Welcome to Frankie Pierce Park one of Metro Parks newest green spaces along the Gulch Greenway. This beautiful park located between spurs of the railroad in Capitol View was named to honor African American Suffragist, Educator and Community Leader, Frankie Pierce.
Juno Frankie Pierce was born in Nashville near the end of the Civil War. Pierce was educated at the Joseph G. McKee Freedman School, the first free African American school in Nashville, and at Roger Williams College, one of four freedman's colleges in the city. Pierce worked throughout her life for equality and human dignity, leading to the creation of black branches of the YWCA and the Red Cross, and championing the Tennessee Federation of Colored Women's Clubs. In 1920, Pierce was the only African American to address the state woman's suffrage convention. Later, Pierce and the League of Women Voters secured state funds to open the Tennessee Vocational School for Colored Girls, where she served as superintendent until 1939. Pierce remained and impactful activist and advocate until her death in 1954.
The 2.5-acre green space, located within view of the state Capitol building where Pierce once spoke, connects Capitol View to a countywide greenway system of nearly 100 miles of paved trails via the Gulch Greenway extension that runs through the park. The park features sand volleyball, a children's playground, a dog park, yoga lawn and spaces for a picnic, including a replica lunch counter.
Pierce's lifetime of social service efforts often benefited residents in the Capitol View district, a place formerly known as Hell’s Half Acre, making it fitting to remember her there.
This cache is placed with a permit from Metro Parks as part of a series to highlight new parks in the system. These micro container "Park Plates" help us to share parks with the geocaching community where a more traditional style of geocache would not be appropriate. Although these are placed with permission, please use stealth in the retrieval and replacement of these caches to help protect their location from the non-geocaching public and curious onlookers.