Tennessee General Assembly – 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.

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.

Thomas A. Sykes, 1838-ca. 1905

by Kathy B. Lauder.

The story of Thomas A. Sykes is a microcosm of African American life in the 19^th century: he rose from slavery to political power in a few short years, only to disappear from view as Southern legislatures once again stripped black citizens of their freedoms.

*Thomas A. Sykes represented Nashville in the 42nd Tennessee General Assembly (1881-1882)*

Former North Carolina legislator, U. S. revenue official, businessman, and school superintendent Thomas Sykes represented Davidson County in the Forty-Second Tennessee General Assembly, 1881-1882.¹ A former slave, Sykes had paid a white child six cents to teach him to read. After emancipation he was elected to represent Pasquotank County in the state legislature (1868-1871) and served on the state Republican executive committee.² He came to Nashville in 1872 as a gauger, a customs official who inspects, weighs, and taxes shipping containers. The following year Sykes became assistant assessor for the Internal Revenue Service,³ and by 1878 he was a county magistrate.⁴

Thomas Sykes’s skills as a public speaker, which had brought him national recognition,⁵ quickly led him to prominence in Nashville politics. Sykes and James Carroll Napier, “Nashville’s two most important black politicians,”⁶ worked with others to bring down Mayor Thomas A. Kercheval’s political machine (1883). Their efforts opened up many city jobs to black workers⁷and facilitated the appointment of black teachers.⁸

Sykes was a Republican candidate for state representative in 1880.⁹ One of four African Americans elected to the General Assembly that term, he introduced five important bills. His attempt to repeal Chapter 130 of the Acts of 1875 was the earliest attempt to overturn this early Jim Crow law permitting discrimination in public facilities.¹⁰ The bill failed, even after all four black legislators protested Chapter 130 as “a palpable violation of the spirit, genius and letter of our system of free government.”¹¹ Sykes’s bill recommending a penitentiary in West Tennessee was made unrecognizable by amendments. When the bill passed 41-20, Sykes, who had actually voted against it himself, pleaded unsuccessfully for its reconsideration.¹² His bill to admit black students to Nashville’s School for the Blind and Knoxville’s School for the Deaf and Dumb, and to house them in separate facilities, passed 59-1, although the Civil Rights Act of 1875, still in force,¹³made such segregation illegal. Two other bills, banning discrimination in jury selection and opening the University of Tennessee to black students, were tabled in committee.¹⁴

Sykes served on the State Temperance Executive Committee and made many speeches on their behalf. An 1885 newspaper article described him as “one of the most highly educated and refined colored men we know.”¹⁵ In 1887 he became Assistant Superintendent, Colored Department, of Nashville’s new Tennessee Industrial School. The school, conceived by Judge John C. Ferris after an 1873 cholera epidemic that orphaned many children, was financed by railroad tycoon Edmund W. “King” Cole.¹⁶

Thomas Sykes was placed in charge of the Colored Department of the Tennessee Industrial School in Nashville when it opened in 1887. (Sketch from Ferris, John C., and Edmund W. Cole. Homes for the Homeless, or, Fourteen Years among the Orphans. Nashville: Methodist Episcopal Church South, 1890.)

Sykes’s career after 1890 clearly illustrates the effects of Jim Crow on Southern blacks. After the Forty-Sixth General Assembly passed four disfranchising laws that effectively silenced black political voices in Tennessee, a political pundit snickered in the Nashville Daily American that former Representative Thomas A. Sykes had been demoted to elevator operator in the very Customs House where he had once held a privileged federal position.¹⁷ Sykes apparently left Nashville after a highly-publicized divorce from his schoolteacher wife, Viola Hoyt.¹⁸ His name does not appear in Nashville city directories after 1893. (2014)

SOURCES:

¹ 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.

² “Sykes, of Nashville: Relating His North Carolina Experience to a Washington Stalwart.” Nashville Daily American, January 25, 1882. (Reprinted from the Washington Republican, date unknown.)

³ Nashville, Tennessee, City Directory, 1873. Ancestry.com. U.S.City Directories, 1821-1989 [database on-line], Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc. 2011.

