African American legislators – Nashville Historical Newsletter

A History of African-American Lawyers in Nashville

by Lewis L. Laska

African-American lawyers have practiced in Nashville at least since 1868, when Alfred Menefee, a grocer, received a license to practice before justices of the peace. Menefee thus became the first black office holder in Nashville, also being named magistrate by 1897. Nineteenth century licensing, rather informal, involved two types of licenses for attorneys. The lesser license allowed one to practice before the magistrates and could be obtained simply by gaining approval from a panel of justices and paying a fee. The “regular” license allowed a lawyer to practice in circuit and chancery courts. The approval process required an oral bar exam conducted in open court, where a panel of practicing attorneys peppered the applicant with questions. Judges freely signed licenses, even for black lawyers, but records were not carefully preserved, so the name of Nashville’s first African-American attorney is unknown.

·*Gavel and court minutes at the Minnesota Judicial Center (photo by Jonathunder, 2008)*

Black lawyers generally needed a white mentor in order to succeed. One of the earliest African Americans to practice in Nashville was Prince Albert Ewing, who studied law under the influential lawyer/politician Edward Baxter. Born into slavery, Ewing had eventually become a Fisk graduate. Many local historians believe that when he obtained a “regular” attorney’s license on September 15, 1871, he was likely the first African American to do so.

His twin brother, Taylor E. Ewing Sr., was the attorney for the National Baptist Publishing Board, and was almost certainly the first black lawyer to represent a corporate client.

William H. Young began practicing law in 1880. He wrested the Republican Party from white control in 1888 and actually carried Davidson County in a race for Congress.

The first African American law school in the South was established in 1879 at Central Tennessee College, later known as Walden University. In 1897 the school graduated the first black female attorney, Lutie A. Lytle, who was also its first black female law professor. The school continued to graduate two or three students each year until it closed in 1903.

*Samuel A. McElwee, from composite photograph of the 45^th Tennessee General Assembly, House of Representatives, 1887-1888.*

The most famous Central Tennessee alumnus was Samuel A. McElwee (1859-1914), one of the earliest black members of the Tennessee House of Representatives. He served three terms (1883-1888) and was nominated for Speaker of the House in his second term. Although he did not win the position, he did receive all the Republican votes in a Democrat-controlled General Assembly. A powerful voice for fair treatment of blacks, he delivered a nominating speech for the vice-presidential candidate (William R. Moore) at the 1888 Republican National Convention. Surprisingly, McElwee told a biographer in 1902 that his color had not been an obstacle to his law practice, and that he had received due recognition from judges and the legal fraternity in general. Another Central Tennessee alumnus, George L. Vaughn, would later convince the Supreme Court (in Shelley v. Kraemer, 1948) to declare that courts could not enforce real estate covenants that restricted the purchase or sale of property based on race.

Although Tennessee passed the first anti-Ku Klux Klan law in 1865 – a law which is still on the books – it was also one of the first states to enact a Jim Crow (segregation) law. Chapter 130 of the Acts of Tennessee (1875) permitted discrimination in public places, from hotels and theaters to trains and streetcars. Among many other constraints on African American liberties, Jim Crow law and custom militated against black professionals, including lawyers. It was soon literally impossible for blacks to study law in the state because no black law schools existed in Tennessee after 1903, and a 1901 statute forbade teaching both races in the same school, public or private. By 1910 only one or two African Americans received law licenses each year in Tennessee.

· *James C. Napier, Colored American Newspaper, Washington, D.C., 2 Nov 1901, p. 1*

Probably the two best-known black lawyers during that era were James C. Napier and Robert L. Mayfield, who represented widely different roles African American lawyers were likely to play in the profession. Napier (1845-1940) was a protégé of accommodationist Booker T. Washington, who promoted advancement of the race by working quietly within the system. Napier was rewarded with one of the nation’s top patronage positions available to blacks: registrar of the United States Treasury (1911-1913) under President William H. Taft. J. C. Napier was not exclusively an attorney. His business ventures included banking and street railways, and at one time he was a trustee of three black colleges. On the other hand, the legal career of Robert Mayfield (1874-1921) consisted almost entirely of litigations against Jim Crow laws and practices. Unfortunately, his work was flawed by technical errors, and he was blamed for mishandling an important 1905 suit against the L&N Railroad Company regarding racial discrimination. Quite unlike the highly principled Napier, Mayfield led a rather dissolute life and was ultimately disbarred in 1919.

