Tag: anti-lynching activities

Nellie Griswold Francis (GW020)

(November 7, 1874 – December 13, 1969)

from The Greenwood Project

Nashville-born Nellie Griswold was a young girl when her family moved to Minnesota, where she met and married St. Paul attorney William Trevanne Francis in 1893. She founded the Everywoman Suffrage Council and held leadership positions in the Minnesota State Federation of Colored Women, the Urban League, and the NAACP. Enlisting her husband’s assistance in writing anti-lynching legislation after a 1920 incident in Duluth, Nellie shepherded the bill through the state legislature to passage in 1921. This ground-breaking law – be reminded that the United States Congress has never passed anti-lynching legislation! – awarded monetary compensation to victims’ families and established penalties for police who failed to protect prisoners from mobs. Facing discriminatory housing practices in their Minnesota neighborhood, Nellie and her husband moved to Africa in 1927 when President Coolidge appointed William to serve as special minister to Liberia. After yellow fever took William’s life, Nellie brought his body to Nashville for burial, remaining here herself until her death at 95.

Nellie Francis Griswold. (Mary Dillon Foster, Who’s Who Among Minnesota Women (1924), 111.)

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The Greenwood Project is a series of 160-word biographies of individuals who lie at rest in Mt. Ararat and Greenwood cemeteries, two historic African American burial grounds in Nashville, Tennessee. The project, which began in September 2014 (and is still available on Facebook, at https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064806156276), shares the stories of more than 300 consequential individuals, primarily African American, who changed the course of city, state, and national history through their words and deeds. (All biographies were written by Kathy Lauder unless otherwise noted.)

Capt. W. L. Irvin (GW015)

(ca. 1835 – May 5, 1907)

from The Greenwood Project

W.L. Irvin’s name appeared frequently in post-Civil War newspapers. A barber by trade, he and other elite leaders posted letters to Gov. John C. Brown and Gen. W.B. Bate in 1874, urging them to take stronger action against lynching. Irvin was a board member of the House Building and Loan Association during the 1890s. He served in the U.S. Army for several years and later led the Langston Rifles, one of Nashville’s five “colored” military companies. During the Spanish American War (1898), he became a lieutenant in an “immune regiment” (military authorities erroneously believed African American troops were naturally immune to tropical diseases and sent many into combat in the tropics), serving until the regiment mustered out. An alternate delegate to the state Republican Convention in 1900, Irvin was active in the [Frederick] Douglass Club and was a featured speaker at their 1903 meeting. He was buried with honors by the Masonic Order, of which he was a longtime member.

All existing African American military units were called up for service in the Spanish American War. (Photo from the Library of Congress)

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The Greenwood Project is a series of 160-word biographies of individuals who lie at rest in Mt. Ararat and Greenwood cemeteries, two historic African American burial grounds in Nashville, Tennessee. The project, which began in September 2014 (and is still available on Facebook, at https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064806156276), shares the stories of more than 300 consequential individuals, primarily African American, who changed the course of city, state, and national history through their words and deeds. (All biographies were written by Kathy Lauder unless otherwise noted.)