⁴ Nashville, Tennessee, City Directory, 1878. Ancestry.com. U.S.City Directories, 1821-1989 [database on-line], Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc. 2011.

⁵ “Sykes, of Nashville.” Nashville Daily American, January 25, 1882.

⁶ Rabinowitz, Howard N. Race Relations in the Urban South, 1865-1890, 2nd ed. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1996.

⁷ Cartwright, Joseph H. The Triumph of Jim Crow: Tennessee Race Relations in the 1880s. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1976, 132-133.

⁸ Rabinowitz, note 37, p. 401.

⁹ Cartwright, 72.

¹⁰“Jim Crow and Disfranchisement of Southern Blacks,” This Honorable Body: African American Legislators in 19^th Century Tennessee. Exhibits, Tennessee State Library and Archives. https://sharetngov.tnsosfiles.com/tsla/exhibits/blackhistory/jimcrow.htm

¹¹ Tennessee General Assembly. Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Tennessee. Nashville: Tavel & Howe, 1881.

¹² House Journal, 1881.

¹³ Lovett, Bobby L. The African-American History of Nashville, Tennessee, 1780-1930: Elites and Dilemmas. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1999. 221.

¹⁴ House Journal, 1881.

¹⁵ “Sykes, of Nashville. A Fellow Legislator’s Handsome Compliment.” Nashville Daily American, July 17, 1885. (Reprinted from Franklin Review and Journal, date unknown)

¹⁶ Tyree, Forrest H. A Centennial History of the Tennessee Preparatory School. Nashville, 1985.

¹⁷ Nashville American, June 8 and 13, 1890.

¹⁸ Sykes v. Sykes, Davidson County Circuit Court, Minute Book 24, 1881, page 180.

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.

1814 Nashville Fire

Primary Source Document, transcribed by Larry Michael Ellis.

DREADFUL FIRE!

Under the dispensations of divine providence, we have again to record the destructive effects of of [sic] this ungovernable element. – On Friday night last, about 10 o’clock, the citizens of this town were alarmed with the cry of fire! It proceeded from the hay-loft of Wm. W. Cooke, Esq. near Mr. Woods [sic] warehouse; it had gained such an ascendency [sic] & the buildings were so combustible, that the utmost exertions of the citizens could not save the large adjoining warehouse, filled with consignments to Joseph Woods esq commission merchant, the bindery, dwelling house and bookstore of Mr. Duncan Robertson, the tavern house of Robert Renfroe, the frame house of John Anderson esq, the house occupied by Mr. Ernest Benoit, baker, the shop of Messrs. E. and G. Hewlett saddlers above; the dwelling house of Wm. W. Cooke esq, the dwelling house occupied by Mr. S. V. Stout, the warehouse of Messrs. Read and Washington, army contractors, and their office, the shop & dwelling house of Mr. D. C. Snow, tin plate worker, below; the dwelling house of Joseph T. Elliston, and his silversmith shop, the dwelling house of the editor of the Clarion, & his printing office, the house lately occupied by Wm. M. Wallace, as a shoemaker’s shop and the house occupied be Joseph Sumner, the property of Mr. John Young, the office of the Nashville Whig, and the hatter’s shop of Mr. Joshua Pilcher, and the brick store-house occupied by W. Tannehill, esq. above on the east of Market street, & all the frame buildings on the same side opposite to bank alley, making in the whole the most destructive fire ever experienced in the western country. No language can paint the distress of many of the sufferers, who were left without bread, meat, dishes or plates, or a covering except the heavens. In the whole range of the fire we are however gratified that no lives were lost, and we hope that in a few years a majority of the sufferers will be able to replace the property they have thus lost.

