Nashville sit-ins
Encyclopedia
The Nashville sit-ins, which lasted from February 13 to May 10, 1960, were part of a nonviolent direct action
campaign to end racial segregation
at lunch counters in downtown Nashville, Tennessee
. The sit-in
campaign, coordinated by the Nashville Student Movement and Nashville Christian Leadership Council, was notable for its early success and emphasis on disciplined nonviolence
.
Over the course of the campaign, sit-ins were staged at numerous stores in Nashville's central business district. Sit-in participants, who consisted mainly of black college students, were often verbally or physically attacked by white onlookers. Despite their refusal to retaliate, over 150 students were eventually arrested for refusing to vacate store lunch counters when ordered to do so by police. At trial, the students were represented by a group of 13 lawyers, headed by Z. Alexander Looby
. On April 19, Looby's home was bombed, however, neither he nor his wife were injured. Later that day, nearly 4000 people marched to City Hall to confront Mayor Ben West
about the escalating violence. When asked if he believed the lunch counters in Nashville should be desegregated, West agreed that they should. After subsequent negotiations between the store owners and protest leaders, an agreement was reached during the first week of May. On May 10, six downtown stores began serving black customers at their lunch counters for the first time.
Although the initial campaign successfully desegregated downtown lunch counters, sit-ins, pickets, and protests against other segregated facilities continued in Nashville until passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
which ended overt, legally sanctioned segregation nationwide. Many of the organizers of the Nashville sit-ins went on to become important leaders in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement.
In 1896, the United States Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson
upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the doctrine of "separate but equal
". This decision led to the proliferation of Jim Crow laws
throughout the United States. These laws mandated segregation in virtually all spheres of public life and allowed racial discrimination to flourish across the country, especially in the Southern United States
.
In Nashville, like most Southern cities, African Americans were severely disadvantaged under the system of Jim Crow segregation. Besides being relegated to underfunded schools and barred from numerous public accommodations, African Americans had few prospects for skilled employment and were subject to constant discrimination from the white majority.
Although serious efforts were made to oppose Jim Crow laws in Nashville as early as 1905,Richard Henry Boyd
, James Napier, Preston Taylor, and others organized a strike against Nashville's segregated streetcar service that lasted from July 1905 until July 1906. More information about this strike can be found in Bobby Lovett's A Black Man's Dream. it was not until 1958, with the formation of the Nashville Christian Leadership Council, that Nashville's African American community would lay the foundation for dismantling racial segregation.
, pastor of First Baptist Church, Capitol Hill. This organization was an affiliate of Martin Luther King, Jr.
's Southern Christian Leadership Conference
and was established to promote civil rights for African American
s through nonviolent civil disobedience
. Smith believed that Americans would be more sympathetic to desegregation if African Americans obtained their rights through peaceful demonstration rather than through the judicial system.
From March 26 to March 28, 1958, the NCLC held the first of many workshops on using nonviolent tactics to challenge segregation. These workshops were led by James Lawson, who had studied the principles of nonviolent resistance
while working as a missionary in India. The workshops were mainly attended by students from Fisk University
, Tennessee A&I (later Tennessee State University
), American Baptist Theological Seminary (later American Baptist College
), and Meharry Medical College
. Among those attending Lawson's sessions were students who would become significant leaders in the Civil Rights Movement, among them: Marion Barry
, James Bevel
, Bernard Lafayette
, John Lewis
, Diane Nash
, and C. T. Vivian
.
During these workshops it was decided that the first target for the group's actions would be downtown lunch counters. At the time, African Americans were allowed to shop in downtown stores but were not allowed to eat in the stores' restaurants. The group felt that the lunch counters were a good objective because they were highly visible, easily accessible, and provided a stark example of the injustices black Southerners faced every day.
In late 1959, James Lawson and other members of the NCLC's projects committee met with department store owners Fred Harvey and John Sloan, and asked them to voluntarily serve African Americans at their lunch counters. Both men declined, saying that they would lose more business than they would gain. The students then began doing reconnaissance for sit-in demonstrations. The first test took place at Harveys Department Store
in downtown Nashville on November 28, followed by the Cain-Sloan
store on December 5. Small groups of students purchased items at the stores and then sat at their lunch counters and attempted to order food. Their goal was to try to sense the mood and degree of resistance in each store. Although they were refused service at both lunch counters, the reactions varied significantly. At Harveys, they received surprisingly polite responses, while at Cain-Sloan they were treated with contempt. These reconnaissance actions were low-key and neither of the city's newspapers was notified of them.
grew into a significant protest with over eighty students participating by the third day. Although similar demonstrations had occurred previously in other cities, this was the first to attract substantial media attention and public notice. When Lawson's group met the subsequent Friday night, about 500 new volunteers showed up to join the cause. Although Lawson and other adult organizers argued for delay, the student leaders insisted that the time had come for action.
