[6] It was named after Casimir Pulaski, a noted Polish-born general on the Patriot side in the American Revolutionary War.

During the Civil War, after the Union took control of Tennessee in 1862, thousands of African Americans left plantations and farms to join their lines for refuge.

[citation needed] The Army set up a contraband camp in Pulaski to help house the freedmen and their families, feed them, and put them to work.

[citation needed] Union troops occupied the state from 1862, and hundreds of African Americans left plantations even before the Emancipation Proclamation to join their lines.

In 1863, Confederate courier Sam Davis was hanged in Pulaski by the Union Army on suspicion of espionage.

[citation needed] After the war, in late 1865, six Tennessee veterans of the Confederate Army founded a secret society, later known as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

[10] The downtown area is on the north side of Richland Creek, a southward-flowing tributary of the Elk River.

U.S. Route 31 Alternate (E. Grigsby Street) leaves U.S. 31 in the north part of Pulaski and heads northeast 23 miles (37 km) to Lewisburg.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 7.2 square miles (18.7 km2), all land.

It is located three nautical miles (6 km) southwest of the central business district of Pulaski.

[18] The town was mentioned in the 1986 film Platoon by Chris Taylor, a character played by Charlie Sheen.