[James Allen Thompson Parks, Divinity School Class of 1896 Founder’s Medalist]

Circa 1897, reproduction
Courtesy of Kathryn Parks Forbes

James Allen Thompson Parks, whose father walked to Indian Territory from Tennessee during Cherokee Removal in 1838, returned to his father’s home state in 1893 and was the Vanderbilt Biblical Department’s Founder’s Medalist three years later.  At Vanderbilt’s 1896 Commencement, Parks spoke on “Christianity and New Thought,” telling the audience, “Each generation must live a life of its own, born anew within it, and not simply repeat the traditions or appropriate the habits of the past.”