James Carroll Napier (June 9, 1845 – April 21, 1940) was an American businessman, lawyer, politician, and civil rights leader from Nashville, Tennessee, who served as Register of the Treasury from 1911 to 1913. He is one of only five African Americans with their signatures on American currency. He was one of four African-American politicians appointed to a high position under President William Howard Taft, and they were known as Taft's "Black Cabinet." He was instrumental in founding civic institutions in Nashville to benefit the African-American business community and residents, including an emphasis on education. Early life James Carroll Napier was born into slavery to William Carroll Napier and Jane Elizabeth Napier (née Watkins) who were both enslaved in Davidson County, Tennessee. His father was mixed race, the son of his White master, Dr. Elias Napier, and an enslaved mother named Judy. The Napier family were freed by their master in 1848. Napier attended a private school for free black children in Nashville until whites forced it to be closed in 1856. His moved to Ohio, a free state, and in 1859 and he enrolled in Wilberforce College, which was founded cooperatively as a historically black college by the AME Church and the Methodist Church of Cincinnati. He later transferred to Oberlin College, the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students in addition to white males. He left Oberlin in 1867 without a degree. While working in Washington, D.C., Napier earned his law degree from Howard University in 1872. Career Napier returned to Tennessee and was appointed to serve as the Commissioner of Refugees and Abandoned Lands in Davidson County for a year. He moved to Washington, D.C. to serve a political appointment as State Department Clerk, the first African American to hold this office. After receiving his law degree, Napier returned to Nashville to establish his law practice. He became influential in the city's African-American community. He was elected to the Nashville City Council and the Tennessee Republican Executive Committee. Napier was elected as the first African-American president of the city council. He worked to hire African-American teachers for the Black public schools in the segregated system, and to organize the Black Fire-engine Company, to serve Black residents. Because of his work in Nashville and his association with Booker T. Washington of Tuskegee Institute, Napier had become an influential African-American leader. In 1905,