· *Jubilee Hall, Fisk University, Historic American Buildings Survey. Retrieved from the Library of Congress <www.loc.gov/item/tn0017/>*

By the 1920s both races had come to regard African American lawyers as marginal to the legal system. Black attorneys tended to be entrepreneurs who sold insurance and real estate, and who promoted such shady public entertainments as boxing matches. Of the nine black lawyers living in Nashville in 1920, only four were practicing their profession full-time.

There were, however, exceptions. The prototypical “new” lawyer – college educated and law-school trained – was Walter W. Walker (1895-1948), who opened his Nashville practice in 1928 and soon became president of the local NAACP chapter. Among other efforts, he filed a lawsuit to equalize teacher pay, thus becoming the first actual civil rights attorney in Nashville.

Previously published in David C. Rutherford, Bench and Bar II, Nashville Bar Foundation, 1981. Used by permission of the author.

Monroe W. Gooden: Ahead of His Time

by John W. Marshall and Kathy B. Lauder.

Introduction: Although Monroe W. Gooden was not a Nashvillian, he was one of the 14 African American men elected to the Tennessee General Assembly during the 19th century. In time we hope to include all their biographies in the Nashville Historical Newsletter. For more information about these remarkable individuals and their complex historical era, see the Tennessee State Library and Archives exhibit: https://sharetngov.tnsosfiles.com/tsla/exhibits/blackhistory/index.htm

Monroe Gooden’s death certificate records his birthdate as October 26, 1852, and his death as January 19, 1915. The Biographical Directory of the Tennessee General Assembly includes the same date of death but lists Gooden’s birth date as May 10, 1848, which, since it corresponds with the age Gooden gave in census records, is probably more likely to be correct.

*Monroe W. Gooden (from a composite photo of the 45th Tennessee General Assembly, 1887)*

The death certificate also states that the future legislator was born in Fayette County, Tennessee, to Monroe Gooden Sr. and an unknown mother. The omission of the mother’s name is regrettable since it might have provided a valuable clue to the family’s history – slaves usually had the same masters (and surnames) as their mothers, at least during their youth. We do know that the neighborhood the Goodens lived in was in the north-central part of Fayette County, along the line between Districts 4 and 5, and only two or three miles from the Haywood County line. In fact, Charles G. Feild’s plantation (Feild was the slave owner of Representative John W. Boyd’s mother) was just over the county line in Haywood County, only a few miles away. Although we still do not know exactly which plantation was Monroe Gooden’s birthplace, we can identify three possible choices bordering each other in that neighborhood: the Baskerville and Tucker plantations in District 4 and the Harwell plantation in District 5. Since slaves generally took spouses from their own and adjoining plantations, a trend that continued throughout Reconstruction, it is likely that Gooden was born on one of these three plantations.

The question of where Gooden and his sister Lucinda lived during the period of slavery has not been completely answered. We are quite certain that they were Monroe Senior’s only children, and it is apparent that their mother died when they were very young. Slave schedule/census records rule out either the Tucker or Baskerville plantations. However, one clue to their childhood home may be found in Civil War enrollment records: Monroe W. evidently enrolled in the Federal army as “Monroe Harvey.” Matching this name to a late 1860s Fayette County record of a “Monroe Harwell” (who does not appear in the census), one wonders whether the young soldier’s name should have been written as “Harwell” also, and whether the children did, in fact, grow up on the Harwell plantation in District 5. Slave genealogy is a puzzle with many pieces (and documents) missing.

