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 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.
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[edit] Pre-cursors and organization
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 African Americans obtained their rights through peaceful demonstration rather than through the judicial system.[1]
From March 26 to March 28, 1958, the NCLC held the first of many workshops on nonviolent tactics against segregation.[2][note 1] 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.[3]
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 on a daily basis.[4]
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. These reconnaissance actions were very low-key and neither of the city's newspapers was notified of them.[5]
[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.[6]
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.[7]
The first large-scale organized sit-in to occur 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.[8][9] On the Monday following the 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.[10]
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.[11][12]
The third sit-in occurred on February 20 when approximately 350 students entered the previous four stores and also 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, however, and no incidents of violence occurred. The students remained for nearly three hours until adjourning to a mass meeting at the First Baptist Church.[13][14]
Tensions mounted over the following week as sit-in demonstrations spread to other cities and race riots broke out in nearby Chattanooga.[15][16] 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 was pushed down a flight of stairs. When police arrived, the white attackers fled and none were arrested.[17] 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. A total of eighty-one[note 2] students were arrested and charged with loitering and disorderly conduct.[18][19]
Numerous other sit-ins took place over the next two months, resulting in the arrests of more that 150 students, as well as Lawson.[20]
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. Among other things, it specified: "Don't strike back or curse if abused... Show yourself courteous and friendly at all times... Remember love and nonviolence."[20][21]
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[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.[22]
A group of 12 lawyers, headed by Z. Alexander Looby, represented the students.[22]
Despite strong support from the black community, all students who had been arrested were convicted of disorderly conduct.
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[edit] 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.[23][24]
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.[17][24]
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] Looby residence bombing
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.[25]
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 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."[26][27]
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,[27] 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.[28] This was largely indicative of the two papers' opposing stances on the issue.[29][30]
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."[31]
[edit] 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. Apparently due to a misunderstanding about this part of the agreement, the merchants actually requested that the local media ignore the development completely.[32]
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.[33][34] 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.[35][36]
[edit] See also
- Greensboro sit-ins
- International Civil Rights Center and Museum
- F. W. Woolworth Building (Lexington, Kentucky)
- State of Iowa v. Katz
[edit] Notes
- ^ Although some sources state that the non-violence workshops started in 1959, the first one was actually held in March, 1958. They were not held regularly, however, until 1959.
- ^ There 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, however, state that 81 students were arrested.
[edit] References
- ^ Lovett, Profiles, 112.
- ^ Lovett, Profiles, 96.
- ^ "Nashville Student Movement (1960-1964)". Civil Rights Movement Veterans. http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis60.htm#1960nsm. Retrieved on 2008-09-23.
- ^ Halberstam, The Children, 90–91.
- ^ Halberstam, The Children, 91.
- ^ Branch, Parting the Waters, 271–272.
- ^ Branch, Parting the Waters, 274.
- ^ Talley, James (February 14, 1960). "Strikes hit city". The Tennessean.
- ^ Sumner, Local Press, 67.
- ^ "Local Ministers To Support Student Movement". Nashville Globe and Independent. February 19, 1960.
- ^ Sumner, Local Press, 70.
- ^ "Negroes 'Strike' Counters Again". The Tennessean. February 19, 1960.
- ^ Sumner, Local Press, 71.
- ^ "Lunch Counter 'Strike' Spreads". The Tennessean. February 21, 1960.
- ^ Gilje, Paul A.. Rioting in America. Indiana University Press. p. 155.
- ^ "'Won't Tolerate Violence,' Chattanooga Mayor Says". Nashville Banner: pp. 49. February 25, 1960.
- ^ a b Halberstam, David (March 9, 1960). "Students Reject 'Token' Service". The Tennessean.
- ^ Talley, James (February 28, 1960). "75 Students Arrested Here". The Tennessean.
- ^ Talley, James (February 29, 1960). "Negro Ministers Urge Meeting With Mayor". The Tennessean.
- ^ a b Carson, In Struggle, 22.
- ^ "Nonviolent Discipline of 1960 Nashville Student Sit-in Movement", in folder on Nonviolent Student Sit-in Movement, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Chicago SNCC Freedom Center Collection, University of Illinois at Chicago Circle Library.
- ^ a b Talley, James (March 1, 1960). "Judge Harris Ouster Sought; Prejudged 'Sitdowns,' Looby Says". The Tennessean.
- ^ Harris, Mac (March 4, 1960). "Mayor Names Biracial Group To Seek Peace". The Tennessean.
- ^ a b Sumner, Local Press, 86.
- ^ Halberstam, The Children, 228.
- ^ Halberstam, The Children, 234.
- ^ a b Halberstam, David (April 20, 1960). "Integrate Counters–Mayor". The Tennessean: pp. 1.
- ^ "West Tells 2,000 Marchers City's Laws To Be Upheld". Nashville Banner: pp. 10. April 20, 1960.
- ^ Sumner, Local Press, 126–127.
- ^ Halberstam, The Children, 113–121.
- ^ Fullerton, Garry (April 21, 1960). "King Delayed By Bomb Scare". The Tennessean: pp. 1.
- ^ Westfeldt, Wallace. "Settling a Sit-In". Report for the Nashville Community Relations Council. Quoted in Sumner, The Local Press and the Nashville Student Movement, 1960, 130–131.
- ^ Travis, Fred (May 11, 1960). "Six lunch counters in Nashville open service to Negro". Chattanooga Times: pp. 1.
- ^ "Negroes Win Dining Rights in Nashville". The Chicago Tribune. May 11, 1960.
- ^ Lovett, Profiles, 97.
- ^ Wynn, Linda T. (Spring 1991). "The Dawning of a New Day: The Nashville Sit-Ins, February 13, 1960–May 10, 1960". Tennessee Historical Quarterly: 42–54.
[edit] Bibliography
- Branch, Taylor (1988). Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-68742-5.
- Carson, Clayborne (1981). In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
- Halberstam, David (1998). The Children. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-449-00439-2.
- Lovett, Bobby L.; Linda Wynn (1996). Profiles of African Americans in Tennessee. Nashville, Tennessee: Annual Local Conference on Afro-American Culture and History.
- Sumner, David E. (1989). The Local Press and the Nashville Student Movement, 1960. Knoxville, Tennessee: University of Tennessee.
