Josiah T. Settle 1850-1915

Josiah Settle was born into slavery in 1850, studied at Oberlin and Howard, and practiced in Sardis, Mississippi, before winning one term in the state House in 1883 as an independent. Moving to Memphis in 1885, he became assistant attorney general for Shelby County, helped found Solvent Bank and Trust in 1906 and served as first president of the National Negro Bar Association. In 1905 he and Benjamin Booth challenged Tennessee's streetcar segregation law for a client, Mary Morrison; the judge ruled for the state. Ida B. Wells boarded with the Settles in 1886 and 1887.

What the plaque says

Josiah T. Settle 1850-1915 Josiah T. Settle, one of the earliest African-American 19th century Memphis lawyers, was born in the Cumberland Mountains of East Tennessee. Educated at Oberlin College, Settle was a member of the Howard University's first law school graduating class (1875). That same year, he was admitted to the bar and in 1876 was presidential elector-at-large. During the early 1880s, Settle served in the Mississippi House of Representatives. After a noted legal and legislative career in Mississippi, Settle came to Memphis in 1885. During the late 1880s, he served as Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Court of Shelby County, an appointment unprecedented for an African-American at that time. He was a delegate to the Republican National Conventions of 1892, 1900, 1904, and 1912. In 1906, Settle was admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Beale Street — 0.7 mi
  The street that became the center of Black Memphis after the Civil War, home to Church's Park, W. C. Handy, Ida B. Wells and the blues, now a National Historic Landmark district.
• Sun Studio — 1.0 mi
  The small Union Avenue room where Sam Phillips recorded Rocket 88, Howlin' Wolf, Elvis Presley and the Million Dollar Quartet, now a National Historic Landmark.
• National Civil Rights Museum — 1.1 mi
  The Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was killed on April 4, 1968, kept as a museum of the civil rights movement from the nineteenth century to today.
• 1866 Memphis Massacre Marker at Army Park — 1.2 mi
  A privately funded NAACP marker in a small downtown park, placed in 2016, that names the May 1866 attack on Black South Memphis as a massacre.

More markers nearby

• Casey Jones — steps away
• Malcolm Rice Patterson — steps away
• Forrest's Early Home — 0.2 mi
• Eugene Magevney — 0.2 mi