The 14th president of the university (1934–46), Dr. James Dickason Hoskins was born in 1870 in New Market, Tennessee, where his father was county clerk. The family moved from Dandridge to Knoxville (sending the household goods by flatboat) in 1883, partially to enable him to attend UT—his father had attended Holston College and then graduated from Maryville College.
When his father purchased a one-half interest in the Minnis and Hozie wholesale grocery firm, Hoskins decided to work there instead of attending college. When the work he was given in his father’s wholesale grocery company—unloading sacks of coffee beans and sweeping the store—was backbreaking and boring, and the wages paid caused him to “know poverty,” he decided to attend UT, entering as a freshman in September 1887. He received one of the first scholarships offered by UT—given to the highest-ranking student in each class. In 1890 he was awarded a medal for excellence in debating, which was presented by President Woodrow Wilson, at that time a professor at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. He graduated in 1891.
Hoskins earned the master of arts degree from UT in 1893 and the LLB in 1897. He took graduate work at the University of Chicago in the summer of 1900. When he finished college, he was offered two jobs, one in a chemical laboratory in Wyoming and one as cashier of a bank. He planned to practice law, but President Dabney asked him to try teaching for a while, so he did. From 1891 to 1893 he instructed in mathematics at the university. In 1893–94, he served as first assistant principal at the Masonic Institute in Fort Jesup, Louisiana. He served as instructor, then principal, at the Knoxville Classical School from 1894 to 1898, and when it was combined with the Baker-Himel School, he served as coprincipal.
In 1900 he rejoined the UT faculty as assistant professor of history, and was appointed dean of the College of Liberal Arts in 1910 after serving as acting dean. In 1919 he was appointed dean of the university, a position roughly equivalent to executive vice president. He succeeded President Harcourt Morgan, first as acting president, and then in 1934 he was appointed president, a post he held for 14 years.
In 1925 he became the first president of the East Tennessee Historical Society and was instrumental in saving Blount Mansion from being demolished for a parking lot. He was vice moderator of the 142nd General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the USA. He was president of the Tennessee College Association in 1933–34 and of the Association of Land Grant Colleges and Universities in 1941–42. He also served as president of the Tennessee History Teachers Association and was a member of the Sons of the Revolution and the Rotary Club. His hobbies were fishing and hunting. In 1950 the board of trustees named the main library for him.
He was married in 1899 to Lynn Luella Deming of Knoxville and commissioned a stained glass window in the Hoskins Library as a memorial to her. His papers were donated to the UT Libraries.
In 1959 a bridge at his hometown of Dandridge was named for him, and the UT Pride of the Southland Band played. Taken to the dedication in an ambulance, Hoskins emerged from the back of the ambulance to stand at attention when the band played the “Alma Mater.”