The Harwell plantation was owned by Dr. Frederick Harwell, a native of Brunswick County, Virginia. Several members of his family had moved to Giles County in Middle Tennessee about 1810. Twenty years later Dr. Harwell and his wife moved west to District 5 in Fayette County, where they established a sizable plantation, with more than 1,000 acres and close to 80 slaves. Several intriguing anecdotes about the family still survive. According to one story, late in the Civil War Dr. Harwell, who was quite elderly by then, took a little slave girl along to help him bury his money in order to protect it from oncoming Yankee soldiers. Several descendants of that little girl tell how, later in life, she wracked her brain trying to remember where the money was buried. Over the years many people tried to find the hidden treasure, but with no success. It was not until the 1940s that Jacob Harwell Jr., whose father was raised by a slave from the plantation, was plowing in one of the fields and dug up part of the money. Descendants of John Yarbrough, the mulatto driver [a high-ranking slave used as an overseer] on the plantation, tell of the Union soldiers who hung Yarbrough upside down from a tree to force him to reveal where the Harwells’ valuables were hidden.

Because the Harwells had no children, when both of them died during the final year of the Civil War, they willed their property to two Giles County nephews, who continued to operate the Harwell plantation as absentee owners for another 40 years. During that period several mortgages were filed by Monroe W. Gooden for crops “grown on the Harwell place,” which was on the Somerville-to-Covington road, where the Bernard School was later located. Combining that information with the available census records, one can draw the conclusion that Monroe was renting and living in the old Harwell manor house during much of the late 1800s. Oral history suggests that Monroe was a “big operator” with many sharecroppers working under him. Whether or not he was originally a Harwell slave, it is evident that he was in time the de facto “master” of the Harwell plantation.

*Photo courtesy of Fayette County Historical Society*

We do know that Monroe W. Gooden’s wife Ann came from the Baskerville plantation owned by the Reverend John Tabb Baskerville, a well-known Methodist minister of the area, and a native of Mecklenburg County, Virginia, which had been home to a number of the large land-owners of southwest Tennessee. A family story relates that the white Baskervilles taught at least one of their young slaves to read, and later gave her enough money to purchase 100 acres of property.

Monroe W. Gooden and Ann Baskerville were married in Somerville on December 29, 1866, not long after Monroe Sr. married Hannah Hare, another former slave from the Baskerville plantation. It is interesting to note that Monroe Sr.’s marriage record lists his surname as “Tucker,” suggesting (since freed slaves often chose the surname of their original owner, rather than the most recent one) that he had at some point been a slave of Joseph C. C. Tucker on a plantation adjoining that of the Baskervilles.

In the 1870 census, both Monroe W. and Monroe Sr. were living in District 4. The elder Gooden was at that time 48 years old, so he would have been born about 1822, during the presidency of James Monroe. Their surname in this particular census is spelled “Goodwin,” which may provide an additional clue to their history – in the 1820s the Goodwyn family were among the largest slave-holders in Dinwiddie County, Virginia . . . which was also the original home of Joseph C. C. Tucker! It is quite possible that Monroe Sr. was born in Virginia as a Goodwyn slave, but was later brought to Fayette County by the Tuckers.

On March 2, 1872, Monroe Gooden Sr. became one of the first African Americans in Fayette County to own land, when he purchased two tracts amounting to about 250 acres from A. D. Stainback (Fayette Deed Book 2, page 57) in a transaction known as a title bond. This was an instrument of sale whereby the title passed to the new owner, but a deed was not given until payment was made in full. Six years later, after the death of Monroe Sr., the administrator of A. D. Stainback’s estate gave a deed for the property to “the heirs of Monroe Gooden,” listed as his widow Hannah Gooden and his two children, Monroe Gooden Jr. and Lucinda Gooden McNeal (Fayette Deed Book 7, page 345, 25 February 1878). Lucinda McNeal, who married Austin McNeal, owned a house and lot in the town of Mason during the early 1900s. She was known around town as “Aunt Cindy McNeal” and lived to be an old woman. Unfortunately, her death certificate provides no information as to her parentage.

