Sarah Porter School

Sarah Porter and the subject of the historical marker in front of you—Sarah Estell—are also featured on the Early Black Life and Culture tour and Women's History Highlights tour. Sarah Porter worked as a baker in Nashville during the 1830s. In 1841, she rejected this quiet, idyllic life by opening a school for free and enslaved children in her home just a few blocks from here. The structure no longer exists, but her story is worth remembering. Porter was a free Black woman in Nashville who was married to an enslaved man. Opening the school took a great deal of courage, and she knew that doing so could jeopardize her life. The subject of African American education was very controversial, even for free Blacks. Seven years earlier, in 1834, Alphonso Sumner, a well-respected free African American opened the first school for Black students in Nashville.

Sumner’s school prospered, growing from 20 to 200 students, until whites accused him of communicating with fugitive slaves. After being severely whipped, Sumner fled to Cincinnati, leaving the school without a leader. Sarah Porter stepped up and continued to operate the school for the next two years, keeping the dream of education alive for local African American students. Sarah Porter’s life illustrates the strength and resilience of Nashville’s Black community—taking adversity and turning it into an opportunity.

Continue down Fifth Avenue to Church Street and turn RIGHT heading west, away from the river. On Church Street, you will pass Downtown Presbyterian Church, 505 Tower, Puckett’s Grocery and Restaurant, and McKendree Methodist Church before reaching the last stop, the Nashville Public Library main building. The library is open to the public and includes the Metro Archives, Nashville Room, Woman’s Suffrage exhibit and Civil Rights Room on the second and third floors. For more on churches on this street, see the Old Time Religion Tour.