Dr. Nettie J. Craig Asberry, Tacoma Icon

Dr. Nettie J. Asberry earned a Doctorate of Music on June 12, 1883, by the Kansas Conservatory of Music and Elocution. She lost the document in her Tacoma, Washington, home, but told folks at her 100th birthday party in 1965 that she believed she was probably the nation's first black woman to receive a doctoral degree.

She had quite a remarkable life; a lot of it spent in Washington State. However, her roots were in the south.

Southern Roots

Nettie was born at the end of the Civil War, July 15, 1865, in Leavenworth, Kansas. She attended school there and her musical ability showed itself at an early age; she began piano lessons when she was eight. The school was segregated only by grade level, so she was given the same opportunities as her peers and allowed to excel.

Later, in higher education, she made her mark. She attended the University of Kansas, which was free to every person, and earned her undergraduate degree. This was during the Reconstruction Era when new governments in the South obliterated racially discriminating laws. She was only 18 when she proudly earned her doctorate degree.

Her Washington Connection

Her life was to change once through college. She married and taught music in Kansas City and Denver before moving to the northwest with her husband, Albert Jones. In1890 she and her husband arrived in Seattle by train. She soon became the organist and musical director for the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

On her husband's death she remarried Henry J. Asberry, a well-known owner of the Tacoma Hotel Barbershop. Her husband served not only the well do of the area, but also United States presidents passing through Tacoma. Through him, she became well known for her next endeavor, music teaching, and also for her civic involvement.

Life's Work

Nettie and a group of Tacoma black women, members of the Clover Leaf Art Club, set to work on handicrafts to display at the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition World's Fair. Works included needlework, oil and watercolor paintings, ceramics and china paintings. The group won a gold medal for the exhibit and several others.

When she read about the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Nettie started a Tacoma branch; they were chartered in 1913. They defeated legislation being considered to ban interracial marriages.

Nettie began a lot of black women's clubs in Tacoma; all were charter members of the Washington State Federation of Colored Women's Organizations formed in 1917. She served as officer and statistician of that group.

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