*Tennessee Capitol (photo courtesy of the Tennessee House of Representatives)*

A deed from January 25, 1881 (Fayette Deed Book 9, page 618), provides for one-half acre to be used as the site for a school for colored children. The school directors for Civil District 5 during that period were identified as W. A. Rives, M. W. Goodwin, and James H. Cocke. Rives and Cocke were both white men. There is little doubt that by this time Monroe W. Gooden had risen to a very prominent position in the community. The only African American Democrat in the Tennessee legislature in the 19th century, he was elected to represent Fayette County in the 45th Tennessee General Assembly, 1887-1888. A legislative biography identifies him as a “farmer and ginner near Somerville, Fayette County,” and lists him as a member of the Masonic order. [African-American Freemasons groups have existed in the United States since 1775, and the number of black lodges increased significantly after the Civil War.] Gooden was also a trustee of the Williamson Chapel Missionary Baptist Church.

About the time he was elected to the legislature, Monroe W. Gooden began to acquire large tracts of land. One such purchase, recorded on November 22, 1887, was for 372 acres. He bought more land in 1890, and in 1897 he purchased still another large tract totaling over 500 acres. By the end of his life, he owned about a thousand acres, including the former Patterson plantation in the Brewer community. This property had been owned before the Civil War by General Bernard Markham Patterson (originally Patteson), another native Virginian and large-scale planter, who had also spent time in Giles County before coming to West Tennessee. At some point between 1890 and 1900 Gooden moved his large family into the old Patterson plantation house, a comfortable two-story, white frame building.

The Goodens had a large number of children: Mary, Monroe J., John, James/Jim, Lillie Bell, and Willa Ola Gooden. Ann already had one son, Dempsey (Demp) Shivers, when she married Monroe Gooden, and he is listed with the family in the 1880 census. Monroe W. had at least one other child as well, a son named Frank Gooden, whose mother was Mollie Coe.

Monroe Gooden and his wife Ann are buried in the Patterson Cemetery in Fayette County, northwest of Somerville. This section was originally a slave burial ground: most of the people buried there are descendants of slaves from the Patterson plantation. (Photo by John Marshall)

After his death, Monroe Gooden was buried in the family section he had created in the Patterson cemetery, which had originally been the slave burial ground on the Patterson plantation. Most members of his family are buried there with him. Nearly all the people buried on that site can trace their roots to the Patterson slaves. Several such cemeteries survive in District 5, all bearing the names of the original plantation owners. Although some are abandoned, several others, including the Patterson cemetery, are still in use today.

A brief obituary of Monroe Gooden appeared in the January 22, 1915, edition of the Fayette Falcon, Somerville, Tennessee:

“Fayette county lost one of her best colored citizens on last Tuesday when Monroe J. Gooden of the fifth district, died at a ripe old age. Monroe was one of the most thrifty men of his race in the county and owned several hundred acres of good land. He lived on this land and can be counted as a good citizen. He was quiet, unpretentious, and lived in peace and harmony with his white neighbors, holding their friendship and respect. He represented Fayette county in the state legislature in 1887 and was the last negro to sit in a legislature in any of the southern states during the reconstruction times. In recent years he has taken no part in politics, never even voting for years*. Many negroes could help to improve the condition and standing of their race by emulating the example of honesty and right living set by Monroe Gooden.”

* Note: There were very few African American Democrats during Reconstruction, so Gooden’s politics were quite unusual. It is likely (particularly since he seemed to withdraw completely from political attachment in his later years) that he became a Democrat during the years in which he was politically active in order to avoid friction with his white neighbors.

Samuel A. McElwee, 1859-1914

by Kathy B. Lauder.