The first large-scale organized sit-in was on Saturday, February 13, 1960. At about 12:30 pm, 124 students, most of them black, walked into the downtown Woolworths, S. H. Kress
, and McClellan
stores and asked to be served at the lunch counters. After the staff refused to serve them, they sat in the stores for two hours and then left without incident.
On the Monday following the first sit-in, the Baptist Minister's Conference of Nashville, representing 79 congregations, unanimously voted to support the student movement, thus throwing the weight of Nashville's black religious community behind the students. Local religious leaders called on people of good will to boycott downtown merchants who practiced segregation. Nashville's black community strongly supported the boycott, causing economic hardship for the merchants.
The second sit-in occurred on Thursday, February 18, when more than 200 students entered Woolworths, S. H. Kress, McClellan, and Grants
. The lunch counters were immediately closed. The students remained for about half an hour and then left, again without incident. The third sit-in occurred on February 20 when about 350 students entered the previous four stores and the downtown Walgreens
drugstore. As the students sat at the counters, crowds of white youths gathered in several of the stores. Police kept a watchful eye on all five locations, but no incidents of violence occurred. The students remained for nearly three hours until adjourning to a mass meeting at the First Baptist Church.
Tensions mounted over the following week as sit-in demonstrations spread to other cities and race riot
s broke out in nearby Chattanooga
. On February 27, the Nashville student activists held a fourth sit-in at the Woolworths, McClellan, and Walgreens stores. Crowds of white youths again gathered in the stores to taunt and harass the demonstrators. This time, however, police were not present. Eventually, several of the sit-in demonstrators were attacked by hecklers in the McClellan and Woolworths stores. Some were pulled from their seats and beaten, and one demonstrator was pushed down a flight of stairs. When police arrived, the white attackers fled and none were arrested. Police then ordered the demonstrators at all three locations to leave the stores. When the demonstrators refused to leave, they were arrested and loaded into police vehicles as onlookers applauded. Eighty-oneThere are several conflicting sources on the number of students arrested on February 27: The initial story in The Tennessean claims 75 were arrested; a story in the Nashville Globe and Independent states that 79 were arrested; most later sources, such as Halberstam's The Children and Wynn's "The Dawning of a New Day", state that 81 students were arrested. students were arrested and charged with loitering and disorderly conduct.
The arrests brought a surge of media coverage to the sit-in campaign, including national television news coverage, front page stories in both of Nashville's daily newspapers, and an Associated Press
story. The students generally viewed any media coverage as helpful to their cause, especially when it illustrated their commitment to nonviolence.
Several other sit-ins took place over the following two months, resulting in more arrests and further attacks against sit-in participants. Over 150 students were arrested. Throughout the demonstrations, the student activists maintained a policy of disciplined nonviolence. Their written code of conduct became a model followed by demonstrators in other cities:
, represented the students.According to Fisk News and Nashville Globe and Independent, the lawyers representing the students were: Z. Alexander Looby; Robert Lillard; Avon Williams; Coyness L. Ennix; A. J. Steel; J. F. McClellan; R. B. J. Campbell, Jr.; Adolph Birch; W. D. Hawkins, Jr.; Roscoe Hamby; William Blakemore; E. B. Lindsey; and Eugene White. Initially, the trial was presided over by City Judge Andrew J. Doyle. Doyle dismissed the loitering charges against the students and then stepped down from the bench, turning the trial over to Special City Judge John I. Harris.
Despite strong support from the black community, all the students who had been arrested were convicted of disorderly conduct and fined $50. The students refused to pay the fines, however, and chose instead to serve thirty-three days in the county workhouse. Diane Nash issued a statement on behalf of the students explaining the decision: "We feel that if we pay these fines we would be contributing to and supporting the injustice and immoral practices that have been performed in the arrest and conviction of the defendants."
The same day the trials began, a group of black ministers, including James Lawson, met with Mayor Ben West
to discuss the sit-ins. Coverage of the meeting by the local press, including a scathing editorial in the Nashville Banner
denouncing Lawson as a "flannel-mouth agitator", brought Lawson's activities to the attention of Vanderbilt University
where he was enrolled as a Divinity School student. When Lawson was confronted by Vanderbilt's executive committee and told he would have to end his involvement with the sit-ins, Lawson refused. He was immediately expelled from the university.
