Hadley Park

Benjamin J. Carr, a founder of what became Tennessee State, drove the city's purchase of 34 acres for a municipal park, and Mayor Hilary Howse dedicated it in 1912. The land came from the estate of John L. Hadley, who enslaved many people. Whether the park honors him or Dr. W. A. Hadley, a prominent Black physician, became a dispute in 2018. A swimming pool was installed in 1947 and closed in the early 2000s, and stone columns at the main entrance list Black soldiers from Nashville who died in World War I.

What the plaque says

Hadley Park In 1912, Nashville officials purchased 34 acres of land to provide a public park for Negro citizens. Originally a part of the John L. Hadley plantation, Hadley Park was dedicated on July 4th. It is considered the first public park in the United States for African Americans. Named for either the pioneer African-American physician Dr. W. A. Hadley or John L. Hadley, supporter of freedmen after the Civil War, Hadley Park continues as a benchmark in the community's cultural heritage.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fisk University and Jubilee Hall — 0.9 mi
  The 1866 school for freed people whose Jubilee Singers paid for Jubilee Hall, a National Historic Landmark, and whose students helped start Nashville's sit-ins.
• Tennessee State Capitol — 2.0 mi
  William Strickland's Greek Revival capitol on Nashville's Capitol Hill, finished in 1859 and built from the bottom up with the labor of enslaved men.
• Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library — 2.2 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.
• National Museum of African American Music — 2.3 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.

More markers nearby

• Juno Frankie Pierce — 0.2 mi
• Tennessee State University — 0.3 mi
• Lt. William McBryar, Buffalo Soldier Medal of Honor — 0.4 mi
• National Negro High School Basketball Tournament — 0.4 mi