Background
William Malone Baskerville was born in 1850 in Fayette County, Tennessee.
William Malone Baskerville was born in 1850 in Fayette County, Tennessee.
He graduated from Randolph–Macon College in Ashland, Virginia. One of his teacher, Thomas Randoph Price, encouraged him to study in Germany. As a result, he attended the University of Leipzig in 1873-1874, where he became friends with Charles Forster Smith.
Baskervill taught at Vanderbilt University. Together with Smith, who also taught at Vanderbilt, and George Washington Cable, he ran an organization known as the Open Letter Club. Essie Samuels notes this was "a loosely organized attempt to disseminate liberal propaganda concerning civil rights and education for the Negro in the South between 1887 and 1890."
He died in 1899.
