Nashville's Capital City Directory

On today's date - June 6 - 1915 - the Nashville Banner newspaper published a small article about a publication in that city - the Capital City Directory. This Directory had been published the previous year by the Nashville Baptist Publishing Board.  The Capital City Handbook was described as a "handbook of the religious, social, fraternal and other activities of the negroes of Nashville." It had been compiled primarily by Whittier H. Wright with help from Dock A. Hart, the editor of the African American Nashville Globe newspaper.

I have not been able to locate a copy of the Directory, but it appears to have been the first  - only? - Nashville City directory focused solely on the African American community.  It also appears to have operated as a precursor to the Green Book in that it included "A complete index ...given for the benefit of the traveler."

The Directory compiled the listings and described how the 40,000 African Americans in Nashville at the time owned assets worth over $5 million with over $2 million in the banks.  About 19  "negroes [were] estimated to be worth $100,000."

According to newspaper accounts describing the Directory's listings, the black population of the city at the time controlled:

• two banks
• a school for blind negro boys and girls
• 3 drug stores
• 7 office buildings
• 3 undertaking businesses
• two publishes houses [the Nashville Baptist Publishing House and the Sunday School Publishing Board]
• 1 doll manufacturer [the Negro Doll Company]
• 1 broom manufacturer 
• numerous ice cream manufacturers
• 5 printers 
• 2 hotels 
• 5 newspapers 
• 4 magazines 
• 3 livery stables
• 15 millinery [hat] establishments
• 11 soft drink stands
• "many"
• restaurants and boarding houses
• cleaning and pressing establishments
• theaters and places of amusement

Additionally, the Directory included listings for many professionals working in Nashville, including

• 2 architects
• 9 attorneys 
• over 40 physicians 
• 28 blacksmiths
• 5 contracting paperhangers
• 7 contracting painters 
• 17 coal merchants 
• 5 real estate brokers 
• 16 shoemakers 
• 3 furniture dealers 
• 2 jewelers 
• 1 junk dealer 
• 10 notaries public
• many 
• grocers
• tailors
• hair culturists
• graduate nurses
• expressmen
• dressmakers
•  bootblacks 
• barbers
• music teachers
• meat dealers

Three black bishops lived in Nashville - the bishops of the AME Church, the Colored ME Church, and the African Bishop of the ME Church.

• There were also many African American churches in Nashville:
• 35 Missionary Baptist
• 3 Primitive Baptist
• 16 AME
• 7 Methodist Episcopal
• 3 Methodist Episcopal
• 3 Congregational
• 1 Catholic
• 3 Episcopal
• 3 Christian
• 3 Presbyterian
• 1 African Methodist Zion

And last, but definitely not least, the black population of Nashville supported "one negro fire engine company."

Nashville Daily American
June 25, 1899

The piece ended by stating, that "Nashville Negroes have gone quite a distance, but still have a great way to travel."

Nashville Tennessean June 6, 1915

When the Directory was originally published, the Tennessean covered it in its column reporting on the "General News of the Colored People."

Nashville Tennessean, May 17, 1914, page 13

Whittier H. Wright, who put the directory together was at the time a student at Meharry Medical College. He had been born in Georgia and was the son of Richard R. Wright, Sr. the President of the Georgia State Industrial College (now Savannah State University). Richard Wright had been appointed the first president of the institution in 1891. When Richard White had been about 12 years old, the abolitionist poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote a poem about him entitled "Howard at Atlanta." I assume that Richard Wright named his middle son Whittier in honor of the poet.

The Pittsburgh Currier, Sept 27, 1924

In 1898, Georgia State Industrial College awarded its first degree to Whittier Wright's brother Richard R. Wright, Jr., who later became the ninth president of Wilberforce University in Ohio. Whittier Wright went on to success in his own right, with a successful career in medicine in Philadelphia.

Wright was assisted in his work on the Directory by Dock A. Hart, an executive at the Nashville Globe, the local African American newspaper.