Editor’s note: Main Street Nashville reprints some of the best front pages from the Nashville Banner, an afternoon newspaper that published from 1876 to 1998. The pages are courtesy of the Nashville Public Library, Nashville Banner Collection.
75 YEARS AGO IN THE
NASHVILLE BANNER
Political news dominated the front page of the Banner on Jan. 6, 1947, as Tennessee’s legislature returned for a new session and President Harry S. Truman delivered his State of the Union address.
In Nashville, the first bill introduced in the Senate aimed to lift the tolls on the state’s eight toll bridges. The second bill authorized an increase in pay for teachers.
Banner Publisher James G. Stahlman threw his support behind Gov. Jim McCord’s 2% retail sales tax bill. In his “From the Shoulder” column, Stahlman wrote:
“No sooner had the governor proposed the sales levy than the howls went up. Now I don’t like taxes any more than you do. But any fool knows that no governmental function can perform without money. And the only source of governmental revenue in sufficient quantity is through taxation.”
In Washington, D.C., Truman, in his first appearance before a Congress controlled by the opposition party, outlined a four-point labor program to avert “national disaster” from strikes.
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