Cameron-Trimble & Black Self-Emancipation / Education for Black Empowerment

Lutie Lytle was born in Murfreesboro in 1875 and graduated as valedictorian from the law course at Central Tennessee College in 1897. She was admitted to the Tennessee bar that year and also became the first African American woman admitted to practice in Kansas. In 1898 she joined the college's law faculty as a teacher and librarian. Historians rank her probably third among Black women lawyers in the nation, after Charlotte Ray and Mary Ann Shadd Cary. She later practiced in Topeka and Brooklyn and died in 1955.

What the plaque says

Cameron-Trimble & Black Self- Emancipation / Education for Black Empowerment Cameron-Trimble & Black Self-Emancipation - Known as Cameron-Trimble, this was among Nashville's early African American neighborhoods. When the Union Army occupied Nashville in 1862, many enslaved African American risked their safety to seek freedom here. Twenty-seven hundred men, women, and children endured terrible conditions to build Ft. Negley, a Union fort and a beacon of freedom for enslaved people across the South. Thousands joined the U. S. Colored Troops, who helped win the Battle of Nashville. After the war, many veterans stayed in the Cameron-Trimble area to develop area churches, businesses, and schools. Continued: Education For Black Empowerment - After gaining freedom during the Civil War, African Americans eagerly sought education denied them during enslavement. Established in an old Confederate gun factory 600 yards west of here, Central Tennessee College offered its first classes in 1867. Renamed Walden university in 1900, it closed in 1922. The medical department known as Meharry, became chartered as Meharry Medical College in 1915 and moved to North Nashville near Fisk University in 1931. Its law school trained early African American lawyers in the South, including Lutie Lytle, the first African American woman licensed to practice in Tennessee, and Noah Parden and George Vaughn, who won key civil rights cases in the U. S. Supreme Court.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Negley — 0.9 mi
  The largest inland stone fort of the Civil War, built in 1862 on St. Cloud Hill by more than 2,700 conscripted Black laborers, hundreds of whom died.
• National Museum of African American Music — 1.5 mi
  A downtown Nashville museum, opened in 2021, tracing gospel, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues and hip-hop through Black history from 1619 to 2016.
• Ryman Auditorium — 1.5 mi
  The 1892 brick tabernacle in downtown Nashville that was the Grand Ole Opry's home from 1943 to 1974, now a National Historic Landmark and working concert hall.
• Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library — 1.7 mi
  A room in the downtown library with a circular lunch counter, a timeline and oral histories of the 1960 Nashville sit-ins, a few blocks from the stores where they began.

More markers nearby

• Battle of Nashville: Lafayette Street — steps away
• Hubbard House — 0.3 mi
• Tom Wilson Park — 0.4 mi
• Walden College — 0.5 mi