Nashville sit-ins

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The Nashville sit-ins were part of a nonviolent direct action campaign to end racial segregation at lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee. The sit-ins lasted from February to May of 1960 and were notable for their early success and emphasis on disciplined nonviolence. Many of the organizers of the Nashville sit-ins went on to become important leaders in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement.

Contents 1 Pre-cursors and organizing 2 Full-scale demonstrations 3 Legal defense 4 The Biracial Committee 5 Bombing of the Looby residence 6 Desegregation 7 References 8 External links

[edit] Pre-cursors and organizing

The Reverend Kelly Miller Smith, pastor of First Baptist Church, Capitol Hill, founded the Nashville Christian Leadership Council (NCLC) in 1958. This organization was an affiliate of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and was established to promote civil rights for African Americans through nonviolent civil disobedience. Smith believed that Americans would be more sympathetic to desegregation if blacks obtained their rights through peaceful demonstration rather than through the judicial system.

On March 26–28, 1958, the NCLC held the first of many workshops on nonviolent tactics against segregation. These workshops were led by Reverend 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 (which became Tennessee State University), American Baptist Theological Seminary (which became American Baptist College), and Meharry Medical College.

During these workshops it was decided that the first target for the group's actions would be downtown lunch counters. At the time, blacks 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 on a daily basis.

In December 1959, the group began doing reconnaissance for sit-in demonstrations. Small groups of students would purchase items at downtown stores and then sit at their lunch counters and attempt 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 each lunch counter, the reactions varied greatly. At Harveys, for example, they received surprisingly polite responses, while at Cain-Sloan they were treated with contempt. These reconnaissance actions were very low-key and neither of the city's newspapers were notified of them.

[edit] Full-scale demonstrations

Before the students in Nashville had a chance to formalize their plans, events elsewhere would bring a renewed urgency. During the first week of February, a small sit-in demonstration in Greensboro, North Carolina had grown 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.^[1]

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.^[2]

The first large-scale organized sit-in to occur was on 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.

The second sit-in occurred five days later on 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 approximately 350 students entered the previous four stores and also the downtown Walgreens drugstore. This time the students remained for nearly three hours until the police ordered the students to leave.

Numerous other sit-ins took place over the next two months, resulting in the arrests of 145 people, mostly college students.

[edit] Legal defense

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 nearly 2000 people lined the streets surrounding the city courthouse to show their support for the defendants.

A group of 12 lawyers, headed by Z. Alexander Looby, represented the students.

Despite strong support from the black community, all students who had been arrested were convicted of disorderly conduct.

[edit] The Biracial Committee

On March 3, in an effort to diffuse the racial tensions caused by the sit-ins, Mayor Ben 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 universities, but did not include any representatives from the student movement itself.

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 a boycott of downtown businesses was also initiated.

[edit] Bombing of the Looby residence

At 5:30 am on April 19, a bomb was thrown through a front window of Z. Alexander Looby's home in north Nashville, apparently in retaliation for his support of the demonstrators. The explosion almost completely destroyed Looby's home, although Looby and his wife, who were asleep in a back bedroom, survived without injury. More than 140 windows in a nearby dormitory were broken by the blast.

Rather than discouraging the protesters, however, 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 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 or not to desegregate. This was largely indicative of the two papers' opposing stances on the issue.^[3]

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."

[edit] Desegregation

After weeks of secret negotiations between merchants and protest leaders, six downtown stores opened their lunch counters to black customers for the first time on May 10, 1960. As part of the agreement, no word of the initial desegregation was broadcast or published locally in an effort to forestall any incidents of violence. The plan was successful and the lunch counters were integrated without incident.^[4] Thus Nashville became the first major city in the South to begin desegregating its public facilities.^[5]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

American Experience – Eyes on the Prize (Non-Violent Protests)