legislators – Nashville Historical Newsletter

Slave to Statesman: The Story of John W. Boyd

by John W. Marshall and Kathy B. Lauder.

Introduction: Although John W. Boyd was not a Nashvillian, he was one of the fourteen African American men who served in the Tennessee General Assembly during the 19th century, so was certainly a significant figure in Nashville history. In time we hope to include biographies of all these men in the Nashville Historical Newsletter. For more information about these remarkable individuals and their complex historical era, visit the website of the Tennessee State Library and Archives.

John W. Boyd was born about 1852 in Tipton County, Tennessee, to Philip and Sophia Fields Boyd*. On March 13, 1879, John married Martha C. “Mattie” Doggett in Trinity Episcopal Church, Mason, Tennessee. Mattie was a member of St. Paul Episcopal Church, the local black congregation, but the couple was somehow permitted to be married in the white church, with their wedding ceremony conducted by its priest, Rev. C. F. Collins. Anecdotal references suggest that Boyd freely attended services in both churches, black and white.

*John Boyd, from a composite photo of the 42nd Tennessee General Assembly*, 1881

Mattie Doggett was the daughter of Andrew Doggett, a free man of color. Andrew actually owned property before the Civil War, acquiring some 200 acres more after the war ended. John Boyd’s older brother Armistead was married to Mattie’s twin sister, Nannie Doggett. Neither couple left any children. Their sister Judy married Henderson Stevens, a member of a well-respected, land-owning family in Mason. Judy and Henderson Stevens did leave a number of descendants, one of whom provided much of the information we know about the family.

While Nannie and Mattie Doggett were Episcopalian, the Boyd brothers were originally Methodists, members of what survives today as Alexander’s Chapel United Methodist Church. This church, too, was somewhat unusual in that it was not connected with either the Christian Methodist Episcopal (CME) or African Methodist Episcopal (AME) churches, the historically black Methodist denominations.

John Boyd was a member of what is now Alexander’s Chapel United Methodist Church in Mason, Tennessee. Boyd is the bald gentleman standing in the back row on the left; his wife Mattie, wearing a dark hat, stands beside him. John’s brother Armistead Boyd, seated in front of Mattie, has a light-colored hat and a large white mustache. (Photo used by permission, Tipton County Historical Society)

John Boyd was too young to take part in the Civil War, but toward the end of the war his older brother Armistead left the Sanford place and went to Memphis to join the Federal army. His war record shows that he joined Company C of the 88th U.S. Colored Infantry on Jan. 21, 1865, at 19 years of age. He was mustered out a year later as a corporal. A story still extant in the community tells that, before his enlistment but after all the adult males had gone off to fight, Armistead, still a young teenager, armed himself with a shotgun to protect his master’s family.

Although no information has yet come to light concerning how or where John W. Boyd received his education or legal training, we do know that he was an attorney in the local courts and was highly respected among both the white and black communities. It is likely that the Boyd family had been allowed to obtain some rudimentary education even before emancipation – there is some evidence that for several generations this family of slaves had been high-achievers and had received special treatment from their masters. Perhaps this background gave them an advantage during Reconstruction and helped propel John Boyd into the profession of the law. Despite the Jim Crow laws that disfranchised African Americans during the last decade of the 19^th century and removed them from positions of power, Boyd was still representing District 10 as a magistrate on the county court as late as 1900, although by that time he was the only black member remaining on the court.

*John Boyd served as a Tipton County Magistrate well into the Jim Crow era*. *(Photo used by permission, Tipton County Historical Society)*

John Boyd was elected to two terms in the Tennessee State Legislature. In the 42^nd General Assembly (1881-1882) he served on the committees for Immigration, New Counties and County Lines, and Tippling Houses. In the 43^rd General Assembly (1883-1884) he was named to the committee on Federal Regulations. During his period of service in Nashville, Boyd worked diligently with other African American legislators to overturn Chapter 130 of the Acts of 1875, the first of Tennessee’s Jim Crow laws, which permitted racial discrimination in public facilities. He also attempted unsuccessfully to repeal the restrictive contract labor law, which had the effect of keeping working blacks in bondage.

Republican ballot from 1884 election, when Boyd ran for the Tennessee Senate. 19th century ballots listed all candidates from a single political party. If a voter wanted to vote for everyone on the ticket, he merely dropped it into the ballot box with no alterations (i.e., he voted the straight ticket). However, he could mark through (scratch) any names he did not want to vote for. Black candidates often received many fewer votes than others on the same ticket.

In the 1884 election, John Boyd ran for the Tennessee Senate seat representing Tipton and Fayette counties. When certified winner H. L. Blackwell, a Democrat, died three days before the 44^th Session was due to convene, Governor William B. Bate called for a new Democratic election to choose Blackwell’s successor. Boyd challenged the governor’s ruling, saying he was the rightful winner of the original election and had been defrauded of his seat: during the November 4 election the District 4 ballot box had “mysteriously disappeared,” along with at least 400 Republican ballots, more than enough to elect Boyd Tennessee’s first black senator. However, despite compelling evidence – depositions from the sheriff and several election officials that two Democratic election judges had taken the box with them when they left for supper, later claiming that it had been “stolen and carried off” – the Senate chose to seat Democrat J. P. Edmondson. It would be 84 years (1969) before an African American would be seated in the Tennessee State Senate.

