{"id":48377,"date":"2016-07-22T18:23:12","date_gmt":"2016-07-22T18:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=48377"},"modified":"2016-07-22T20:07:11","modified_gmt":"2016-07-22T20:07:11","slug":"early-black-lawyer-wife-endured-bigotry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=48377","title":{"rendered":"Early black lawyer, wife endured bigotry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Early black lawyer, wife endured bigotry<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Minneapolis Star-Tribune<\/a>
\n2016-02-13<\/p>\n

Curt Brown<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Nellie and William Francis<\/a> were doing so well in 1924 they decided to move four miles southwest in St. Paul<\/a> \u2014 leaving their Rondo<\/a> neighborhood for a house in the Groveland Park area near the Mississippi River<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 1920 census listed the couple, married for 27 years, as \u201cMu\u201d for mulatto<\/a>. Skin color hadn\u2019t deterred William Francis from becoming \u201cprominent in religious, political, social and fraternal circles,\u201d according to the Twin City Star<\/em> newspaper.<\/p>\n

He was a railroad lawyer and she was a suffragette and civic activist. But when they moved into their house at 2092 Sargent Av.<\/a>, just east of Cretin Avenue, their race would render them \u201cdirect victims of virulent racial hatred,\u201d according to former law school dean Douglas Heidenreich\u2019s<\/a> 2000 article<\/a> in William Mitchell<\/em> magazine.<\/p>\n

Nellie Griswold was born in 1874 in Nashville<\/a>, but moved north in time to graduate from St. Paul Central High School<\/a> in the 1890s and become president of the Minnesota State Federation of Colored Women in the early 20th Century.<\/p>\n

As leader of the Everywoman Suffrage Club, she helped women earn the right to vote in 1920. The next year, she was credited with writing the state anti-lynching<\/a> bill that allowed survivors to collect $7,500 in damages, nearly $100,000 in today\u2019s dollars. The legislation \u2014 spawned by the 1920 lynching of three black circus workers in Duluth<\/a> \u2014 also punished neglectful police who allowed lynchings under their watch. They could be fired for malfeasance.<\/p>\n

In 1893, Nellie married William Francis \u2014 an Indiana<\/a> native five years her senior. At 19, he had moved to Minnesota<\/a>, where he graduated in 1904 from St. Paul College of Law (now Mitchell Hamline School of Law)…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Early black lawyer, wife endured bigotry Minneapolis Star-Tribune 2016-02-13 Curt Brown Nellie and William Francis were doing so well in 1924 they decided to move four miles southwest in St. Paul \u2014 leaving their Rondo neighborhood for a house in the Groveland Park area near the Mississippi River. The 1920 census listed the couple, married […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,1467,8],"tags":[24559,24478,24477,16389,5703,24560,24480,24479],"class_list":["post-48377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-law","category-media-archive","tag-curt-brown","tag-douglas-heidenreich","tag-douglas-r-heidenreich","tag-minneapolis-star-tribune","tag-minnesota","tag-nellie-francis","tag-william-francis","tag-william-t-francis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48377"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48384,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48377\/revisions\/48384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}