Clarksville's Slave Market

After the war, Black Clarksvillians built their own institutions. Newly freed people founded St. Peter's AME Church and tried repeatedly to open public schools, while whites resisted Black education and hampered the Freedmen's Bureau. By the 1870s the city's population was roughly half Black, and John Page served as alderman, Jerry Wheeler as county commissioner, and J. H. M. Graham, a Black newspaper publisher, was elected to the General Assembly. The 1878 fire then hit Black businesses especially hard.

What the plaque says

Clarksville's Slave Market Prior to the Civil War, kept in a pen located on this corner, enslaved people waited to be sold at auction at the county courthouse. Prior to the fire of 1878, the courthouse stood on the north side of Franklin Street between 1st and 2nd. Enslavers also sold many of the people enslaved at the Market House located in the middle of the Public Square. In 1860, the enslaved population constituted almost half of the people living in Montgomery County. Clarksville's tobacco industry especially profited from enslaved labor.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Defiance Civil War Park and Interpretive Center — 1.2 mi
  An intact earthwork fort above the Cumberland and Red Rivers in Clarksville, begun with forced Black labor and later a contraband camp and recruiting center for Black soldiers.
• Dunbar Cave State Park — 3.6 mi
  A Clarksville cave with 800-year-old Mississippian artwork, later a resort and Roy Acuff's dance stage, now a state park with seasonal guided tours.
• Cross Creeks National Wildlife Refuge — 24 mi
  An 8,862-acre refuge on the Cumberland River floodplain near Dover, made in 1962 to replace habitat Lake Barkley flooded, wintering tens of thousands of waterfowl.

More markers nearby

• Montgomery County Courthouse — steps away
• Austin Peay — steps away
• Clarence Cameron White — steps away
• Pioneer Newspaper — steps away