Before the life of fame and recognition, Designing Women star Dixie Carter roamed the halls of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville campus, searching for her voice. Her years at the university would become the quiet foundation for a career that would redefine the image of Southern women on American television.
Carter came to Knoxville in 1957 as a music major focused on singing. However, a flawed tonsillectomy at the age of 7 made it difficult, and the UT Department of Music faculty suggested that she switch her concentration to the piano. Carter transferred to Rhodes College, where she took up theater and acting and found her passion. She ended up graduating from the University of Memphis.
Carter set high goals from a very young age. Born in McLemoresville, she spent her early years in Memphis, where she made her debut performance in a 1960s production of Carousel. Her musical inspiration came from hearing a broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera at 4 years old. It was then that she declared she would move to New York and become an opera singer. Although her dream didn’t come true, her motivation to be on stage carried her further than she imagined.
She moved to New York to pursue acting and joined Joseph Papp’s A Winter’s Tale in 1963. After an eight-year hiatus to raise her children, Carter re-entered the acting field. She took on daytime drama roles while she warmed back up to the profession. When she moved to Los Angeles in 1979, she stepped into her most iconic role, Julia Sugarbaker.
Even though Carter died in April 2010, her legacy lives on through The Dixie Performing Arts Center, located in Huntingdon. The center blossomed into an arts and culture hub with hundreds of performance and education series events and more than 200,000 patrons.
From the Archives
The summer 1965 issue of Tennessee Alumnus highlights the article “The Voice of the U-T Singers,” the university’s official “singing ambassadors.”
The UT Singers performed to express UT Knoxville’s values and mission. During 1965, the group finished two tours, one statewide and the other through Northern Europe. The tour’s mission was to showcase how “music, sung with the joyousness of spirit that is traditional with the singers, is truly a common language.”
The article features numerous photos and captions from their excursions on tour, providing insight into the performers’ daily lives as entertainers and as people.
Our Tennessee was published as the Tennessee Alumnus from 1917 to 2020. Scanned archives of past issues of the magazine can be accessed online through UT Knoxville’s Digital Collections Library.
