Nettie Napier Day Home Club

You are very near the former site of the Day Home Club, which was located here before moving to its permanent location at 618 Fourth Avenue South. The Day Home Club was but one of Nettie Langston Napier’s many accomplishments. She was a reformer, administrator, club woman, and a formidable force—described as “the first lady of Nashville’s Black elite.” Born in Oberlin, Ohio in 1861, she was the daughter of John Mercer and Carrie Wall Langston, and her father was the first African American elected to the U.S. Congress from Virginia. Nettie Napier grew up in one of the most prestigious African American households in the United States, an upbringing that exposed her to the central tenets of civic engagement and the struggle for Black equality. 

Following her graduation from Oberlin College, she married James Carroll Napier in 1878, and the two emerged as Nashville’s most powerful African American couple. The Napiers were part of an elite social circle that included Booker T. and Margaret Murray Washington. Shortly after the couple’s arrival in Nashville, she became involved in the women’s club movement. For example, Nettie Napier and other female Black leaders were instrumental in the formation of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs of America (NACWCA) and helped to organize its first meeting in Nashville in 1897. 

Her crowning achievement, however, was the establishment of the city’s Day Home Club in 1907. The Day Home Club was created to provide a space where working mothers could drop off their children while they worked. The center provided childcare, meals, education, healthcare, and shelter at no cost to the women or their families. 

The Day Home Club’s operation depended largely on private donations and volunteers, and its success was a result of Napier’s skills as an organizer and fundraiser. She appointed vice presidents for each city ward who raised funds and secured donations. At Napier’s request, Preston Taylor, a prominent Black undertaker and founder of Greenwood Park and Cemetery, furnished one of the home’s rooms, while the Castner-Knott store donated quilts, sheets, and other goods. Dr. Josie Wells, Nashville’s preeminent African American female physician, split time between her private practice and her duties at Meharry Medical College to ensure that the children received adequate medical care. 

In addition to the Day Home Club, Napier was also a tireless advocate of education and worked with Lugenia Burns Hope in Atlanta, Mary McLeod Bethune in Daytona Beach, and Lucy Craft Laney in Augusta to advance historically Black colleges. Napier also supported the Nineteenth Amendment and joined ranks with African American activist J. Frankie Pierce to support a woman’s right to vote. For more see our Woman’s Suffrage Tour.

As you get ready to cross Deaderick Street to continue the tour, first take a look to your right for a great view of Public Square Park in front of the Davidson County Courthouse. Up the hill to your left you’ll see the William Snodgrass Tennessee Tower and War Memorial Auditorium. All of these amazing buildings are on several other tours, including the Capitol and Church Architecture Tour and the Civic and Public Spaces Tour. Cross Deaderick Street and continue north on Fourth Ave. North until you reach Dr. M.L.K. Jr. Blvd. Cross Dr. M.L.K. Jr. Blvd to reach the seventh tour stop.