In some few cases we are, however, sorry to learn the individuals are ruined. It is impossible at present to form any estimate of the immense loss sustained – nearly one half the buildings that were in the town are in ashes; much furniture and other valuable property was lost in the flames. Among the sufferers, the Editor of this Paper finds it necessary to repeat that he was one – his Printing Office contained many printed books and pamphlets, the most of which were lost, and he is sorry to state, in that situation is the Journal of the proceedings of the last Gener- Assembly [sic], which was nearly entirely lost. Of the Journal of the house of Representatives, it is believed a copy can be made out; but of the Senate, there is not the least hope of ever recovering one, for the printing and manuscript shared the same fate. Of the heavy editions of law books, &c. &c in the house, it is believed scarcely a copy remains; and of the printing apparatus, a considerable part was lost; but one press and nearly all the type was saved. For the satisfaction of the members of the last General Assembly, he is thus particular, that the loss of the public Journals may be rightly understood.

The fire was communicated, we have little doubt, by some incendiary – who is not yet ascertained.

Chapter 130 of the Acts of Tennessee, 1875: Tennessee’s First Jim Crow Law

by Kathy B. Lauder.

Tennessee is often credited with passage of the first “Jim Crow” law (1881), which required racial segregation in train cars. However, the state had actually passed a comparable law, Chapter 130 of the Acts of Tennessee, in 1875, soon after Sampson Keeble’s legislative term ended. Chapter 130 permitted discrimination in public places – not merely trains and streetcars, but also hotels, restaurants, theaters, circuses, museums, and steamboats.¹

The last Confederate state to secede from the Union and the first to return, Tennessee had revised the state constitution to prohibit slavery and quickly ratified both the 13^th and 14^th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 gave African Americans the right to make contracts, to inherit property, to sue, and to enjoy equal benefits and protections under the laws . . . but not the right to vote. However, two seemingly unrelated events were aligning to produce significant changes.

First, Nashville’s influential black leaders (Sampson Keeble, Nelson G. Merry, and others) hosted the second State Colored Men’s Convention in Nashville in August 1866 and organized daily demonstrations at the Capitol urging the passage of legislation to grant voting rights to black citizens. At the same time, Governor William Gannaway “Parson” Brownlow, a man with many enemies, realized African American votes could greatly improve his chances for reelection. He shepherded a law through the Tennessee General Assembly in February 1867 that granted African American men the right to vote and to hold political office² – three full years before the ratification of the 15^th Amendment (which, incidentally, Tennessee lawmakers failed to approve until 1997).³

Within a year Nashville voters had elected an African American to its city council; by 1868 six of the twenty members were black.⁴ Memphis and Chattanooga quickly followed suit. In 1872 the first African American legislator, Nashville barber Sampson W. Keeble, was elected to the Tennessee House. The apprehension of white voters about the number of blacks suddenly occupying positions of authority set the stage for Tennessee’s first Jim Crow law.

During the 1875 Session of the General Assembly, Democrat R. P. Cole (Carroll, Gibson, Henry, and Weakley) introduced House Bill 527, which passed to the Judiciary Committee for approval. The committee modified the bill’s blatantly racist language to ensure passage, and both houses approved it – Tennessee had passed a law discriminating against one-fourth of its own citizens.

Using terminology shocking to modern sensibilities, Cole’s bill approved the exclusion of persons “whose hair has a spiral curvature, not greater than one fourth of one inch radius,” “whose ancestors were canibals [sic], or were guilty of the practice of voodoism,” or whose physical characteristics corresponded to certain racial stereotypes, all “without regard to race color or previous condition of servitude.” Judiciary Committee members agreed they “fully approve of the principles embodied therein,” but muted the provocative language to avoid a legal battle with the federal government. Although several of the 19^th century black legislators introduced bills to overturn Chapter 130, none succeeded. (2015)

A transcription of the bill, including committee notes, can be viewed here: https://sharetngov.tnsosfiles.com/tsla/exhibits/blackhistory/pdfs/chapter130.pdf

SOURCES:

¹ HB 527 (1875), Record Group 60, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville, TN.

² Cartwright, Joseph H. The Triumph of Jim Crow: Tennessee Race Relations in the 1880s. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1976, 9-11.

³Brown, Representative Tommie F. (Tennessee House District #28, Hamilton County). Interview by Kathy B. Lauder. Nashville, Tennessee, June 10, 2008. (Original tape is housed at the Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville, TN.)

⁴ Rabinowitz, Howard N. Race Relations in the Urban South, 1865-1890, 2^nd ed. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1996, 265.