If scholars agree on anything about the African American experience in the 19^th century, it is that slavery, violence, discrimination, and other forms of dehumanization defined Black life. Yet, in these difficult and challenging circumstances, Blacks were able to beat the odds, and rise to reclaim their identity and humanity; demonstrate their abilities, hopes, and achievements. One of these African Americans was John Gassett/ John Q Gassett (Figure 1).

John Gassett

Gassett was born in 1854 to a single white mother, and possibly an enslaved father. Raised by his mother’s family in Sullivan County, Tennessee, he was educated in the Freedman’s Institute ¹,  and majored in Latin and the Classics. In 1880, at age 22, he accepted a teaching position in Cartersville, Georgia. He stayed as a tenant in the house of Angelina Peacock, a successful Black businesswoman. Angelina Peacock sold properties and ran a boarding house and a restaurant in Cartersville. After a few years, Gassett married his wife, and moved to live with his family on the corner of Maine and Fite street.

Grocer, Real Estate Developer, and Party Delegate

John Gassett opened the first Black owned grocery store in downtown Cartersville at 127 West Main Street in 1893.  Gassett’s grocery store was one of the first main Black-owned businesses to be established in Bartow County, Georgia. Gassett bought the space  from Angelina Peacock, daughter of Jackson Burge ², one of the wealthiest Black property owners in Cartersville in the 19^th century. From the 1860s, a community of former enslaved Blacks emerged in downtown Cartersville, and created a Black business community around land owners ³ by the Black businessmen Jackson Burge, Ellis Patterson ⁴, Henry Saxon ⁵  from the 1880s to 1920s.  In 1910, Gassett provided a space above his grocery store for the first African American doctor in Cartersville -Dr. William Riley Moore- to open his practice. 

Gassett’s grocery store created a customer base in the area, and allowed surrounding businesses to flourish, including Dr. William Riley Moore’s practice. Gassett also invested in real estate, and developed property formerly owned by Lewis Tumlin ⁶  to help Black families settle in Summer Hill area.

Politically, Gassett was active in the Republican party of the state of Georgia. In 1892, he was elected a delegate to represent the state of Georgia at the Republican party convention in Minneapolis on June 7^th of the same year. Reporting on the upcoming Republican convention, the Savannah Tribune  ⁷ of May 14^th, 1892 wrote the following:

            The Georgia Delegation.

The delegation from this state to the Minneapolis convention which meets on June 7 next is as follows: from the state at large – A E Buck, W A Pledger, W W Brown, R R Wright. Frist district – M J Doyle, S B Morse. Second district – M F Brimberry, C T Barnes. Third district – C E Coleman, E S Richardson. Fourth district – A J Laird, John T Shepherd. … Seventh district – J Q Gassett, W T Blackman

John Gassett died in 1921 and though little is known about him today, we know he was a very ambitious Black man. With his grocery store, he provided his community with essentials needed for daily living; as a real estate developer, he addressed housing issues; and without doubt, his political engagement was driven by the interests of the Black community. In a racially segregated South, John Gassett, like other African Americans, was discriminated against. Yet he rose to overcome the adversities, to give hope, and to build a future for himself and his community. Gassett is buried at the Oak Hill Cemetery on Erwin Street, Cartersville, Georgia.