, but did not include any representatives from the student movement. The committee met several times over the next month and delivered its recommendations in a report on April 5. The committee recommended to partially integrate the city's lunch counters. Each store would have one section that was for whites only and another section for whites and blacks. This solution was rejected by the student leaders, who considered the recommendations to be morally unacceptable and based upon a policy of segregation. Less than a week after the Biracial Committee issued its report, the sit-ins resumed and the boycott of downtown businesses was intensified.
Rather than discouraging the protesters, this event served as a catalyst for the movement. Within hours, news of the bombing had spread throughout the community. Around noon, nearly 4000 people marched silently to City Hall to confront the mayor. Mayor West met the marchers at the courthouse steps. Reverend C. T. Vivian
read a prepared statement accusing the mayor of ignoring the moral issues involved in segregation and turning a blind eye to violence and injustice. Diane Nash
then asked the mayor if he felt it was wrong to discriminate against a person based solely on their race or skin color. West answered that he agreed it was wrong. Nash then asked him if he believed that lunch counters in the city should be desegregated. West answered, "Yes", then added, "That's up to the store managers, of course."
Coverage of this event varied significantly between Nashville's two major newspapers. The Tennessean
emphasized the mayor's agreement that lunch counters should be desegregated, while the Nashville Banner
emphasized the mayor's statement that it was up to the city's merchants to decide whether to desegregate. This was largely indicative of the two papers' opposing stances on the issue.
The next day Martin Luther King, Jr.
came to Nashville to speak at Fisk University
. During the speech, he praised the Nashville sit-in movement as "the best organized and the most disciplined in the Southland." He further stated that he came to Nashville "not to bring inspiration but to gain inspiration from the great movement that has taken place in this community."
On May 10, six downtown stores opened their lunch counters to black customers for the first time. The customers arrived in groups of two or three during the afternoon and were served without incident. At the same time, African Americans ended their six-week-old boycott of the downtown stores. The plan continued successfully and the lunch counters were integrated without any further incidents of violence. Nashville thus became the first major city in the South
to begin desegregating its public facilities.
Although the end of the sit-in campaign brought a brief respite for civil rights activists in Nashville, institutionalized racism remained a problem throughout the city. Over the next few years, further sit-ins, pickets, and other actions would take place at restaurants, movie theaters, public swimming pools, and other segregated facilities across Nashville. These actions continued until Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964
, which prohibited segregation in public places throughout the United States.
hosted a panel discussion entitled "Veterans of the Nashville Sit-ins - The Struggle Continues". The featured speakers were Kwame Leo Lillard and Matthew Walker, Jr. Tennessee State Museum
hosted an exhibition from February 4 to May 16 entitled "We Shall Not Be Moved: The 50th Anniversary of Tennessee's Civil Rights Sit-Ins". At Tennessee State University
on February 10, the 29th annual Conference on African American History and Culture held a special commemoration of the sit-ins, with Diane Nash
as the featured guest speaker. On February 12, Vanderbilt University hosted a panel discussion on media coverage of the Nashville sit-ins. The featured speakers were James Lawson and John Seigenthaler
. The downtown Nashville library hosted a photography exhibit entitled "Visions & Voices: The Civil Rights Movement in Nashville & Tennessee" from February 9 to May 22. In addition, National Public Radio's Juan Williams
lead a forum to discuss civil rights issues at the downtown library auditorium on February 13.
Direct action
Direct action is activity undertaken by individuals, groups, or governments to achieve political, economic, or social goals outside of normal social/political channels. This can include nonviolent and violent activities which target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the direct action...
campaign to end racial segregation
Racial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...
at lunch counters in downtown Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...
. The sit-in
Sit-in
A sit-in or sit-down is a form of protest that involves occupying seats or sitting down on the floor of an establishment.-Process:In a sit-in, protesters remain until they are evicted, usually by force, or arrested, or until their requests have been met...
campaign, coordinated by the Nashville Student Movement and Nashville Christian Leadership Council, was notable for its early success and emphasis on disciplined nonviolence
Nonviolence
Nonviolence has two meanings. It can refer, first, to a general philosophy of abstention from violence because of moral or religious principle It can refer to the behaviour of people using nonviolent action Nonviolence has two (closely related) meanings. (1) It can refer, first, to a general...
.
Over the course of the campaign, sit-ins were staged at numerous stores in Nashville's central business district. Sit-in participants, who consisted mainly of black college students, were often verbally or physically attacked by white onlookers. Despite their refusal to retaliate, over 150 students were eventually arrested for refusing to vacate store lunch counters when ordered to do so by police. At trial, the students were represented by a group of 13 lawyers, headed by Z. Alexander Looby
Z. Alexander Looby
Zephaniah Alexander Looby was a lawyer active in the American Civil Rights Movement. He was born in Antigua, and moved to the United States in 1914. He attended Howard University as an undergraduate where he became a member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity. Looby earned his bachelor's degree from...
