William Edmondson

Little about Edmondson's life is certain. A fire destroyed the family Bible and its record of his birth, and accounts range from 1874 to about 1883. Before carving he farmed, worked as a racehorse swipe, and spent years in the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway shops until an accident forced him out in 1907. He then worked at Woman's Hospital until it closed in 1931, and in 1939 and 1941 the WPA sculpture division employed him. He is buried at Mount Ararat in an unmarked grave, and the cemetery's records burned too.

What the plaque says

William Edmondson (c. 1883-1951) William Edmondson, a native Nashvillian and renowned primitive sculptor, worked exclusively in limestone. In 1937, he became the first African-American to be given a one-man show by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. His visions in stone are now held in major museums throughout America. In June of 1981, for the opening of its new facilities, the Tennessee State Museum honored him with with a 125-piece exhibition.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fisk University and Jubilee Hall — 0.8 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 — 0.9 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 — 0.9 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 — 1.1 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

• First State Penitentiary — steps away
• Grace M. Eaton/Grace M. Eaton Dayhome — steps away
• Bethlehem Centers of Nashville 100th Anniversary (1894-1994) — steps away
• John Robert Bradley — 0.3 mi