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She only knew her as Aunt Nettie until Antoinette researched her grandaunt, Nettie Craig Asberry, and discovered she was one of the founders of the Tacoma, Washington NAACP, in 1913. Broussard was impressed with her aunt’s social activism and presented the paper, The Militant Matron, to the Association for African American Historical Research and Preservation Conference in Seattle, Washington, in 2005. Columbia Magazine of the Washington State Historical Society published the paper. It was the first of many articles Broussard has written about Asberry, whose house was purchased by the Colored Women’s Club, (Tacoma, Washington) in 2023. It is undergoing a renovation into a museum and community center to honor Asberry’s lifetime of civil rights work and dedication to her Tacoma community.

For the African American National Biography, editors Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Evelyn Higginbotham, Oxford Press, in 2009, Antoinette contributed biographies about Nettie Craig Asberry and her cousin Lulu Sadler Craig. Both women were early American educators and pioneers of Nicodemus, Kansas; a western town established by African Americans during the Reconstruction Period following the American Civil War. To further honor her grandaunt’s work, Antoinette was the actor in the 2022 Ancestry.com national commercial highlighting Nettie Craig Asberry.

Nettie J. Craig Asberry

Lulu Sadler Craig