The singular career of William Francis Yardley
by Jack Neely
A century or so ago, he was one of the most respected men in town: a portly man in muttonchop whiskers, he wore a Prince Albert coat and derby. He kept his law offices in the Dewine Building on State Street. People on Gay Street called him Governor.
His origins were uncommon. His parents were, in fact, a couple that many modern people would doubt existed in antebellum Tennessee. His father was black; his mom was Irish. If Hollywood were to portray such a couple in the 1840s South, one or both of them would be lynched before the second reel.
I don't know what became of William Francis Yardley's parents. Their dark-complected child was free, but only as free as any poor kid in those hard days. His mother apparently couldn't take care of him. She left him on the doorstep of a white family, the Yardleys, who, in turn, loaned him out to be something like an indentured servant to a "Squire McClannahan" until he was 21. The deal was that Yardley would work for McClannahan if McClannahan would teach the boy to read and to educate him in a useful profession. Yardley attended Sunday school at St. John's Episcopal, under Thomas Humes, the rector and former newspaper editor. According to some sources, he also attended Maryville College, which was famously unsegregated.
Yardley turned 21 in 1865, free of his long apprenticeship the same year others of his race were free of slavery. Yardley taught at the new Negro school in Ebenezer, the community on Ten Mile Creek in West Knox County, and, during his free time, studied law. In 1872, he passed the bar and quickly developed a reputation as a lawyer.
His career lasted more than 50 years and was, by all accounts, a distinguished one; but in thumbnail bios, he's remembered for one dramatic episode from its early days.
A politically ambitious Republican, Yardley was just 26 when he was elected to County Court, Knox County's main governing board. Then, while still on County Court, he was elected to the city's Board of Aldermen. It was the equivalent of one individual holding both the positions of city councilman and county commissioner. And he was only 28.
Yardley went to Nashville late in the summer of 1876, as a delegate to the state Republican convention. He demanded sweeping changes in state government: he proposed that the word "colored" be removed from all state laws. (Yardley himself was listed in that year's Knoxville City Directory as "colored.")
When the convention balked at his proposals, Yardley astonished his colleagues by announcing his candidacy for governor.
It was a bold and apparently impulsive move; some in both parties called it a reckless one. Not only was Yardley black; he was, at 32, uncommonly young for a gubernatorial candidate. Moreover, he didn't announce his candidacy until about nine weeks before the election, when there were already three hats in the ring in what already looked like a chaotic contest.
Intrepid, Yardley stumped all over the state, as curious crowds came out to see what a black gubernatorial candidate looked like. One of his platform's planks was desegregated schooling, an issue which would remain controversial for another century or more. Another was legalization of mixed-race marriages. Nobody shot him.
His candidacy was a platform for his civil-rights message, and he impressed many: the Morristown Gazette called Yardley "intelligent far above the average of the Republican Party...."
But Yardley's candidacy, criticized as "impudent" in the Democratic press, never had a chance with mainstream whites. Some conservative blacks in Yardley's own party, who feared upsetting the tenuous gains they'd earned in Reconstruction, distrusted him.
It wasn't much of a race. The Democratic incumbent, middle-aged Confederate veteran James Porter, earned more votes than the other three candidates combined. Yardley came up with 2,165 votes, little more than 1 percent of the total.
It's unlikely that he was surprised. He returned home to settle for a more modest office, assistant chief of the Knoxville Fire Department. For 45 years after that, the stately man with the muttonchop whiskers was a familiar figure around town. He was a regular on the stage of Staub's Opera House, a stirring lecturer during civil-rights occasions. When Frederick Douglass came to town, Yardley—who, some thought, resembled Douglass—introduced him. Douglass later remarked that Yardley was "one of the most remarkable men I have ever met."
And, of course, he was a fixture at the courthouse, where he most often defended poor blacks accused of crimes from petty theft to murder. Yardley's "roaring voice commanded attention," one recalled. During a trial, Knoxvillians could hear Yardley's booming summations clear out on Gay Street.
When you see newspapers refer to him as "Governor Yardley" it's hard to tell whether it was in honor or irony. But he answered to it.
Yardley lived to see the promise of Reconstruction recede. The bizarre race riots of 1919 happened below his office window. At the age of 76, Yardley was the defense attorney of Maurice Mays, the murder suspect at the fulcrum of that riot, in one of the most dramatic trials in Knoxville history. Yardley lost the case; Mays was executed.
Yardley saw changes in his 80 years, but he lived to see some things change back. By the time Yardley died in 1924, city and county government no longer made room for black representatives.
February 21, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 8
© 2002 Metro Pulse
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