Samuel Allen McElwee was born a slave in Haywood County, Tennessee, on June 26, 1859. After emancipation he attended Freedmen’s Bureau schools¹ and by 16 was teaching in a local school himself.²

In 1875 he entered Oberlin College for a year, taking odd jobs to pay his tuition.³ Returning to Tennessee, he walked ten miles each day after work to study Latin, German, and algebra with a white Vanderbilt student.⁴ He entered Fisk University in 1878, earning a Peabody Scholarship⁵ to pay his way.

While still enrolled at Fisk, McElwee won a seat in the 43^rd Tennessee General Assembly (1882), representing Haywood County.⁶ He graduated the following May, just as his first House term ended.⁷ In 1884, at age 25, he became secretary of the Tennessee Convention, a state-wide gathering of black leaders,⁸ and served as a state delegate to the Republican National Convention.⁹

McElwee entered Nashville’s Central Tennessee College during his second legislative term, earning a law degree in 1885.¹⁰ He became the focus of a historic vote after former U.S. Senator Roderick Butler nominated him for House Speaker. Although unable to surmount a large Democratic majority, the 26-year-old former slave received 32 of the 93 votes cast.¹¹

The first black Tennessean elected to a third legislative term (1887), McElwee pleaded for stronger legal powers over lynch mobs: “Great God, when will this Nation treat the Negro as an American citizen?”¹² Despite his highly publicized speech, the House tabled the bill 41-36.¹³Later that year McElwee spoke at Tuskegee Institute’s graduation¹⁴and presided over the Colored World’s Fair Association.¹⁵

In 1888 Samuel McElwee married the “handsome and cultured” Georgia Shelton.¹⁶ Their wedding party included many prominent Nashvillians, black and white. Fisk President E. M. Cravath officiated; guests included Charles Nelson, Granville P. Lipscomb, Dr. H. T. Noel, Dr. R. F. Boyd, Major E. B. Stahlman, and former Confederate General George Maney.¹⁷

The State Republican Party elected McElwee delegate-at-large to the 1888 Republican National Convention,¹⁸ where he was a member of the committee on credentials.¹⁹ McElwee’s eloquent words about the potential role of African Americans in national politics helped persuade Benjamin Harrison to nominate former slave Frederick Douglass as ambassador to Haiti and to endorse bills prohibiting Southern states from obstructing African American suffrage.²⁰

At home McElwee faced powerful political challenges to his campaign for an unprecedented fourth legislative term: Haywood County officials employed “disgraceful election methods”²¹ to ensure his defeat,²² and white separatists drove him from the county. During the following term (1889) the all-white General Assembly approved legislation that would disfranchise black voters for decades.²³

McElwee and his wife spent the next twelve years in Nashville, where he established a thriving law office.²⁴ Both Samuel and Georgia were active in civic organizations, and their names regularly appeared in the social pages of the newspapers. In 1901 McElwee moved his wife and daughters to Chicago,²⁵ where his legal practice flourished for over a decade. He won many important cases, including a multi-million-dollar lawsuit against the City Railway Company.²⁶ He died in Chicago October 21, 1914, at the age of 56. ²⁷ (2014)

SOURCES:

¹“Brave Tennessean Forgotten by History,” Nashville Tennessean, February 13, 1971.

² “A Remarkable Negro,” Nashville Daily American, June 9, 1888.

³ “Brave Tennessean Forgotten by History.”

⁴ “The Death of Atty. Samuel A. McElwee,” Chicago Broad Axe, October 24, 1914.

⁵Tennessee State Board of Education Minute Book, Volume 55, page 131.

⁶ McBride, Robert M., and Dan M. Robinson. Biographical Directory, Tennessee General Assembly, Volume II (1861-1901). Nashville: Tennessee State Library and Archives, and Tennessee Historical Commission, 1979.

⁷ Simmons, William J. Men of Mark: Eminent, Progressive and Rising. Cleveland: G. M. Rewell & Co., 1887, 500.

