Nettie Langston Napier

Nettie Langston Napier (born Nettie DeElla Langston) was an African-American activist for the rights of women of color during the early part of the 20th century. She lived in Nashville, Tennessee. Biography Nettie Langston was born June 17, 1861 in Oberlin, Ohio, into an upper-class family. Her father was John Mercer Langston, later the founding dean of the law school at Howard University, first president of Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute, a historically black college, and the first black person to be elected to the United States Congress from Virginia. Her mother was Caroline Matilda (Wall), also a graduate of Oberlin. After attending Howard for a year, Nettie transferred to Oberlin College, where she studied music. Her future husband, James Carroll Napier, was then working at the State Department and earned his law degree at Howard, where he met John Mercer Langston and his family. Napier returned to Nashville in 1872 to start a law practice. In 1878 he and Nettie married in Washington D.C., in a "predominantly white Congregational church". They adopted a daughter, Carrie. Napier became a "prominent clubwom[a]n" in Nashville, and made important social connections across the South. She was part of a "southern network" of about a dozen upper-class women, including such prominent women as Maggie L. Walker, Mary McLeod Bethune, Margaret Murray Washington, Jennie B. Moton, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, and Lucy Craft Laney. She was a close friend of the educator John Hope, and was described as "the first lady of Nashville's black elite". The Napier household was known as "the undisputed center of Nashville's African American upper class".