. On April 19, Looby's home was bombed, however, neither he nor his wife were injured. Later that day, nearly 4000 people marched to City Hall to confront Mayor Ben West
Ben West
Raphael Benjamin West was mayor of Nashville, Tennessee from 1951-1963. West was born on March 31, 1911, in Columbia, Maury County, Tennessee the son of Martha Melissa and her husband James Watt West....
about the escalating violence. When asked if he believed the lunch counters in Nashville should be desegregated, West agreed that they should. After subsequent negotiations between the store owners and protest leaders, an agreement was reached during the first week of May. On May 10, six downtown stores began serving black customers at their lunch counters for the first time.
Although the initial campaign successfully desegregated downtown lunch counters, sit-ins, pickets, and protests against other segregated facilities continued in Nashville until passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against African Americans and women, including racial segregation...
which ended overt, legally sanctioned segregation nationwide. Many of the organizers of the Nashville sit-ins went on to become important leaders in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement.
Historical context
Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 , is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in the jurisprudence of the United States, upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in private businesses , under the doctrine of "separate but equal".The decision was handed...
upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the doctrine of "separate but equal
Separate but equal
Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law that justified systems of segregation. Under this doctrine, services, facilities and public accommodations were allowed to be separated by race, on the condition that the quality of each group's public facilities was to...
". This decision led to the proliferation of Jim Crow laws
Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans...
throughout the United States. These laws mandated segregation in virtually all spheres of public life and allowed racial discrimination to flourish across the country, especially in the Southern United States
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
.
In Nashville, like most Southern cities, African Americans were severely disadvantaged under the system of Jim Crow segregation. Besides being relegated to underfunded schools and barred from numerous public accommodations, African Americans had few prospects for skilled employment and were subject to constant discrimination from the white majority.
Although serious efforts were made to oppose Jim Crow laws in Nashville as early as 1905,Richard Henry Boyd
Richard Henry Boyd
Richard Henry Boyd , commonly known as the Rev. Dr. R. H. Boyd, was an African-American minister and businessman who was the founder and head of the National Baptist Publishing Board and a founder of the National Baptist Convention of America, Inc.-Early life:Boyd was born into slavery at the B. A...
, James Napier, Preston Taylor, and others organized a strike against Nashville's segregated streetcar service that lasted from July 1905 until July 1906. More information about this strike can be found in Bobby Lovett's A Black Man's Dream. it was not until 1958, with the formation of the Nashville Christian Leadership Council, that Nashville's African American community would lay the foundation for dismantling racial segregation.
Precursors and organization
The Nashville Christian Leadership Council (or NCLC), was founded by the Reverend Kelly Miller SmithKelly Miller Smith
Kelly Miller Smith, Sr. was a Baptist preacher, author, and prominent activist in the American Civil Rights Movement.Smith was born and raised in the all-black community of Mound Bayou, Mississippi...
, pastor of First Baptist Church, Capitol Hill. This organization was an affiliate of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...
's Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is an African-American civil rights organization. SCLC was closely associated with its first president, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr...
and was established to promote civil rights for African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
s through nonviolent civil disobedience
Civil disobedience
Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Civil disobedience is commonly, though not always, defined as being nonviolent resistance. It is one form of civil resistance...
. Smith believed that Americans would be more sympathetic to desegregation if African Americans obtained their rights through peaceful demonstration rather than through the judicial system.
From March 26 to March 28, 1958, the NCLC held the first of many workshops on using nonviolent tactics to challenge segregation. These workshops were led by James Lawson, who had studied the principles of nonviolent resistance
Nonviolent resistance
Nonviolent resistance is the practice of achieving goals through symbolic protests, civil disobedience, economic or political noncooperation, and other methods, without using violence. It is largely synonymous with civil resistance...
while working as a missionary in India. The workshops were mainly attended by students from Fisk University
Fisk University
Fisk University is an historically black university founded in 1866 in Nashville, Tennessee, U.S. The world-famous Fisk Jubilee Singers started as a group of students who performed to earn enough money to save the school at a critical time of financial shortages. They toured to raise funds to...
, Tennessee A&I (later Tennessee State University
Tennessee State University
Tennessee State University is a land-grant university located in Nashville, Tennessee. TSU is the only state-funded historically black university in Tennessee.-History:...
