Dr. Nettie Craig Asberry was a pioneer in African-American civil rights leadership in the Northwest. Born in Kansas in 1865, Asberry moved to the Northwest in 1890. Asberry was one of the founding members of Tacoma's NAACP chapter, the first to be established west of the Rockies. Archives document her tireless campaigns for justice, including her efforts to protest the showing of Birth of a Nation in Tacoma and segregation at Fort Lewis.Asberry is also associated with the growth of African American women's club movement in the Northwest. She established the Tacoma City Association of Colored Women's Clubs before touring the state to encourage other communities to do the same, eventually helping to establish a statewide federation. A longtime resident of Tacoma's (WA) Hilltop neighborhood, Asberry taught music--a subject in which she held a PhD--to generations of students. In fact, it is believed that she was the first African-American woman ever to receive a PhD.