David Foote Rivers

David Foote Rivers (July 18, 1859 – July 5, 1941) was a theologian and politician in the United States. An African American and a Republican, he served as a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives from 1883 to 1885, representing Fayette County.

Biography Rivers was born in Montgomery, Alabama to Edmonia Rivers, a free black woman. His father, who may have been a white man, is not known. They moved to Mississippi and then to Fayette County, Tennessee. Rivers did not learn to write until the age of nineteen. He was reelected in 1884 and seated in 1885 but was soon forced to flee the county due to rising racist violence.

Rivers moved to Nashville, where there was less racial tension. He taught at his alma mater, Roger Williams University. For a time, he also lived in southern Kentucky while preaching at the Fifth Ward Baptist Church just over the river in Clarksville, Tennessee. from 1898 to 1941. After his death in New York City, he was interred at Lincoln Cemetery near Washington, D.C. Another son, Mark Edmond Rivers, became a dentist. His son, Mark Edmond Rivers Jr., in turn became one of only five African American graduates of the United States Military Academy during World War II.