), American Baptist Theological Seminary (later American Baptist College
American Baptist College
American Baptist College is a small, predominantly African American liberal arts college located in Nashville, Tennessee...
), and Meharry Medical College
Meharry Medical College
Meharry Medical College, located in Nashville, Tennessee, United States, is a graduate and professional institution affiliated with the United Methodist Church whose mission is to educate healthcare professionals and scientists. Founded in 1876 as the Medical Department of Central Tennessee...
. Among those attending Lawson's sessions were students who would become significant leaders in the Civil Rights Movement, among them: Marion Barry
Marion Barry
Marion Shepilov Barry, Jr. is an American Democratic politician who is currently serving as a member of the Council of the District of Columbia, representing DC's Ward 8. Barry served as the second elected mayor of the District of Columbia from 1979 to 1991, and again as the fourth mayor from 1995...
, James Bevel
James Bevel
James L. Bevel was an American minister and leader of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement who, as the Director of Direct Action and Director of Nonviolent Education of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference initiated, strategized, directed, and developed SCLC's three major successes of the era:...
, Bernard Lafayette
Bernard Lafayette
Bernard Lafayette Jr. is a longtime civil rights activist and organizer, who was a leader in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement...
, John Lewis
John Lewis (politician)
John Robert Lewis is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1987. He was a leader in the American Civil Rights Movement and chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee , playing a key role in the struggle to end segregation...
, Diane Nash
Diane Nash
Diane Judith Nash was a leader and strategist of the student wing of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. A historian described her as: "…bright, focused, utterly fearless, with an unerring instinct for the correct tactical move at each increment of the crisis; as a leader, her instincts had been...
, and C. T. Vivian
C. T. Vivian
Cordy Tindell Vivian is a minister, author, and was a close friend and lieutenant of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. during the American Civil Rights Movement. Vivian continues to reside in Atlanta, Georgia and most recently founded the C. T. Vivian Leadership Institute, Inc. Rev...
.
During these workshops it was decided that the first target for the group's actions would be downtown lunch counters. At the time, African Americans were allowed to shop in downtown stores but were not allowed to eat in the stores' restaurants. The group felt that the lunch counters were a good objective because they were highly visible, easily accessible, and provided a stark example of the injustices black Southerners faced every day.
In late 1959, James Lawson and other members of the NCLC's projects committee met with department store owners Fred Harvey and John Sloan, and asked them to voluntarily serve African Americans at their lunch counters. Both men declined, saying that they would lose more business than they would gain. The students then began doing reconnaissance for sit-in demonstrations. The first test took place at Harveys Department Store
Harveys (department store)
Harveys was a department store chain best known for its original store in downtown Nashville, Tennessee.The original Harveys department store was opened by Fred Harvey in 1942 at the corner of 6th Avenue North and Church Street. The site was the former home of a post-Reconstruction Nashville...
in downtown Nashville on November 28, followed by the Cain-Sloan
Cain-Sloan
Cain-Sloan Co. Inc. was a department store chain based in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Paul Lowe Sloan, Pat Cain and John E. Cain founded Cain-Sloan in Nashville in 1903. The company merged with Allied Stores Corp. of New York in 1955 and remained under its umbrella before being sold to,...
store on December 5. Small groups of students purchased items at the stores and then sat at their lunch counters and attempted to order food. Their goal was to try to sense the mood and degree of resistance in each store. Although they were refused service at both lunch counters, the reactions varied significantly. At Harveys, they received surprisingly polite responses, while at Cain-Sloan they were treated with contempt. These reconnaissance actions were low-key and neither of the city's newspapers was notified of them.
Full-scale demonstrations
Before the students in Nashville had a chance to formalize their plans, events elsewhere brought renewed urgency to the effort. During the first week of February 1960, a small sit-in demonstration in Greensboro, North CarolinaGreensboro sit-ins
The Greensboro sit-ins were a series of nonviolent protests which led to the Woolworth's department store chain reversing its policy of racial segregation in the Southern United States....
grew into a significant protest with over eighty students participating by the third day. Although similar demonstrations had occurred previously in other cities, this was the first to attract substantial media attention and public notice. When Lawson's group met the subsequent Friday night, about 500 new volunteers showed up to join the cause. Although Lawson and other adult organizers argued for delay, the student leaders insisted that the time had come for action.
S. H. Kress & Co.
S. H. Kress & Co. was the trading name of a chain of "five and dime" retail department stores in the United States, which operated from 1896 to 1981....
