
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Thomas O’Conner Prize for Outstanding Junior Student; academic prize for undergraduate students memorializing Thomas O'Conner
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From 1871 to 1882, Thomas O'Conner, a businessman and entrepreneur, made a substantial fortune leasing prisoners incarcerated by the State of Tennessee and then selling their labor to coal mining companies in the state. Most of the prisoners were African American men, and many had been unjustly sent to prison in the repressive conditions of Reconstruction-era Tennessee.
O'Conner sold the labor of three hundred prisoners to the Sewanee Mining Company in Tracy City, Tennessee. O'Conner also developed close personal ties to the Episcopal Church leadership of the University of the South. He died in a gunfight in 1882, and in 1924, his widow, Fannie Renshaw O'Conner, bequeathed $10,000 in memory of her husband to the University of the South to establish the scholarship in his name.
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The Thomas O'Connor [sic] Scholarship for Highest Scholastic Attainment for Three Years. [Source: Catalogue of the University of the South, 1961-1962, 168.]
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O'Conner, Thomas
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O'Conner, Fannie Renshaw
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1924
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O'Conner, Fannie Renshaw
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