Civil Rights Events

Sit-Ins

Nashville -- Accommodation

 

There were other arrests, other acts of violence, notably during the months of March and April 

 

The events of February 27 did not put-off student demonstrators – if anything, it spurred them on. They also received more support from [previously neutral] students who were appalled by their treatment. Such events attracted even more media attention and by April 1960, the leadership of the sit-ins decided to expand their movement so that they boycotted all downtown businesses in Nashville associated with segregation. The action was so successful that it is calculated that 98% of the African American population in Nashville took part in the boycott (Trueman 4).

 

On March 3 Mayor Ben West appointed a seven-member biracial committee to investigate segregation in the city. Despite the committee’s numerous attempts at a compromise, the students declared that they would accept nothing less than the acknowledgement of their rights to sit at the store lunch counters along with white customers. On April 5, the committee suggested that the counters be divided into black and white sections. [Whites would occupy counter stool from one end of the row while Blacks occupied stools beginning at the opposite end of the row] The Nashville Christian Leadership Conference (NCLC), which worked with the Nashville Student Movement, rejected the proposal, arguing that segregation of the counters was no better than black exclusion from them (Momodu 2-3).

 

One of the important phases of the movement in Nashville [Diane Nash years later declared] was the economic withdrawal, where the oppressed people really withdraw their participation from their own oppression. So there was a withdrawal of shopping, by the blacks, and by whites who agreed with us, and who would participate, from the downtown area, that while blacks couldn't be served at the lunch counters or in the restaurants of the department stores, we didn't shop downtown at all. That was the height of the Easter shopping season, which used to be even important to, to retail merchants than they are now. Everybody used to get brand new Easter outfits, that … could possibly afford to. And that boycott was, I think, about 98% effective, or more, among blacks in Nashville. So that the next time — when we began negotiating with the merchants again, they were much more interested in talking to us than they had been the first time (Interview Nash 10).

 

On April 19, a bomb destroyed the home of Z. Alexander Looby, the defense attorney representing many of the protesters. The bombing triggered a mass march.   John Lewis remembered: One of the attorneys that had been defending us, I think it was April 19, 1960, about six o'clock in the morning, the home of Z. Alexander Looby, he was one of the attorneys for the Legal Defense Fund, who taught part-time at Fisk, his home was bombed. He lived across the street from Meharry Medical College and the bomb impact broke the windows of the school. About seven o'clock we had a meeting with this group of students called the Central Committee of the Nashville Student Movement, which represented students from Fisk, American Baptist, Tennessee State, Peabody, Vanderbilt. We all met and decided that we would have a mass march on City Hall in response to the bombing of Attorney Looby's home. We sent the mayor a telegram saying to him to meet us on the steps of the City Hall by noon. By noon, we had more than five thousand students and community people marching on City Hall and the mayor came and spoke (Interview Lewis 9).

 

Diane Nash related: Attorney Looby was a very, very respected man in the community. He had a reputation of defending people who didn't have enough money to adequately pay him, and of being a really decent human being. And quite by accident, the student central committee had a meeting scheduled for six a.m. that morning. And I remember I was up, getting dressed to go to the meeting, when I heard the explosion.

 

…

 

The students met on Tennessee A&I's campus, and we marched, I think, three abreast. We were very organized. One of the things that we made it a point of was that whenever there was a demonstration, we were to be overly dressed. The men generally wore suits and ties, and the women — we looked like we were dressing up for Sunday. And anyway, we marched quietly — we were met later by students at Fisk. We passed Fisk campus. And other students, other schools had points where they joined in to the march. There were many thousands of people that marched that day. We marched silently, really. And the — the long line of students must have continued for many, many blocks. Miles, maybe. And we marched to the mayor's office.  … We had sent telegrams ahead of time, telling him that as a result of the bombing, turning the Looby home into a state of violence, tension, violence in the city of Nashville, we felt like we needed to talk …. So we met him on the steps of City Hall. And confronted him with what his feelings as a man, were. As a person. I was particularly interested in that, as opposed to just his being a mayor (Interview Nash 12, 14, 15).

 

Nash asked Mayor West if it was wrong for a citizen of Nashville to discriminate against his fellow citizens because of his race or skin color. The mayor admitted that it was wrong, giving the students an important symbolic victory in their campaign. Nash then asked the mayor if the lunch counters in Nashville should be desegregated. The mayor said they should (Momodu 5).

 

I have a lot of respect for the way he responded. He didn't have to respond the way he did. He said, that he felt like it was wrong, for citizens of Nashville to be discriminated against at the lunch counters, solely on the basis of the color of their skin. … I think that was the turning point.  The Nashville newspaper reported that, in the headlines, the next day …  (Interview Nash 15).

 

Weeks of secret negotiations resulted.  Diane Nash and the other student committee members tried to understand the merchants’ reservations, one important reservation being that there might be a boycott by whites at the lunch counters, if they began to serve blacks. And we started really strategizing how we could avoid that. So, some of the whites in Nashville …  who recognized that it was important to desegregate the city, figured into …the strategy, because they made it a point to sit next to the blacks, who were being served, so that there could not be a white boycott. So, those kinds of experiences made me really look at the fact that bringing about social change through violence is probably not … as realistic. Because, who do you kill? Do you kill all whites? That doesn't make sense, because we had whites who were our opposition the first year, who the second year… took an attitude … it's not that bad, in fact, it really makes sense.   … they were helpful to us the second year, in bringing about desegregation (Interview Nash 16).

 

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. With that agreement, Nashville became the first major southern city to begin desegregating public facilities (Momodu 6).

 

Whereas the bus boycott in Montgomery had been successful because of its economic clout, there had been no overt comment by anyone within the city’s authority about the immorality of segregation. For a mayor to do this, combined with the impact on a city’s local economy, was a major achievement for a state such as Tennessee.

 

The story of the Nashville sit-ins did not end with the desegregation of lunch counters. Towards the end of 1960, a number of the leaders of the movement helped to found the Student Non-violent Co-ordinating Committee (SNCC). Diane Nash became a full-time SNCC field worker while John Lewis was elected the leader of SNCC in 1962. …

 

Several of the SNCC leaders, who had honed their leadership skills during the sit-ins, became involved in the Freedom Rides. The sit-in leaders were also involved in helping to organize the Selma to Montgomery march.

 

Most of those who led the sit-ins became major figures in the civil rights campaign. Diane Nash was appointed to a national committee by J F Kennedy that promoted the 1964 Civil Rights Act. John Lewis was elected to Congress in 1986 after two decades of being recognized as one of the civil rights movement’s major figures.

 

The Rev James Lawson – who taught about the importance of a non-violent campaign – was expelled from Vanderbilt University Divinity School for his part in the sit-ins – but has since been honoured by the university (Trueman 5-6).

 

 

Works cited:

 

“Interview with Diane Nash.” Eyes on the Prize Interview.  Washington University Digital Gateway Texts.  November 12, 1985.  Web.  http://digital.wustl.edu/e/eop/eopweb/nas0015.0267.075dianenash.html

 

“Interview with John Lewis.”  Southern Oral History Program Collection.  Documenting the American South.  November 20, 1973.  Web.   https://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/A-0073/A-0073.html

 

Momodu, Samuel.  “Nashville Sit-Ins (1960).”  BlackPast.org.  Web.  http://www.blackpast.org/aah/nashville-sit-ins-1960.

 

Trueman, C. N.  “Nashville Sit Ins.”  historylearningsite.co.uk.  March 27, 2015.  Web.  https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/the-civil-rights-movement-in-america-1945-to-1968/nashville-sit-ins/.