, and McClellan
McLellan Stores
McLellan Stores were a 20th-century chain of five and dime stores in the United States.The stores were founded by William Walker McLellan in 1917. The chain grew to 200 variety stores, but the Great Depression drove the company into bankruptcy...
stores and asked to be served at the lunch counters. After the staff refused to serve them, they sat in the stores for two hours and then left without incident.
On the Monday following the first sit-in, the Baptist Minister's Conference of Nashville, representing 79 congregations, unanimously voted to support the student movement, thus throwing the weight of Nashville's black religious community behind the students. Local religious leaders called on people of good will to boycott downtown merchants who practiced segregation. Nashville's black community strongly supported the boycott, causing economic hardship for the merchants.
The second sit-in occurred on Thursday, February 18, when more than 200 students entered Woolworths, S. H. Kress, McClellan, and Grants
W. T. Grant
W. T. Grant or Grants was a United States-based chain of mass-merchandise stores founded by William Thomas Grant that operated from 1906 until 1976. The stores were generally of the variety store format located in downtowns.-History:...
. The lunch counters were immediately closed. The students remained for about half an hour and then left, again without incident. The third sit-in occurred on February 20 when about 350 students entered the previous four stores and the downtown Walgreens
Walgreens
Walgreen Co. , doing business as Walgreens , is the largest drugstore chain in the United States of America. As of August 31st, the company operates 8,210 locations across all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Founded in Chicago, Illinois in 1901, and has since expanded...
drugstore. As the students sat at the counters, crowds of white youths gathered in several of the stores. Police kept a watchful eye on all five locations, but no incidents of violence occurred. The students remained for nearly three hours until adjourning to a mass meeting at the First Baptist Church.
Tensions mounted over the following week as sit-in demonstrations spread to other cities and race riot
Race riot
A race riot or racial riot is an outbreak of violent civil disorder in which race is a key factor. A phenomenon frequently confused with the concept of 'race riot' is sectarian violence, which involves public mass violence or conflict over non-racial factors.-United States:The term had entered the...
s broke out in nearby Chattanooga
Chattanooga, Tennessee
Chattanooga is the fourth-largest city in the US state of Tennessee , with a population of 169,887. It is the seat of Hamilton County...
. On February 27, the Nashville student activists held a fourth sit-in at the Woolworths, McClellan, and Walgreens stores. Crowds of white youths again gathered in the stores to taunt and harass the demonstrators. This time, however, police were not present. Eventually, several of the sit-in demonstrators were attacked by hecklers in the McClellan and Woolworths stores. Some were pulled from their seats and beaten, and one demonstrator was pushed down a flight of stairs. When police arrived, the white attackers fled and none were arrested. Police then ordered the demonstrators at all three locations to leave the stores. When the demonstrators refused to leave, they were arrested and loaded into police vehicles as onlookers applauded. Eighty-oneThere are several conflicting sources on the number of students arrested on February 27: The initial story in The Tennessean claims 75 were arrested; a story in the Nashville Globe and Independent states that 79 were arrested; most later sources, such as Halberstam's The Children and Wynn's "The Dawning of a New Day", state that 81 students were arrested. students were arrested and charged with loitering and disorderly conduct.
The arrests brought a surge of media coverage to the sit-in campaign, including national television news coverage, front page stories in both of Nashville's daily newspapers, and an Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
story. The students generally viewed any media coverage as helpful to their cause, especially when it illustrated their commitment to nonviolence.
Several other sit-ins took place over the following two months, resulting in more arrests and further attacks against sit-in participants. Over 150 students were arrested. Throughout the demonstrations, the student activists maintained a policy of disciplined nonviolence. Their written code of conduct became a model followed by demonstrators in other cities:
"Do not strike back or curse if abused. Do not laugh out. Do not hold conversations with the floor walker. Do not leave your seat until your leader has given you permission to do so. Do not block entrances to stores outside nor the aisles inside. Do show yourself courteous and friendly at all times. Do sit straight; always face the counter. Do report all serious incidents to your leader. Do refer information seekers to your leader in a polite manner. Remember the teachings of JesusJesusJesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
, Gandhi, Martin Luther KingMartin Luther King, Jr.Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...
. Love and nonviolence is the way."
Trials and Lawson expulsion
The trials of the sit-in participants attracted widespread interest throughout Nashville and the surrounding region. On February 29, the first day of the trials, a crowd of more than 2000 people lined the streets surrounding the city courthouse to show their support for the defendants. A group of 13 lawyers, headed by Z. Alexander LoobyZ. Alexander Looby
Zephaniah Alexander Looby was a lawyer active in the American Civil Rights Movement. He was born in Antigua, and moved to the United States in 1914. He attended Howard University as an undergraduate where he became a member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity. Looby earned his bachelor's degree from...