⁸“The Tennessee Convention: Colored Men in Council at Nashville—Vital Questions Ably Discussed—Resolutions setting forth the Grievances and Needs of the Race,” New York Globe, March 15, 1884.

⁹Johnson, Charles W. Republican Party (U.S.:1854-), 227. Official Proceedings of the Republican National Convention, Chicago, June 3, 4, 5 and 6, 1884, 21.

¹⁰ Simmons, William J. Men of Mark: Eminent, Progressive and Rising. Cleveland: G. M. Rewell & Co., 1887, 500.

¹¹ Tennessee General Assembly. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Tennessee. Nashville: Tavel & Howe, 1885.

¹² Nashville Union, February 23, 1887.

¹³ Tennessee General Assembly. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Tennessee. Nashville: Tavel & Howe, 1886.

¹⁴ “Tuskegee Normal School: Celebrating Its Sixth Anniversary—An Exhibit of Industries—Commencement Exercises,” New York Freeman, June 4, 1887.

¹⁵ “General Announcement. Colored World’s Exposition, 1887-’88,” Weekly Pelican, January 29, 1887.

¹⁶ “McElwee. A Southern Lawyer, the Brilliant Orator and Barrister,” Freeman, March 2, 1889.

¹⁷ “Hon. S. A. McElwee Married,” Nashville Daily American, June 7, 1888.

¹⁸ “A Remarkable Negro.”

¹⁹ Johnson, Charles W. Republican Party (U.S.:1854-), 227. Official Proceedings of the Republican National Convention, Chicago, June 3, 4, 5 and 6, 1884, 24.

²⁰ Calhoun, Charles W. Benjamin Harrison: The American Presidents Series: The 23^rd President, 1889-1893. New York: Times Books, 2013,

^{21 “}McElwee. A Southern Lawyer, the Brilliant Orator and Barrister.”

²²Granberry, Dorothy. “When the Rabbit Foot Was Worked and Republican Votes Became Democratic Votes: Black Disfranchisement in Haywood County, Tennessee.” Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Vol. LXIII, No. 1, Spring 2004.

²³ Lester, Connie L. “Disfranchising Laws.” Tennessee Encyclopedia, Online edition. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2002-2014.

²⁴ “An Eloquent Lawyer’s Great Effort Highly Complimented by Leading Whites,” Freeman, June 20, 1891. Also “Professional Success,” Freeman, July 11, 1891.

²⁵ “Chips,” Broad Axe, August 12, 1901.

²⁶ “Chips,” Broad Axe, February 8, 1902

²⁷ “Death Claims Samuel A. McElwee: Well Known Attorney Was Native of Brownsville, Tenn.—Was Member of Tennessee Legislature.” The Chicago Defender, October 24, 1914.

Sampson W. Keeble, 1833-1887

by Kathy B. Lauder.

Sampson Wesley Keeble, Tennessee’s first African American legislator, was born May 18, 1833, in Rutherford County.¹ His parents were Sampson and Nancy Keeble, slaves of Walter “Blackhead” Keeble, whose 1844 inventory listed 11-year-old Sampson.² (Walter Keeble referred to his slaves as his servants and reportedly treated them respectfully. His 1816 will specified that his slaves were to be treated kindly, to be educated, and to be freed as soon as the law allowed . . . and that any of his descendants who refused were to inherit nothing at all.) The youngster was bequeathed to newsman Horace P. Keeble, who employed him as a pressman on the Rutherford Telegraph and the Murfreesboro News.³ After the Civil War, during which Sampson probably served as Private H. P. Keeble’s cook, the newly freed slave settled in Nashville and found work as a barber. Part-time employment in a law office helped him pass the Tennessee bar.⁴ He quickly became a leading citizen of the black community, working with James Napier, Peter and Samuel Lowery, Henry Harding, Nelson Merry, and others to educate black voters and to improve their civic status and security.⁵ Popular and successful as a barber, he also managed a well-known boarding house, and was believed to be quite wealthy.⁶ He was a director of the Tennessee Colored Agricultural and Mechanical Association⁷ and served on one of the few all-black Freedman’s Bank boards in the country.

