Immaculate Mother Academy

Katharine Drexel, born in Philadelphia in 1858 to a banking family, founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament in 1891 to serve Black and Native Americans. The order accepted only white women as members. She paid for Native schools in several states and helped found Black schools in the South. In Nashville the order also founded St. Vincent de Paul Church and School in 1932, which ran until 2009 and was the diocese's second historically Black parish. Drexel was beatified in 1988 and canonized on October 1, 2000, the second American-born saint.

What the plaque says

Immaculate Mother Academy In 1904, a Philadelphia nun and heiress, Mother Mary Katherine Drexel, purchased this site for Immaculate Mother Academy, which included a primary school and the first Catholic secondary school for black students in Tennessee. Holy Family Catholic Church was moved here in 1919, and the primary school was renamed for it. Immaculate Mother became a fully accredited high school in 1940. Until their closing in 1954, the schools were staffed by the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament of Bensalem, PA.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Negley — 0.5 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 — 0.6 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 — 0.6 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 — 0.7 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

• Frank Maxwell Andrews — steps away
• Captain William Driver — 0.2 mi
• Albert Gleaves — 0.4 mi
• Nashville Blacks in the Civil War — 0.5 mi