, represented the students.According to Fisk News and Nashville Globe and Independent, the lawyers representing the students were: Z. Alexander Looby; Robert Lillard; Avon Williams; Coyness L. Ennix; A. J. Steel; J. F. McClellan; R. B. J. Campbell, Jr.; Adolph Birch; W. D. Hawkins, Jr.; Roscoe Hamby; William Blakemore; E. B. Lindsey; and Eugene White. Initially, the trial was presided over by City Judge Andrew J. Doyle. Doyle dismissed the loitering charges against the students and then stepped down from the bench, turning the trial over to Special City Judge John I. Harris.
Despite strong support from the black community, all the students who had been arrested were convicted of disorderly conduct and fined $50. The students refused to pay the fines, however, and chose instead to serve thirty-three days in the county workhouse. Diane Nash issued a statement on behalf of the students explaining the decision: "We feel that if we pay these fines we would be contributing to and supporting the injustice and immoral practices that have been performed in the arrest and conviction of the defendants."
The same day the trials began, a group of black ministers, including James Lawson, met with Mayor Ben West
Ben West
Raphael Benjamin West was mayor of Nashville, Tennessee from 1951-1963. West was born on March 31, 1911, in Columbia, Maury County, Tennessee the son of Martha Melissa and her husband James Watt West....
to discuss the sit-ins. Coverage of the meeting by the local press, including a scathing editorial in the Nashville Banner
Nashville Banner
The Nashville Banner is a defunct daily newspaper of Nashville, Tennessee, United States, which published from April 10, 1876 until February 20, 1998...
denouncing Lawson as a "flannel-mouth agitator", brought Lawson's activities to the attention of Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University is a private research university located in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, the university is named for shipping and rail magnate "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided Vanderbilt its initial $1 million endowment despite having never been to the...
where he was enrolled as a Divinity School student. When Lawson was confronted by Vanderbilt's executive committee and told he would have to end his involvement with the sit-ins, Lawson refused. He was immediately expelled from the university.
Biracial Committee
On March 3, to defuse the racial tensions caused by the sit-ins, Mayor West announced the formation of a Biracial Committee to seek a solution to the city's racial strife. The committee included the presidents of two of the city's black universitiesHistorically Black Colleges and Universities
Historically black colleges and universities are institutions of higher education in the United States that were established before 1964 with the intention of serving the black community....
, but did not include any representatives from the student movement. The committee met several times over the next month and delivered its recommendations in a report on April 5. The committee recommended to partially integrate the city's lunch counters. Each store would have one section that was for whites only and another section for whites and blacks. This solution was rejected by the student leaders, who considered the recommendations to be morally unacceptable and based upon a policy of segregation. Less than a week after the Biracial Committee issued its report, the sit-ins resumed and the boycott of downtown businesses was intensified.
Looby residence bombing
At 5:30 am on April 19, dynamite was thrown through a front window of Z. Alexander Looby's home in north Nashville, apparently in retaliation for his support of the demonstrators. Although the explosion almost destroyed the house, Looby and his wife, who were asleep in a back bedroom, were not injured. More than 140 windows in a nearby dormitory were broken by the blast.Rather than discouraging the protesters, this event served as a catalyst for the movement. Within hours, news of the bombing had spread throughout the community. Around noon, nearly 4000 people marched silently to City Hall to confront the mayor. Mayor West met the marchers at the courthouse steps. Reverend C. T. Vivian
C. T. Vivian
Cordy Tindell Vivian is a minister, author, and was a close friend and lieutenant of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. during the American Civil Rights Movement. Vivian continues to reside in Atlanta, Georgia and most recently founded the C. T. Vivian Leadership Institute, Inc. Rev...
read a prepared statement accusing the mayor of ignoring the moral issues involved in segregation and turning a blind eye to violence and injustice. Diane Nash
Diane Nash
Diane Judith Nash was a leader and strategist of the student wing of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. A historian described her as: "…bright, focused, utterly fearless, with an unerring instinct for the correct tactical move at each increment of the crisis; as a leader, her instincts had been...
then asked the mayor if he felt it was wrong to discriminate against a person based solely on their race or skin color. West answered that he agreed it was wrong. Nash then asked him if he believed that lunch counters in the city should be desegregated. West answered, "Yes", then added, "That's up to the store managers, of course."
