A Tale of Two Nashville Giants: Napier & Looby’s Legacy of Law

A Tale of Two Nashville Giants: Napier & Looby’s Legacy of Law

James Carroll Napier and Zephaniah Alexander Looby are known for lending their monikers to the Napier Lobby Bar Association. The Association was founded in 1933 in Nashville for African Americans, prior to the integration of the Nashville Bar Association in 1966.

These trailblazing attorneys made a name for themselves during a time when there were very few African Americans practicing law in Nashville. Although Napier was 56 years Looby’s senior, in 1928, he and Looby were the only two African American lawyers practicing in Nashville.

My family knew both men well, as my great, great grandfather Prince Albert Ewing was the first African American lawyer in Nashville in 1871, and my grandfather Rev. Richard Albert Ewing was Napier’s minister, giving his eulogy in 1940.

James Carroll Napier

On June 9, 1845, James Carrol “JC” Napier was born near Nashville. It was not until three years after his birth, in 1848, that Napier and his parents were granted their freedom. The Napiers believed in the power of education and opened a school to educate freed African Americans in Nashville at a time when few were educated. The Napier’s school was short-lived as the State of Tennessee closed it due to laws making it illegal to teach African Americans how to read and write.

Napier Meets John Langston

Despite early setbacks in education and equality in the South, Napier persevered with the most significant event of his early years occurring on December 30, 1864, when he met John Mercer Langston. Langston was visiting Nashville in 1864 to speak to the victorious US Colored Troops and others following the Battle of Nashville. Four years after his visit, Langston would become the founding Dean of Howard University’s Law School, the first African American law school in the US.

After his brief meeting of Langston, Napier continued to pursue his education and graduated from the newly formed public schools for African Americans in Nashville. His education continued when his family moved to Ohio, where he attended Wilberforce College and Oberlin College, where Langston had earlier graduated.

Napier returned to Tennessee and was appointed by Governor William Brownlow to serve as the Commissioner of Refugees and Abandoned Lands in Davidson County, where he was charged to audit the claims of citizens whose property was destroyed during the Civil War. Following this appointment, he traveled to Washington, DC where he was appointed as a State Department Clerk, the first African American to do so.

In 1870, Napier’s path again crossed with Langston when he enrolled at Howard University Law School where Langston was serving as the Dean. Napier was one of the best law students, and was remembered for his oration in a speech he delivered titled, “Let the Jury Respond to the Facts.”

Napier & Nashville

In 1872, Napier was licensed to practice law and returned to Nashville. The following year, Napier married Langston’s youngest daughter, Nettie. Napier was one of a small number of African American lawyers who practiced law in the 1870s and still remained involved in politics. From 1878 to 1885, Napier served in the Nashville City Council until the Jim Crow segregation and gerrymandering caused the local districts to no longer have a majority African American district.

Napier and other African American professionals established an African American business district in Downtown Nashville on 4th Avenue between Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard and Deaderick Street. African American lawyers, doctors, newspapers, undertakers, and businesses operated in this area. In addition, Napier and other business leaders established the One Cent Saving Bank in his office on 4th Avenue, which is known today as Citizens Bank, the oldest continuously operating African American Bank in America.

Napier served as the cashier of the bank and was appointed by President Taft as the Register of the US Treasury in Washington, DC. From 1911 to 1913, Napier served in this important role and his signature appeared on all US currency.

Napier continued to practice law in his 80s and 90s and was active in Nashville law and politics. In 1933, 41 years after the first Davidson County Colored Bar Association was started in 1892, the JC Napier Bar Association was founded for African American lawyers. Napier was later appointed to the new Nashville Housing Association in 1938, becoming the first African American to serve on a city board.

Alexander Looby

Z. Alexander Looby was born in Antiqua, British West Indies, in 1899. He came to the US as a child and graduated from Howard University. Later, he graduated from Columbia University with an LLB in 1925, and received the prestigious Doctorate in Jurisprudence from New York University in 1926.

Looby moved to Nashville in 1926 and took a job as an Associate Professor of Economics at Fisk University. In 1928, he passed the Tennessee Bar Exam in the Fall with the highest score in Tennessee that session and started practicing law.

The first generation of African American lawyers in Nashville after the Civil War had moved away retired and died. When twin brothers and lawyers Prince Albert Ewing and Taylor G. Ewing died in 1921 and 1922, J.C. Napier was the only African American lawyer left in Nashville.

In 1928, when Looby opened his office, Napier and Looby were the only African Americans practicing law in Nashville. Just as Napier pushed for the education of African Americans early in his career, Looby saw the need to educate African Americans as lawyers. With no options in Tennessee for African Americans to receive a legal education, Looby opened up the Kent College of Law in 1932 and served as Dean. He closed the school in 1941 after the Tennessee Supreme Court made two years of college a requirement to attend law school and increased the hours to 720 hours of training.

The short-lived law school did graduate Vernette Grimes who, in 1939, became the first African American woman to pass the Tennessee Bar Exam, and Bob Lillard, who became the first African American to serve on the Nashville Bar Association Board of Directors in 1971.

Looby and the NAACP

In 1939, Looby worked on the first of many cases for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) with Thurgood Marshall, suing the University of Tennessee to allow attendance of African American students. In 1942, the two sued the City of Nashville over discrimination of African American public school teachers making less than white teachers. Looby continued to advocate for African American lawyers and became President of the J.C. Napier Bar Association in 1943.

Looby was hired by the NAACP in 1946 to work with Thurgood Marshall to defend 25 African Americans charged with attempted murder of 4 white police officers after recent unrest in Columbia, Tennessee. Shots fired at these officers hit each one when they refused to leave the area after a controversial arrest of an African American on attempted murder charges, sparked by an argument with a white clerk who crashed through a window. The case attracted national attention, as later two African Americans in jail awaiting trial were killed by Columbia policemen. Marshall and Looby received an acquittal of 23 of the 25 charges from the all-white jury and only one African American was later tried and convicted of murder in 1947.

Looby ran for City Council in 1951 and won, becoming the first African American on the City Council since 1911 when JC Napier was elected. He continued to sue the City of Nashville for discrimination against African Americans. In 1957, after Brown v. Board of Education, when Nashville refused to integrate its schools, Looby won his case in federal court to open the previously white Nashville schools to African Americans.

In 1960, Looby represented the African American college students, including John Lewis and Diane Nash, who led the nonviolent peaceful protest of the downtown Nashville lunch counters. Looby’s house, located across from Meharry, was bombed on the morning of April 19, 1960. This unsolved bombing was believed to send a message to Looby and the Civil Rights movement to stop their protests.

The opposite occurred as 4,000 students marched to the Historic Courthouse that day. Diane Nash confronted Mayor Ben West, asking if segregation at lunch counters was right, and the Mayor responded it was not. The next day, the gym was packed as Looby, still shaken, was staged to hear words of encouragement from his friend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who had rearranged his schedule to come to Nashville to give his support for Looby and the students.

Looby would later leave his last mark on Nashville government when he was appointed to the group of civic leaders who lobbied, wrote the charter, and helped successfully pass Metro Government in 1962.

JC Napier and Z Alexander Looby had an impact on law, education, and politics in Nashville and nationwide. Both were highly educated and believed that the law was the way to help African Americans obtain equality. These Nashville lawyers opened doors and tore down barriers, which continues to benefit generations of lawyers in Nashville and in the US. n

DAVID S. EWING is a ninth generation Nashvillian and Historian. His great, great grandfather Prince Albert Ewing was the first African American lawyer in Nashville.