The Enslaved in Nashville

Human Beings as Commodities

Negroes for Sale

Throughout the 1850s, Rees W. Porter provided a continuous supply of slaves for prospective buyer at his office on Cedar Street (Charlotte Ave). Although Porter's slave advertisements display a reticence to break up enslaved families, he appears to have had little reservation in providing "Fancy Girls" (concubines) for any who desired them.

The Public Square

Although there are few places in the city that gives visitors a glimpse into the lives of Nashville’s enslaved population--the brokerage houses where blacks were bought, sold, and traded no longer exist and the narratives that describe their existence have been sanitized, muted, or erased--the history of certain areas of the city reveal a relationship with the “peculiar institution” that was intimate and ubiquitous. Historically, Nashville’s Public Square Park was a place where people met to shop, mingle, conduct business, and celebrate events. However, the history of African Americans in the city provides a different picture of one of the favorite meeting places in Nashville. More than any other place in the city, the square represented the commodification and devaluing of black life in the Music City. It was a space where the horrors of slavery were laid bare, including the disruption of black families for profit or convenience, for the world to see. Fear, uncertainty, and psychological trauma were the defining features of the City Square for the slave.

Negroes Insured
Negroes for Sale
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Slave Codes 1863

US Slave Census 1860-Tennessee
County	TOTAL POPULATION	Total Free Blacks	Total Slaves	Total Slaveholders	PCT Slaves	PCT Free Blacks
DAVIDSON	47,055	1,209	14,790	2,153	31.4%	2.6%
RUTHERFORD	27,918	190	12,984	1,316	46.5%	0.7%
SHELBY	48,092	276	16,953	2,056	35.3%	0.6%
SUMNER	22,030	103	7,700	951	35.0%	0.5%
WILLIAMSON	23,827	45	12,367	1,207	51.9%	0.2%
WILSON	26,072	321	7,964	1,325	30.5%	1.2%
Tennessee TOTALS	1,109,801	7,300	275,719	36,844	24.8%	0.7%

Formerly Enslaved African Americans Living in North Nashville During the Great Depression

Name	Address
Ellis Ken Kannon	328 5^th Avenue North
Sylvia Watkins	411 14^th Avenue North
Dan Thomas	941 Jefferson Street
Measy Hudson	1209 Jefferson Street
Emma Grisham	1118 Jefferson Street
Frances Batson	1213 Scovel Street
Millie Simpkins	1004 10^th Avenue North
Rachel Gaines	1025 10^th Avenue North