Coverage of this event varied significantly between Nashville's two major newspapers. The Tennessean
The Tennessean
The Tennessean is the principal daily newspaper in Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Its circulation area covers 39 counties in Middle Tennessee and eight counties in southern Kentucky....
emphasized the mayor's agreement that lunch counters should be desegregated, while the Nashville Banner
Nashville Banner
The Nashville Banner is a defunct daily newspaper of Nashville, Tennessee, United States, which published from April 10, 1876 until February 20, 1998...
emphasized the mayor's statement that it was up to the city's merchants to decide whether to desegregate. This was largely indicative of the two papers' opposing stances on the issue.
The next day Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...
came to Nashville to speak at Fisk University
Fisk University
Fisk University is an historically black university founded in 1866 in Nashville, Tennessee, U.S. The world-famous Fisk Jubilee Singers started as a group of students who performed to earn enough money to save the school at a critical time of financial shortages. They toured to raise funds to...
. During the speech, he praised the Nashville sit-in movement as "the best organized and the most disciplined in the Southland." He further stated that he came to Nashville "not to bring inspiration but to gain inspiration from the great movement that has taken place in this community."
Desegregation
After weeks of secret negotiations between merchants and protest leaders, an agreement was finally reached during the first week of May. According to the agreement, small, selected groups of African Americans would order food at the downtown lunch counters on a day known in advance to the merchants. The merchants would prepare their employees for the event and instruct them to serve the customers without trouble. This arrangement would continue in a controlled manner for a couple of weeks and then all controls would be taken off, at which point the merchants and protest leaders would reconvene to evaluate the results. Also as part of the agreement, the media was to be informed of the settlement and requested to provide only accurate, non-sensational coverage.On May 10, six downtown stores opened their lunch counters to black customers for the first time. The customers arrived in groups of two or three during the afternoon and were served without incident. At the same time, African Americans ended their six-week-old boycott of the downtown stores. The plan continued successfully and the lunch counters were integrated without any further incidents of violence. Nashville thus became the first major city in the South
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
to begin desegregating its public facilities.
Although the end of the sit-in campaign brought a brief respite for civil rights activists in Nashville, institutionalized racism remained a problem throughout the city. Over the next few years, further sit-ins, pickets, and other actions would take place at restaurants, movie theaters, public swimming pools, and other segregated facilities across Nashville. These actions continued until Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against African Americans and women, including racial segregation...
, which prohibited segregation in public places throughout the United States.
Fiftieth anniversary
Several events were held during 2010 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Nashville sit-ins. On January 20, Vanderbilt UniversityVanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University is a private research university located in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, the university is named for shipping and rail magnate "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided Vanderbilt its initial $1 million endowment despite having never been to the...
hosted a panel discussion entitled "Veterans of the Nashville Sit-ins - The Struggle Continues". The featured speakers were Kwame Leo Lillard and Matthew Walker, Jr. Tennessee State Museum
Tennessee State Museum
Tennessee State Museum is a large museum in Nashville depicting the history of the U.S. state of Tennessee. Starting from pre-colonization and going all the way to the 20th century, the museum describes the American Civil War, the Frontier, and the Age of Jackson. The museum includes an area of...
hosted an exhibition from February 4 to May 16 entitled "We Shall Not Be Moved: The 50th Anniversary of Tennessee's Civil Rights Sit-Ins". At Tennessee State University
Tennessee State University
Tennessee State University is a land-grant university located in Nashville, Tennessee. TSU is the only state-funded historically black university in Tennessee.-History:...
on February 10, the 29th annual Conference on African American History and Culture held a special commemoration of the sit-ins, with Diane Nash
Diane Nash
Diane Judith Nash was a leader and strategist of the student wing of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. A historian described her as: "…bright, focused, utterly fearless, with an unerring instinct for the correct tactical move at each increment of the crisis; as a leader, her instincts had been...
as the featured guest speaker. On February 12, Vanderbilt University hosted a panel discussion on media coverage of the Nashville sit-ins. The featured speakers were James Lawson and John Seigenthaler
John Seigenthaler
John Lawrence Seigenthaler is an American journalist, writer, and political figure. He is known as a prominent defender of First Amendment rights....
. The downtown Nashville library hosted a photography exhibit entitled "Visions & Voices: The Civil Rights Movement in Nashville & Tennessee" from February 9 to May 22. In addition, National Public Radio's Juan Williams
Juan Williams
Juan Williams is an American journalist and political analyst for Fox News Channel, he was born in Panama on April 10, 1954. He also writes for several newspapers including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal and has been published in magazines such as The Atlantic...
lead a forum to discuss civil rights issues at the downtown library auditorium on February 13.
External links
- Nashville Sit-ins, tn4me.org
- American Experience – Eyes on the Prize: Non-Violent Protests, pbs.org
- Nashville Student Movement (1960-1964), Civil Rights Movement Veterans, crmvet.org