John and Mattie Boyd’s home was in the town of Mason, just south of the railroad tracks on the east side of Main Street. John, who outlived Mattie, died on March 11, 1932, at about 80 years of age, and was buried in Magnolia Cemetery, Mason, Tennessee. The following is his obituary, found in the March 17, 1932, edition of the Covington (TN) Leader. It appeared on the newspaper’s first page:

“WELL-KNOWN NEGRO BURIED AT MASON–John W. BOYD, a well-known negro of District #10, died suddenly of heart failure Thursday, March 10th. He was buried the following Sunday. There were no immediate survivors. Well up in the eighties in age, Boyd was politically prominent in the three decades following the Civil War. A resident of a district composed largely of negroes, he was for a number of years a magistrate for the 10th District, and following a split in the Democratic ranks in the years following 1880 was elected to the Legislature from this county. He was also a member of the Covington Bar.”

* Philip and Sophia Fields Boyd were slaves to Henry Sanford and his wife Jean Murray Feild [sic] Sanford (1830-1893). Henry Sanford’s father was Col. Robert Walker Sanford (1802-1861), an early elected official of Tipton County, who had moved to Tennessee from Orange County, Virginia. Jean Feild Sanford’s father was Charles Grandison Feild (1805-1845), of Mecklenburg County, Virginia, and Haywood County, Tennessee. The death certificate of Armistead Boyd, another of Philip and Sophia’s children, indicated that both his parents were born in Virginia. Sophia Fields Boyd’s obituary lists her birthplace specifically as Mecklenburg County, Virginia, which had been home to many of Mason’s largest slaveholders – including the Feild family. [Note that the African American members of the family, after Emancipation, changed the spelling of their name from Feild to the more familiar Fields.] Another of the large slave-holding families in Mecklenburg County was the Boyd family, who were intimates and neighbors of the Feilds. It is likely that the Boyd name among the Feild slaves came from trading or intermarrying between the slaves of the two families.

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.

Reverend Charles Spencer Smith (1852-1922)

by Jean Roseman.

As Nashville’s attention turns to the revamped Public Square, we should take note of a fascinating but little-known story about that area. It is the story of the Reverend Charles Spencer Smith, an African American man of extraordinary accomplishments.

Photograph from *The Centennial Encyclopædia of the African Methodist Episcopal Church*; Philadelphia, 1916; Richard R. Wright Jr., ed.

Smith was born into humble circumstances in Colborne, Canada, in 1852. Said to be able to read before the age of five, the boy loved books so much that the first money he ever spent was for a book. Attending school irregularly until he was ten, the youngster then struck out on his own. He first learned the trade of furniture refinishing and later worked at various other jobs: as a general utility boy in a boarding house, as a deck hand on the Great Lakes, as a cook, and as a waiter, continually working his way southward on the waterways.

Passionately fond of reading, especially newspapers, he educated himself successfully enough to become a teacher in Kentucky. When the Ku Klux Klan broke up the school, Smith moved on to Mississippi. There he was licensed to preach in the African Methodist Episcopal Church at Jackson, Mississippi, and also began to take an active role in politics.

Smith next settled in Mobile, Alabama, where he was ordained as a minister. Under the political changes initiated during Reconstruction, he was elected by a large majority to the 1874 Alabama House of Representatives. Widely respected for his prodigious knowledge and his impressive speaking skills, Smith gained a reputation as “the orator of the House.” However, the signing of the Amnesty Act, a period of economic depression, and a series of violent acts by white supremacists heralded a return to Democratic control of politics in the South, and many newly elected black politicians lost their seats in the 1874 and 1876 elections.

When his term ended in 1876, Smith came to Nashville. Still very active in the church, he attended Central Tennessee College (Meharry), receiving a full medical degree in 1880.

Two years later Smith founded a publishing house, the Sunday School Union of the A. M. E. Church, at 206 Public Square. He purchased the property for $9,000 from Maria Louisa Elliston Yandell, who had inherited it from her father, William Elliston. Much earlier it had been the site of the Nashville Inn in 1804.

The Sunday School Union was the first and only steam printing establishment in America to be owned and managed by an African American. From that location, Smith generated an enormous amount of printed religious material circulated not only in the United States but also abroad. Despite Charles Spencer Smith’s international renown, however, it was seven years before the Nashville City Directory (1889) mentioned him or his publishing house.

Not only did Smith successfully supervise the Nashville publishing operation, but he also became a bishop of the A. M. E. church in 1900, traveling widely throughout Africa, the Caribbean, South America, and Europe. In 1911 he was distinguished as the first black recipient of the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Victoria College, Toronto. Before his death in 1922, Smith completed a continuation volume of the history of the A. M. E. church.

In Smith’s time 206 Public Square was a four-story building only 20 feet wide and 120 feet deep. Inscribed on the stone façade was the legend, “Founded A.D. 1882 by C. S. Smith.” At some point after 1918 the top two floors were blown off in a storm.

The building was purchased in 1918 by shoe businessman Sam Levy, who sold it in 1943 to the Katz family for their men’s furnishings wholesale house. In the mid-1960s, when the building was facing demolition, Katz descendant Dorothy Katz Mintz allied herself with others interested in preserving the building, hoping to convert it into a museum to commemorate Smith for his service to church and society. To this day, she still laments, “Now, why did they have to build a jailhouse on that property?” Some Nashvillians may still remember that, just prior to the demolition, the building housed the “Judge’s Chambers,” a restaurant on the Square.

Because of the efforts of the Reverend Charles Spencer Smith and others, 206 Public Square North has had a unique and unlikely history – one that should not be forgotten as a remodeled courthouse casts new shadows on the old Public Square.