“James (J.C.) Carroll Napier- Nashville’s Negro Political Banker”
On June 9, 1845, James (J.C) Carroll Napier, was born a slave to William C. and Jane E. Napier in the western outskirts of Nashville, Tennessee. The family would earn their freedom when J.C. was just three years old in 1848. Napier attended a private school with 60 other black children in Nashville called Daniel Wadkins School for Free Blacks located on Line and High Street, which is now Sixth Avenue.
James’ primary education would become interrupted by a December 1856 race riot started by white vigilantes forced the school to close. This rebellion momentarily truncated black educational opportunities in Nashville until Union forces occupied the city in February 1862. In the interim under the direction of free black teacher, Rufus Conrad, the Napier family and several other free black families sent their children to Ohio to continue their schooling.
J.C. Napier enrolled in historically black Wilberforce College in 1859 before transferring to integrated Oberlin College. Returning to Nashville without a degree in 1867, the city was still held by Union forces. The ambitious future civil rights activist began to get involved with Republican Party politics.
John Mercer Langston, an Ohio free black and a friend of Napier’s father, visited Nashville to speak to the victorious African American Union troops who had defeated the Confederates at the Battle of Nashville and to deliver an Emancipation Day address. Langston, who became a Republican Congressman and the founding Dean of Howard University School of Law, later invited J. C. Napier to attend the law school under his mentorship. After receiving his law degree in 1872, Napier returned to Nashville starting his own law practice. In 1873, he married Langston’s daughter, Nettie.
From 1878 to 1885, he served on Nashville’s City Council becoming the first African American presiding councilmember. Napier used his influence in the heart of black political struggles to author legislation instrumental in the hiring of black public school teachers, black detectives, and assisting in the organization of Nashville’s fire engine company. He later lost his Council seat as his Republican Party altered from advocating blacks’ rights.
In 1904, Napier used his own savings to establish One-Cent Savings Bank (Citizens Savings Bank & Trust Company), the nation’s first bank owned and operated by African-Americans. J.C. Napier served as president of the National Negro Business League (NNBL) founded by his long time friend, Booker T. Washington, opening a chapter in Nashville in 1905.He helped organize the 1905 Negro strike against Nashville’s segregated streetcar service. Using his powerful influence, Napier presided over the Nashville Negro Board of Trade, and board of trustees for Fisk and Howard Universities, and he was instrumental in the drive to establish the Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State Normal School for Negroes (now Tennessee State University).
During his return to Washington D.C, Napier became the first black non-janitorial employee at the Treasury Department as a State Department Clerk. In 1911, upon the recommendation of his friend Booker T. Washington, James Napier was appointed the Register of the Treasury under President William Howard Taft, the highest governmental position then available to African Americans. A position that allowed his signature to appear on all federally printed paper money. He held patronage appointments under Presidents Grant, Hayes, Garfield, and Arthur.
In 1913, he resigned in protest of President Woodrow Wilson’s federal order of the institution of segregation practices among federal employees in Washington. Consequently, the American government stopped its practice of appointing black men to be Register of the Treasury.
After returning to Nashville, Napier remained active in the promotion of the welfare of the black community in Nashville. Serving on the Nashville Housing Authority and remaining a cashier at his bank even until his death. Fisk University honored him with a honorary doctorate law degree. Week-long funeral services at the Fisk University Memorial Chapel, after his death on April 21, 1940. Napier’s remains are interred in Greenwood Cemetery, the second oldest African-American cemetery in Nashville. Today, a public housing project in Nashville is named for James (J.C.) Carroll Napier, Nashville’s Negro Political Banker.
