New Nashville park to be named for influential African American women’s suffrage leader Frankie Pierce – Tennessean
On May 18, 1920, three months before Tennessee’s ratification of the 19th Amendment, Juno Frankie Pierce spoke at the first meeting of the newly formed League of Women Voters of Tennessee.
During the meeting in the House chamber of the state Capitol, passionate representatives from each political party encouraged the league to become active in party politics if — and when — women gained the right to vote.
As the only African American female to speak that day, Pierce addressed the convention for the women of her race.
In Tennessee, Jim Crow laws firmly segregated schools, street cars, railways and people in love. But Pierce wouldn’t let those rules segregate support for women’s suffrage.
“What will the Negro women do with the vote?” she asked. “We will stand by the white women.”
Pierce laid out a poignant defense for racial and gender equality, drawing on the common bonds forged by war. She told those at the meeting that black women sought suffrage to receive “a square deal.”
Though she died a few years before the civil rights movement of the 1960s truly took hold in Nashville, she learned to work within a white, male-dominated society to stand up for young girls, women’s rights and a future she believed in.
Now, she is being honored for that fortitude.
On Wednesday morning, families and children, city officials and the mayor are expected to gather in celebration of Pierce’s activism at the grand opening of the new Frankie Pierce Park.
The 2.5-acre green space, located within view of the state Capitol where Pierce once spoke, connects Capitol View to a countywide greenway system of nearly 100 miles of paved trails via the Gulch Greenway extension that runs through the park. It features sand volleyball, a children’s playground, a dog park and yoga lawn.
Pierce’s lifetime of social service efforts often benefited residents in the Capitol View district, a place formerly known as Hell’s Half Acre.
“Mrs. Pierce was an individualist who looked in three directions,” the Rev. Kelly Miller Smith, one of the city’s most influential black leaders, said in a 1963 tribute to Pierce. “Upward to God, inward with humility and aggressiveness, and outward as she reached out in the state of Tennessee to give service.”
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‘Inspired by the troubles of her people’
A Nashville native, Pierce was born to a house slave of a Smith County legislator about the time of the Civil War. There is little known about her early life, only that she became educated, studied at Roger Williams University — one of four colleges founded in Nashville for freed slaves — and built a reputation on her excellent political instincts.
She grew up an activist and trailblazer, a woman who sought to improve conditions for African Americans.
As an advocate of women’s rights, including the right to vote, she experienced the great moments of celebration when a statewide movement helped achieve ratification of the 19th Amendment by the Tennessee General Assembly. On Aug. 26, 1920, the ratification was certified and a new law added to the U.S. Constitution, forever changing the face of the American electorate.
In 1923, in the wake of suffrage, Pierce took up another cause — one for which she is best remembered. She founded the Tennessee Vocational School for Colored Girls.
Then a teacher at Bellevue School, she noted that the state confined African American girls who needed correctional services in institutions with convicted adults. Pierce had almost no money of her own, yet, she convinced the Tennessee General Assembly to authorized the establishment of the Vocational School and procured the money to purchase a site and construct a building.
She was “inspired by the troubles of her people to become a dedicated leader,” according to Janie Deaderick, the retired president of City Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs, who was quoted in The Tennessean in 1963.
The Vocational School, set on a 66-acre campus near what is now Tennessee State University, accepted 12-to 15-year-old girls from juvenile courts across the state. It was only 2 miles from Hell’s Half Acre, a sprawling area filled with shacks and lean-tos that spread up the western and northern slopes of Capitol Hill.
Pierce was a woman who did “so much with so little for those that society had done so little for in their lives,” then-Mayor Beverly Briley’s executive assistant said on the mayor’s behalf at Pierce’s 1963 tribute.
A siren of equality
While serving as superintendent of the school, Pierce remained active with the Blue Triangle League, the “colored branch” of the Young Women’s Christian Association, as it was called then.
In 1935, she served as vice president of the Negro Voters League, which served both men and women. She also chaired the women’s division of the Tennessee Interracial League.
In the South, black women’s struggle for the vote continued until 1965 when the Voting Rights Act finally toppled barriers constructed by Jim Crow. Before then, Pierce led women’s marches to city hall in Nashville protesting segregation in public facilities — serving as a siren of equality.
“We are interested in the same moral uplift of the community in which we live,” Pierce is said to have told that League of Women Voters of Tennessee in 1920. “We are asking for a square deal … we want recognition in all forms of government.”
In 1953, she was honored as “Woman of the Year” by the Nashville chapter of Links, a national organization that helped women assume social and civil responsibilities.
She died a year later, before Nashville’s civil rights movement of the 1960s took hold. But her legacy remained.
In 2016, Pierce was memorialized in Alan LeQuire’s Tennessee Woman Suffrage Monument in Centennial Park.
Now, she will also be forever remembered at Frankie Pierce Park at Capitol View. Her name will endure alongside others like J. C. Napier, Percy and Edwin Warner, Ted Rhodes and Fannie Mae Dees.
“Those names continue to honor the people who did so much in our city,” said Jeff Haynes, the developer of both Capitol View and the park. “With the naming of Frankie Pierce Park, hopefully women and minorities will continue to be encouraged to take leadership roles and be active in our city.”
Reach Jessica Bliss at 615-259-8253 and jbliss@tennessean.com or on Twitter @jlbliss, and please support local journalism.
Attend the Frankie Pierce Park grand opening
What: Frankie Pierce Park ribbon-cutting ceremony
When: 10 a.m., Wednesday
Where: Frankie Pierce Park (130 Lifeway Plaza, Nashville)
Celebration includes: Nashville Mayor John Cooper, Metro Parks Director Monique Odom, Boyle Investment Company Partner Jeff Haynes and Metro Council District 19 Member Freddie O’Connell.
Published 6:00 AM EST Nov 13, 2019
