(March 19, 1898 – December 7, 1988)
from The Greenwood Project
Born in South Carolina, Josephine Groves Holloway was a pioneering leader in African American Girl Scouting. A graduate of both Fisk University and Tennessee A&I, she worked at Nashville’s Bethlehem Center before marrying Guernsey Holloway (1925). Intrigued by the emerging Girl Scout program but unable to gain the local Council’s permission to form and sponsor even a segregated troop (1933), the Holloways organized an unofficial scouting program for their daughters and friends until 1943, when Josephine successfully registered her troop with the Council. That year she became the first African American Girl Scout executive in Tennessee, establishing new troops and helping locate and finance a campground. Mrs. Holloway worked with the Girl Scout Council for 20 years, retiring in 1963. The recipient of many honors and awards, she was also instrumental in integrating the scouting program in Nashville and Tennessee. The historic special collections and gallery of the new (1991) Cumberland Valley Girl Scout Center now carry Josephine Holloway’s name.
(Biography by Dr. Tara Mitchell Mielnik.)
Girl Scout executive Josephine Groves Holloway and her granddaughter Nareda. (Photograph from the website of the Girl Scouts of Middle Tennessee.)
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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.)
Nashville Historical Newsletter 