*This bust of Representative Sampson W. Keeble was installed near the House Chamber in the Tennessee State Capitol in 2010. (photo used with permission of the sculptor, Roy Butler)*

In 1872 Davidson County Republicans appointed Keeble to run for the Tennessee House of Representatives. Swept into office by the landslide vote for President Grant, he became the first African American to serve in the state legislature. He introduced several bills aimed at improving the condition of black citizens, but none received sufficient votes to pass into law.⁸ He served only a single two-year term and lost a later bid for reelection (1878).

Sampson Keeble joined other prominent Nashvillians in protesting the upper-level mismanagement and fraud that threatened to topple the Freedman’s Bank,⁹ but Congressional response was inadequate. When the government failed to insure the existing deposits, the Freedman’s Bank collapsed in 1874, taking with it the life savings of thousands of African American depositors.

*Keeble descendants at his historical marker in downtown Nashville. (photo from NHN collection)*

Keeble was elected to the Davidson County Court in 1877, serving as a magistrate until 1882.¹⁰ He was a delegate to the State Republican convention and served on a number of juries, including a federal grand jury (1881).¹¹

After the death of his first wife,¹² he married educator Rebecca Cantrell Gordon. Of the six children born to them, only a son and daughter survived to adulthood.¹³ At some point in the middle 1880s the family moved to Marshall, Texas, where Sampson Keeble died in June 1887.¹⁴ Rebecca brought the children back to Nashville, supporting them as a seamstress. She died in 1923 in a tragic accident at her daughter’s home in Charleston, South Carolina.¹⁵ Sampson Keeble is buried with his daughter and son-in-law in Nashville’s Greenwood Cemetery under a stone which reads, “Benjamin F. Cox (1874-1952) – His Wife, Jeannette Keeble Cox (1876-1956) – Her Father, Sampson W. Keeble (1833-1887), First Negro Representative of Tennessee Legislature.”

*Keeble-Cox tombstone in Greenwood Cemetery, Nashville.*

On March 29, 2010, a bust of Sampson W. Keeble, created by sculptor Roy W. Butler, was unveiled near the House chamber in the Tennessee Capitol. Its base lists all fourteen African Americans elected to the General Assembly during the 19^th century. (2014)

SOURCES:

¹ McBride, Robert M., and Dan M. Robinson. Biographical Directory, Tennessee General Assembly, Volume II (1861-1901) Nashville: Tennessee State Library & Archives and Tennessee Historical Commission, 1979.

² Rutherford County Will and Inventory Book 12, 1844, 432-434 and 558-562.

³ “Representative Keeble,” Nashville Union & American, December 6, 1872.

⁴ Helen Davis Mills, Keeble descendant, correspondence, 2008.

⁵ “In Chancery at Nashville,” Nashville Republican Banner, September 3, 1872.

⁶ “History of a Stolen Watch,” Nashville Republican Banner, October 18, 1871.

⁷ “The Colored Fair, A Satisfactory Indication of Material Progress,” Nashville Republican Banner, July 16, 1871.

⁸ Cartwright, Joseph H. The Triumph of Jim Crow: Tennessee Race Relations in the 1880s. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1976.⁹ “A Memorial to the Senate and House of Representatives of the Congress of the United States,” Congressional Record, January 15, 1875.

¹⁰ “Keeble Still Ahead,” Nashville Daily American, September 2, 1876.

¹¹ “Federal Court Jurors,” Nashville Daily American, March 16, 1881.

¹² “Died,” Nashville Republican Banner, June 17, 1870.

¹³ U. S. Census records.

¹⁴ “Death of Sampson W. Keeble,” Nashville Daily American, July 3, 1887.

¹⁵ Ancestry.com South Carolina, Death Records, 1821-1960 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry-com Operations Inc., 2008.