African Americans in Rutherford County

By Devora E. Butler

African Americans have heavily contributed to and shaped the unique and vibrant Rutherford County in middle Tennessee. Located 30 miles southeast of Nashville, Rutherford County is at the state's geographical center. This area is home to the Stones River National Battlefield, a national park that was the site of a major Civil War battle--the Battle of Stones River. Tourists come from all over the world to experience this rich cultural and historic venue that once served, although briefly, as the capital of Tennessee. African American men and women have lived, worked, and toiled here for generations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Sep 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781439622384

Devora E. Butler

Author Devora E. Butler holds a master�s degree in education from the University of London. As a native of Rutherford County, Butler has listened to the stories of locals who have contributed to the African American community. Through this compilation of photographs from private collections and archives, Butler is able to tell their stories along with the history of Rutherford County.

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INTRODUCTION

My historical interest in my birthplace was piqued after gathering information on my family’s history in the area. After spending 10 years of work and study in Seattle, Washington, and graduate study in education at the University of London in London, England, I returned to Rutherford County. Upon my return, I began inquiring as to what people did in life, how they lived, and where they went to school.

Residents shared with me amazing stories of educators, doctors, soldiers, ministers, and businesspeople who contributed to the African American community of the area. The exciting stories I had heard while growing up and the individuals I knew all seemed larger than life, proven evidence of the area’s thriving and lively past. I wanted to know more, as if I were connecting a puzzle; I began looking for the people I knew growing up and inquiring about the Mink Slide and the end, while recalling my personal experiences of gypsy breakfasts and basket dinners. These people with incredible courage and unbelievable dignity managed to live, love, and laugh and make a home in the area amid a backdrop of Jim Crow, separate and unequal, and the horror of two documented lynchings of African Americans in the county.

As with the history of most of America’s African American communities, the church has been its center and its backbone. Thus is the case with the African American community of the city of Murfreesboro, the largest in Rutherford County post-emancipation. By 1870, the four African American congregations founded in Murfreesboro were precursors to the present-day Key United Methodist Church, Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Mount Zion Baptist Church, and First Baptist Church. Through these churches and their efforts came many area African American schools as well. In an old newspaper article, Rutherford County native America Eules spoke of her life in servitude and of following her mistress’s buggy to church and worshipping with other slaves in a Methodist church basement while the owners worshipped upstairs. Newspaper interviews near the end of her long life indicated that early Key Church assemblies were held in brush arbors. The personal stories of America Eules and another local ex-slave, Berry Wesley Seward, come to mind when I study the history of the African American church in Rutherford County. Both local folk coming from a hard life of bondage and toil, they held tight to their belief that their God would lead them to a better life. These folks put that strong belief into practice as they helped to build a church and a community that would support them and their offspring for successive generations.

These folks helped to create me, for I am a product of Key Church. I was christened there, baptized, Sunday schooled, Christmas played, Easter speeched, a lifetime member of the United Methodist Women there, Vacation Bible School taught, Black History Month informed, and even held a wedding in its chapel. The church sent me on a United Nations and Washington, D.C., study tour that politicized me for life. I have personally experienced the power of a strong church and its ripple effect on the people of a community and vice versa. When one discovers Rutherford County residents that exemplify such endurance and strength, we know the substance on which the foundation of our African American community was built. This foundation was built on faith and unity, solid ideals from which any American can spring. I hope to convey the character and strength as well as the backdrop of the white Southern construct that was in place as these accomplishments were made.

I have divided this work into three main headings: Education, the Military, and Faces and Places of Rutherford County. The Education chapter was developed because of its extreme importance to the emancipated slave, for through it freed men and women would be able to comprehend their constitutional and civil rights and better themselves in life, thus leading to greater progress for the African American community. I would like to convey the great spirit of camaraderie and the dedication of a generation of educators instructing as well as those who attended the schools.

As an educator, I was captivated by the value placed on education in eras past, thus the chapter regarding education. I read of teachers such as William Sneak Butler and how he solved the problem of low enrollment at Squirrel Hill during cotton picking time, and how at Gladeview School the stove fire had be started early to heat up the one-room schoolhouse before the students came. Antioch School and Sulphur Springs School were attended by 98-year-old resident Dora Rucker. She remembers walking for miles to school as a student in good and bad weather, and if one was fortunate, one had a buggy on those wet, muddy days. When she got to Antioch School, she would see her classmate and dear friend Willa Kimbro Foster, a joyful memory for her even today. James Link Butler Sr., as a student, recalls catching a car or a wagon for a ride from Woodbury Road to old Bradley Academy in town. He would also describe how he would use his father’s wagon and horse at times, parking it in the back of his uncle Spain’s house on Academy Street until time to go home.

The chapter regarding the military inspires deep pride within me. Rutherford County boasts African American soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary War, Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and World Wars I and II, as well as the more recent wars and conflicts. Tennessee, having coined the nickname the Volunteer State, has been shown to have no shortage of African American patriots stepping up to their country’s defense. Soldiers of Rutherford County volunteered and were drafted, like many other Americans, to serve and defend their democracy. Peter Jennings, the Revolutionary War veteran and pensioner who settled in this area, is to be noted, as well as Sampson Keeble, a former slave from the H. P. Keeble Plantation in Rutherford County, who moved to Davidson County and was the first African American to be elected to the Tennessee General Assembly. He apparently was also a Confederate War veteran as